We enjoyed dinner with old friends Paul and Darlene in
Biloxi. Paul works for NASA at the Stennis Space Center and we learned that
NASA has focused on deep space exploration.
We arrived in Castroville, Texas at Alsatian RV Resort on
Friday. Saturday morning we went to Blue Skies of Texas (formerly Air Force
Village) to work on Julie’s mom Bobbie’s new assisted living apartment. Julie’s
sister Cindy arrived from south Texas and all four of us worked on getting the
remaining furnishings for the apartment.
Bobbie saw the apartment on Sunday and loved her new
place. We then moved her in on Monday.
On Tuesday, May 17th, we had a severe
thunderstorm, with large hail, hit the RV resort and surrounding Castroville
area around 10:45PM. We were following the storm on radar and saw that it was
coming from the west but we thought it would pass just north of us. The storm
cell shifted south and hit us head-on.
It was the worse hail storm that Julie and I had ever experienced.
The hail lasted about 15 long minutes and we really thought hail was going to
come through the roof of our motorhome. Rain water was pouring out our air
conditioning vents and ceiling light fixtures. The sound of large hail hitting
our roof was deafening. After the storm subsided, we went outside and I picked
up hailstones that were 3-inches in diameter.
The next morning we saw that all our neighbors in the RV
resort had truck and car windshields, rear windows, and RV windows broken out
and every vehicle and RV had suffered heavy hail damage. I used duct tape and
quickly covered cracks and baseball size holes in our motorhome roof, because
more rain was predicted for Wednesday. We also lost our roof solar panel, all
three slide-out awnings, side mirror, and got hail dents on several cargo
doors.
Our Ford F-150 pickup also sustained substantial damage.
The windshield was okay because I backed into our space, rather than pull into
the space the day before. However, hail broke our moon roofs, side mirrors, and
dented most of the truck body.
Our insurance company adjuster found one of their blue
ribbon RV repair and body shop facilities near Bandera, about 50-miles away, that
could fix everything for us and could start right away. The downside is that we
have to move out of our motorhome for 2 to 4 weeks or more while it’s in the
shop being repaired and we’ll be homeless.
We’ve decided to go to Donna, Texas to visit Cindy and
Terry for a couple of weeks. We’ve rented a small cottage at the RV resort they
live at. We’ve also made reservations for 2-weeks at a Residence Inn in north
San Antonio, a short distance from the RV repair and body shop.
Steve & Julie Cornelius
Hailstorms are frighteningly loud, especially when you hear the hail hitting a metal roof directly above your head. I am sorry you sustained damage to your RV and truck, but it is wonderful that your insurance company was on the ball. A few weeks in a cottage and a few weeks in a hotel will be like a mini vacation.
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