Springtime in northern Indiana

Having lived most of my life in Indiana, I certainly know about severe weather. I remember the Palm Sunday tornadoes in 1965 when I was a freshman in high school and remember seeing the twin twisters touching down and totally obliterating a trailer court on U.S. 33 and CR17. If you drive by now, the trailer court is gone, having been re-established after the tornado only to be a victim of the "new 17." It sits in the shadow of the bridge on the south side. Roads in the court are still visible as is a foundation or two. I learned this year there is a memorial on Wilden Avenue in Sunnyside. The memorial is maintained, I believe, by one family whose son was killed in the tornado. Their house was destroyed and on that lot they have erected a park-like memorial to victims of the tornado.

Last Friday many campers in the Elkhart Campground thought a tornado hit them. There was no severe weather forecast and as we left on our way over to the apartments, we were undecided about whether or not to put the Datastorm down. Since we weren't going to be there, we decided we may as well go back and put it down, so we did. We typically leave nothing out when we are gone, so we don't have to worry about wind.

In the early afternoon over at the house, we had a lot of rain and some wind. The rain was quite unlike any we have seen this year, except maybe in Texas. It just poured and while the wind blew, it was not excessive and we still didn't have severe weather warnings on TV.

However, when we got back to the campground that evening, it was a different story. There were people who lost their awnings, satellite dishes, slide toppers, etc. One man told us his 5'er lifted and the slide particularly lifted and rainwater shot through the slide seals and sprayed to the inside of his coach. He said he was scared that this was a tornado and they were going to roll over. In fact, a wooden picnic table right outside his door was flipped over.

We got back to our rig and inspected for damage. We had a little water on the counter by the table that had been pushed in through the weep holes, but it was very little. No other water or moisture anywhere, so we felt lucky there. What we did notice was that our slide topper on our largest living room slide which was facing the storm was pushed out of the track at the top by about 12 inches. It was not torn, but we knew we were leaving in a few days and we didn't think we should travel with it like that. It would stress the slide topper and perhaps rip it. This morning we were ready to go early and called Charger Enterprises over on CR 6, just 2 miles away. The guys there said to bring it in. We drove there and they put a man on it right away and we were done and on our way by 8:30.

Charger Enterprises is a class operation. Gerald is the owner and he has been in the RV repair business for over 20 years. He works hard at customer relations and they have helped us out many times. In fact, they are the ones who just fixed our front A/C unit, our main awning wind sensor and replaced our refrigerator doors. They worked with our extended warranty company and the work was done promptly and efficiently. There are several choices for RV service in the Elkhart area. . . some are good. . . some are not. Charger Enterprises is one of the good guys.

Till next time. . .

Dale