The time came for us to leave our sunset paradise in Keaton Beach so we readied the RV and hit the road about 10:00 am. All was going well on the drive as we passed through the town of Perry Florida. However, heading west on a nice two lane road,something caught my eye.
NOTE: What occurred next felt like it happened in slow motion – almost as if I was in a Sam Peckinpah slow motion movie scene.
So what was it that caught my eye? It soon became obvious what it was… a wild turkey! How cool was that? As it started in flight I could see it was a large,beautiful wild bird. Its wings were beating slowly as it lifted its mass off the ground and became airborne. Oddly this turkey was flying toward the road instead of toward the woods as most do. I was watching it take flight and was in wonder of it when I suddenly realized that if the turkey didn’t fly a bit higher I might hit it. With no time for action (only thoughts) the bird suddenly struck the top of our RV on the windshield !
Back at real time…. we heard a BOOOM! The loud noise startled Sharon as she was looking down at her phone. The sound was similar to hearing two cars hitting each other. A shower of very small glass particles littered our dash board and the windshield itself was shattered with cracks going from the top tot the bottom. Less than 40% of the windshield had no cracks after striking the bird.
Being on a two-lane road gave us no choice but to continue down the road until we could find a suitable space to pull over. Before pulling over we called our insurance company to start a claim. Sharon searched the internet to see if we should worry about the windshield caving in on us if we drove any further with it as cracked as it was. Feeling as if we could safely drive it I put duct tape over the cracks on the top and bottom of the glass to hopefully secure it. We also put in a call to Tiffin Motorhomes who suggested we use clear packing tape to tape all the cracks as soon as we could.
We drove slowly over to Mexico Beach and checked into our park. I immediately went and bought a roll of packing tape to tape all the cracks to keep it intact in case we had to drive any further. It took the whole roll! Meanwhile, we have heard tentatively from the insurance company and it looks like we will have to drive on down the road to have it repaired.
It certainly was not an exiting way to spend the day but alas, it is all part of the experience of life. We aren’t particular happy about this event and its future inconvenience. The thousand dollar deductible will hurt the budget a bit but we came out unharmed so we have simply chalked this one up to bad luck. However, we both can’t help but wonder if this was an omen and if it was we have no idea what it means…
In the meantime life goes on and we have spent our time here in Mexico Beach solving insurance and logistics stuff. Each afternoon we took a walk to the beach and would end the day at our favorite local hangout (Lookout Bar) where there is always another stunning sunset over the ocean for us to forget about that eventful day…
NOTE: We will leave Mexico Beach Florida today and head east to Robertsdale Alabama for a night before continuing on towards Louisiana in hopes of getting our windshield repaired...
Yikes. Can't believe it did that much damage.
ReplyDeleteOh no. That is definitely not a good way to start your travels.
ReplyDeleteOh No, that's a real mess. What a snare in your plans. How was the turkey? You are sure in a beautiful place. What sunsets!
ReplyDeleteI had the exact same thing happen to me about 15 years ago. Only it was running toward the road instead of flying. I sped up to try and get by it and it slammed right into the driver's side door. Got a pretty good dent in my car. When I went to a repair place, the guy said I was lucky it hadn't hit the windshield because turkeys are so bony, and he had heard of some going right through the windshield and causing really serious injury.
ReplyDeleteWow, heard about from MonaLiza yesterday while hiking with them. Glad you're safe...all part of the adventure.
ReplyDeleteWe know the feeling all too well from when we hit a turkey vulture in Idaho under the exact same circumstances! It is truly a shocking experience! Good luck with the repairs.
ReplyDeleteWhat I really want to know is,,, did you go back and pick up the turkey 🍗🦃
ReplyDeletePoor bird and poor windshield. Good thing no one was hurt, humans that is.
ReplyDeleteWOW! So sorry to read about this. Glad you safely made it to the campground. I worried about this when we were driving to the Outer banks ... in our case pelicans were flying very low and way too close to the rig.
ReplyDeleteDuct tape kept us together for several months after our accident last summer on the way to Alaska! Then just a week, and many thousands of miles later, our windshield slipped crating an open area on the top. We limped to a glass repair place and they said we were in no danger. We drove on several hundred miles to our Alfa repair appointment. We arrived safely, but both windshields broke when they were removed from the damaged front cap.
ReplyDeleteDuct tape is wonderful stuff. Just try to drive a little slower and avoid big bumps! Being safety glass it may crack more, but probably wont fall in on you.
Glad you're both safe and besides the $1000, good that it's a problem easily fixed. You've had your share of "excitement" these last few years, for sure. We also got hit with a $1000 deductible in December when our Miata was hit by a runaway dumpster in the Mission Bay RV Park overflow lot.
ReplyDelete