The Great Off Grid Ozark Adventure: part 12

Note: This content was written out long before it was published here on the blog. So although this post is being published in early 2025, it was written several months ago. If you’re just finding this post, I recommend starting with part one here to get more background.

If you haven’t read the last post, you’ll need to or none of this will make sense. In one day, our move went from being just around the corner, to covered in fog with no sign of when or how it would happen. Our truck was demolished. Being an older truck, we didn’t have full insurance coverage on it. When the front of our truck hit the semi truck, the momentum of our fully loader trailer ripped the hitch off the truck and jammed the tongue under the truck which bent the truck frame. The front of the trailer wall hit the tailgate of the truck and bent in the trailer wall about 2 feet. It was obvious that some of our things inside were going to be broken. Of most concern was our heirloom piano which was loaded right up against the front of the trailer.

Our friends were very generous and allowed us to stay with them while we figured out what we were going to do. Not only did they give us a place to stay but they fed us, and they helped us fix our trailer which was a huge blessing. We pulled it up to their garage, unloaded the front portion to access the piano. It certainly had some damage, but amazingly, it had not been destroyed! I guess there is a reason that it has survived over a hundred years!

If you remember, we had a neighbor show up right before we left to weld our other trailer. Well, those same neighbors found out where we were staying, and surprised us by showing up to help us. They came at the right moment and went to work unloading the trailer and assessing the damage. We unloaded the front part of the trailer and moved the piano. We had packed many of our things were in plastic totes. A few of them just bent, but most of them exploded upon impact. One of those totes was full of legos so we found little legos everywhere! The women went to work organizing and the things that had been in totes that got destroyed. Once we got the trailer partially unloaded, we moved the piano back and the guys went to work tearing off the front wall of the trailer. A new bar was welded on, and we built a new wall out of wood. These guys were amazing! It was fun to work together and it seemed like between the three of us, we had all the right tools, skills, and ideas to complete the project. We cut the old tongue off, and welded a new one on. I also had to do some re-wiring of the trailer since the harness I had just installed was ripped in half. It was a several day long process but went fairly smoothly.

Mary was eager to asses the damage to the piano. There is certainly some damage but it was amazingly minimal! The piano is solid (and heavy!) so most of the energy from impact was absorbed by the boxes behind it.

I paused to take this picture but at one point there were three of us with metal grinders cutting off the old tongue.

We also needed a new truck. We searched online and found a list of suitable trucks that were in our price range. The truck would need to be robust enough to tow our heavy trailer across the country, but also serve us as a farm truck so we were not looking for new and fancy. After looking at several, we narrowed it down to two. They were both the same model as our old truck but newer. The newer one had a shorter bed and some issues that would need to be fixed. I ended up picking the other, older one because I’ve really liked having a long bed, and because it needed less work than the other one that we liked. Unfortunately, after a few days of driving it, the check engine light came on and it was the same issue that the other truck had! The knock sensors needed to be replaced. It’s a fairly straight forward job, but requires a lot to be taken out to get to the sensors. I’m relating this all as if it happened in a few days but keep in mind that this was all a process and took time. By this time, I was feeling very sensitive our our friend’s time, space, and privacy. I was hoping that the truck could be fixed quickly and we could get back on the road. Unfortunately, after I put everything back together the engine started running very roughly. There were new issues. Without getting into details, there was an issue caused by taking the intake manifold apart, but unrelated to that was the fact that the truck had been sitting and the gas in it had begun to varnish. In the end I had to drain the tank and put fresh gas in it.

In the end, I had to remove and reinstall the entire manifold 5 times. It’s not an easy task, but I did it so many times I got good at it! the last time I did it I took it out, and put it back together in less than 10 minutes! The first time it took several hours.

Another issue was that there was no trailer brake controller in the truck. That was a necessity for this trip! The trailer brakes had to be working in order for us to take that heavy trailer! I started working on it but eventually got a little bit over my head. Our friend called another friend of his that does car wiring for a living. We were just looking for some advice but he offered to just do the work free of charge. He did an amazing job and I’m very grateful for that service done! I had so much help during this time! I seriously could not have done everything without the help that we got. I can’t even imagine how much more difficult, time consuming, and expensive this ordeal could have been!

It was beginning to get difficult living in such a temporary situation and I’m sure our friends were ready to get back to their normal routines. It didn’t help that the weather had gotten very cold. We had planned to be on the road for three or four days and then arrive at the home we would be living in. We had looked at the weather and packed our bags accordingly. So we had about four days worth of clothing, and not winter clothing! I had taken our animals back to their pens at our house but there was nothing there for us so we stayed in a camp trailer at our friends house. I was driving back and forth each morning to milk the goats and gather eggs. It was a cold time for me. I didn’t quite have enough warm clothes and I was out working in the snow and wind quite a lot.

This was taken after the accident and before we unloaded the front of the trailer. The boxes were kind of out of order but I had stacked them so tightly and they got jammed into place with the impact of the accident that we had a hard time getting them unloaded!

Finally, after many days of work, I got the truck figured out, and the trailer was ready to go. I was nervous about getting all the things packed up because I did some serious live action tetris to get everything to fit, and now, things were in different boxes, and I had to fit it all back into the same space. Again, I was able to do my thing and get it all to work. I was tired but I had enough sleep and wasn’t allowing myself to get overly stressed. Another friend had offered to let us stay at their airBnB so we took them up on that offer for our last night in town. The next morning I went and milked our goats, collected our animals, and we got back on the road. It was nice to be leaving in the day time instead of at night! I had a quiet little celebration inside as we passed the place where the accident was. We made it further without any issues! What I didn’t know is that there were more adventures waiting for us just down the road…

To be continued…