This has not been a great week for us at Alaskan Ram Travel Adventures. On Tuesday, while Heather was visiting her dad in Florida, Jeff was sitting at his desk at work eating lunch when a notification came in from our home security cameras. Normally, we both ignore these notifications because it is often a fly on the window, changing light, or the wind blowing the trees; but this time – for whatever reason – he checked it. You can imagine his shock to see smoke rolling out from under the hood of our truck which was sitting in our driveway beside the Bigfoot. He called 911, called a neighbor, and then jumped in the car and high-tailed it home. By the time he arrived, the fire department was on-scene and had the fire put out. This entire scenario occurred in just a matter of minutes, but still, the Bigfoot is damaged and the truck is a total loss.
Heather returned home late Tuesday night, and since then we have spent much time assessing the damage, removing all our smoke-damaged, water-logged belongings from the truck, and communicating with the insurance company. We are still in a bit of disbelief that this has happened. The pictures of the damage to the truck pretty much speak for themselves.
We still aren’t entirely sure of the scope of damage to the Bigfoot. Luckily, it is repairable and is not a total loss, but since our focus has mostly been on the truck, we still have much to determine about the travel trailer. At the very least there is trim, component doors, and reflectors that will have to be replaced, some spots in the fiberglass that will need to be repaired, and a good portion of two sides and the roof that will need to be buffed and waxed. We gave it a quick wash today and the yellowing and black marks on the corner closest to the fire did not wash off, so it remains to be seen if they will wax or buff out. We have worked so hard over the years to keep it looking nice, so this is a really tough pill for us to swallow.
The insurance company sent a tow truck out today to haul the truck off, so we are happy about that. There was so much glass, soot, and melted plastic that it was difficult to get into our backdoor that we use exclusively for access to our house. With the truck sitting in the driveway, though, it was impossible to clean up, so having it gone means Jeff was able to get out this afternoon to get it all swept up and pressure washed. There is some damage to the driveway that we will have to live with, but at least we aren’t getting all sooty every time we try to walk from the garage to the house.
As unfortunate as this is, and as sad as we are about seeing our truck go, we realize this situation could have been so much worse! The truck was parked immediately next to the Bigfoot and within 20 feet of both the house and our detached garage. Had the fire not been discovered or the fire department not made it when they did, we could have lost so much more. Our thanks definitely goes to our neighbor who did everything in his power to help out, and to the fire department that made it here and got the fire put out VERY quickly. Many thanks, also, to our friend Matt who came the next day and helped us think through things and get all our belongings out of the wet and very stinky truck. Without the help and hard work of all these folks, this would likely be a very different blog post.
So, now what? We really don’t know. There is definitely another truck in our future, but we haven’t even begun the process of determining what we want. Will we get something similar and just replace what we had, or will we use this as an opportunity to do something different? We have no idea right now, but we will be sure to update when we make a decision!
Until next time!
Here is the video we made showing the damage and talking about our next steps.