The Parker Travels

Growing up camping, I’ve had plenty of break downs and long days that never seem to end. The famous Backus Road in the middle of the Mojave is still talked about today! Well, Kyle and I had our first “Backus Road” experience today. We started the day cleaning up camp in Loveland, an hour outside of Denver. We were on the road by noon and made it about 15 minutes down the highway before we were flagged down by a neighbor driver. We pulled off to the side of the road to find our trailer wheel smoking and what looked like melted metal splattered all over. We called our roadside assistance and were quickly denied. We were also denied by all the RV repair shops nearby. Apparently they are all booked up for months! After a few more phone calls we found a small auto repair shop nearby wiling to take us. They were only 4 miles away, but with the wheel smoking those were very slow 4 miles. We stayed in the shoulder and drove as slow as possible and stopped every so often to let the wheel cool o...

After all that work yesterday we are now able to fill in the gaps in the new wall we put up. When dad left, we had the wall put in, but it was shimmed up and not secured in any way. Today we glued, screwed and caulked every open seam to ensure all the work we have put into this will prevent water from coming in the trailer again.  We laid a 2x2 the width of the trailer, glued and screwed it to the floor, then screwed the Zip System wall into it. We also ran a bead of latex caulking on the top and bottom side of the wood. These photos just have images of the caulking on the top.  I also glued the vinyl floor down where it meets the wood. I screwed a piece of temporary wood to the floor to help with the glue drying. Once the glue was dry we caulked those seams too. Onto the inside of the trailer. I used the same latex caulking along all the seams of the new wall and subfloor. Then I used the Zinsser Bulls Eye Interior Latex Primer to paint 2 coats o...

Time to take apart the storage box lid. With the help from Jeff, the 3 of us managed to get this lid off in one piece. Next came the hard part. We had to scrub away at all the old silicone and caulk the previous owner had on there. Once we scraped that all away we found the reason for the leak… This crack has to be the main reason water is still getting inside the trailer. After an hour of all 3 of us scrubbing we finally had all the glue, caulk and dirt cleaned off. It looks so much better. You can really see where the cracks are now. They are everywhere! Next we laid down some pieces of white gorilla tape to cover all the cracks. We put it on the underside too. We are going to go over the seams of the gorilla tape with some caulking too just to make sure everything is water tight. We took Jeff out to dinner as thanks for all his help today! 

We left off at the beginning of the month with our front storage box repair. Looks nice and protected, a few more things need to be touched up but for the most part, this huge project was supposed to solve all our problems... Well today we brought it home a little over 2 weeks later and open it up to find water! NO!!! Its everywhere it shouldnt be. Time to get back to work and fix this mess. Again! I have to say that all the work that my dad and I put into this a few weeks back did hold up. The Zip System did a good job at waterproofing that side of the board, so did the primer on the backside. The spot that the water is coming in from is the storage box lid and not from the spots that we fixed a few weeks ago. So thats good. But now its time to fix the storage box lid. More to come.

Ok this is a big one. But we are so happy with the transformation! The original plan was to rip these doors out, take the shower out, then replace that wall with something more structurally sound than this flaky MDF stuff the trailer is made out of. Well as we started taking more and more parts in this area apart we came across some water damage issues and this projected slowly started to become a lot bigger than we thought. No problem though! Like we planned, to start we took these doors out, Kyle literally had to rip them out of the wall . The wall was so water damaged the screws were just spinning in their spots when he was trying to unscrew the hinges.  Next was the shower. That was quite the project , we saved the potty though (thats a post for another day). Ok so now we have a hole in the wall and a hole in the floor. Thankfully this wonderful man from "Tom's Tools" showed up just in time to help with the rest of this project...