Bringing Down the Money Pit

Today's story about a prior adventure is not really about the RV life but it's still funny.  We were at our lot at Cedar Blue and expecting friends, Mike and Cheryl Smith, for a day on the lake.  At the time we did not have the big canopy that covers our RV and boat now but we had erected one of those canopies that had a nylon cover on it for our boat to protect it from storms and hail.  We found this at an inexpensive price and figured it would give our boat some protection from the weather.  When we unpacked it and started to get a good look at it we realized that the poles it came with were not going to be tall enough for our boat and they were very thin.  So we purchased longer and more substantial poles to make it taller and sturdier.  Of course we couldn't find them in Sulphur so we had to drive several miles to Ardmore to purchase them.  This required a lot of hard work in order to make them work and we spent a great deal of time drilling holes through them so we could insert the smaller poles and screw them together.  We worked into the dark the weekend we built this.  This cover was still not a very permanent structure so when the boat was under it we had tie down lines from the cover to the boat.  Also, the boat was sitting on grass.  So as you can see, we had invested quite a bit of money, time and labor into this not very permanent canopy.

It had rained the night before the Smiths were to arrive so John was a bit concerned that we might not get the boat pulled out on the wet grass.  Our truck tires had a tendency to spin on wet grass with a load on it.  Instead of trying to get the boat out before our guests arrived we chose to wait hoping the grass would dry out a bit.  So with our guests watching, John had instructed me to give it all I could when he told me to drive the truck out with the boat.  He had untied the ropes to the canopy, or so I thought, and told me to 'hit it'.  I tromped on the gas and away I went.  The truck was slipping and sliding a bit and I was truly hoping the boat wouldn't sway into the canopy poles.  The truck and boat came out just fine and so did the canopy!  Yes, John had not untied all the ropes that were tied to the boat and the entire thing came with the boat and truck!

All we could do was laugh, untie it and head for the lake with our friends and worry about fixing it later.  The canopy top was still in good shape as were the thin poles that came with it amazingly enough.  So all we had to do was replace some of the larger poles and the boat was not damaged.  Boy, this inexpensive canopy suddenly got very pricey.  So much for trying to do something the inexpensive way.  In the end, however, the canopy served us well.  We had to replace the nylon cover once and finally we had a 45'x24' canopy erected over the RV that included a space for the boat and a deck.