Lucy checked her phone for the hundredth time that morning, scrolling through photos of Devil’s Canyon—the crown jewel of Montana’s wilderness. After three years of dreaming and saving, we’d finally pulled the trigger on our dream fifth wheel: a 2023 Keystone Montana that we’d immediately nicknamed “Big Bertha” (because at 42 feet and 13,000 pounds, she earned it). Today marked day fifteen of our sixty-day cross-country adventure, and we were headed to the most anticipated stop on our itinerary.
“Hun, you’re going to love this campground,” I called from the driver’s seat of our F-350, adjusting my polarized driving sunglasses against the morning glare. “Look at that view!”
Lucy lowered her window visor shade and leaned forward. The canyon spread out in front of us—red rocks, deep shadows, the whole nine yards. But something else caught her attention—a line of dark clouds piling up on the western horizon like they were late for an appointment.
“Babe, check the weather app,” she said.
I glanced at the display. “Says partly cloudy. We’re good.”
We rolled into Devil’s Canyon RV Resort around noon, and after the usual three-point-turn dance that comes with backing a 42-footer, I got Big Bertha lined up in site 47. Full hookups, 50-amp service, concrete pad with a slight slope that would definitely make my leveling jacks work for their money, and a view straight into the canyon. Eighty-five bucks a night, which felt steep until I saw that view. Then it felt like highway robbery, but whatever—we were on vacation.
As I disconnected the truck, Lucy set up our outdoor space—camping chairs, the little folding table we’d bought at Walmart in Boise, and our small portable grill. She grabbed our pack of super-absorbent microfiber towels from the basement storage—we’d bought them on Amazon before the trip for cleaning the windshield and Big Bertha’s exterior. Best twenty bucks we’d spent. Those things could soak up a small lake, which would become very relevant in about twelve hours.
—
That evening, we fired up the grill. I’d grabbed two ribeyes at the grocery store in town—thick ones that cost more than my first car payment. Lucy made her famous garlic butter (which is just butter with garlic and some Italian seasoning, but calling it “famous” makes it sound fancier). We also had baked potatoes wrapped in foil and a salad that Lucy insisted on bringing because “we can’t just eat steak and potatoes every night.” (We absolutely could, but I didn’t say that.)
The sunset was killer. Those canyon walls turned orange, then pink, then this deep red that made your phone camera completely useless because nothing captures it right. We sat there with our beers, feeling smug about this whole RV life decision.
But those clouds we’d seen earlier? They’d been busy. By the time we finished eating, they’d grown into these massive towers of dark gray that looked like they meant business.
“Should probably bring everything inside,” I said, eyeing the sky.
We packed up the chairs and table. By 9 PM, the first drops hit. By 9:30, it was coming down like God left the faucet on. I’m talking full-on biblical deluge.
I lay in bed listening to the rain hammer Big Bertha’s roof. It was loud—way louder than rain on a regular house. Then I heard something different. A steady drip-drip-drip that definitely wasn’t supposed to be there.
“Lucy. Lucy!” I shook her awake. “Do you hear that?”
We turned on the lights. Water was dripping from the ceiling near the living room slide-out, running down the wall and pooling on our fancy luxury vinyl plank flooring that the salesman had sworn was “completely waterproof.” Turns out, waterproof flooring doesn’t mean much when the water’s coming from above.
“Oh hell no,” I said, jumping up and grabbing those microfiber towels off the counter. They soaked up water like champions, but we weren’t solving the actual problem here—just managing the symptoms.
The leak went all night. We went through every towel we had, wringing them out in the shower and running them back to the drip zone. By morning, we’d collected nearly two gallons of water in a mixing bowl. Our “waterproof” flooring was holding up, which was nice, but I was certain we had bigger problems.
—
Dawn came up gray and miserable. I grabbed our telescoping ladder from the basement storage and climbed up on the roof. What I found made my stomach drop faster than a lead balloon.
“The sealant around the slide-out housing is completely shot,” I called down to Lucy. “There’s a gap about three feet long, and I think the roof membrane’s got a tear too.”
Lucy climbed up (carefully, because wet RV roofs are ice rinks). The damage was worse than I’d thought. The original Dicor lap sealant had cracked and pulled away from the seams. Years of UV exposure and hot-cold cycles had turned it brittle, and last night’s storm had just exploited every weakness.
“Can we fix this ourselves?” Lucy asked, though we both already knew the answer. We were 200 miles from the nearest RV service center, and this was June—peak season. Getting an appointment would take weeks, maybe months.
I pulled out my phone. “Let me check YouTube.”
Here’s the thing about RV repairs: there’s a YouTube video for everything. Some guy named “RV Mike” had a twenty-minute video on exactly this problem. The fix didn’t look impossible, but we needed supplies. I made a list on my phone:
Dicor self-leveling lap sealant (white)
– Eternabond RV tape for the membrane tear – Denatured alcohol for surface prep
– Disposable gloves
– Putty knife or scraper
– Caulk gun
“Nearest Walmart is forty minutes away,” Lucy said, checking Google Maps. “Let’s go before it rains again.”
We left Big Bertha sitting there looking sad and wet, and headed to town.
—
At Walmart, we split up like we were on some kind of home improvement scavenger hunt. I went to automotive, Lucy hit the hardware section. We met back at checkout with everything except the most important item—Dicor lap sealant.
“We don’t carry RV-specific products,” the clerk said, probably wondering why we looked so desperate. “Try the auto parts store across the street.”
At O’Reilly’s, we hit the jackpot. They had Dicor lap sealant, and even better—a starter kit with a small can of Eternabond tape included. I grabbed a bottle of denatured alcohol and a pack of nitrile gloves. Total damage: about eighty bucks. Way cheaper than waiting three months for an RV repair shop.
Back at the campsite, those clouds were building again. The weather app now showed a 90% chance of thunderstorms. Great.
“We’ve got maybe two hours,” I said, pulling up the radar. “Three if we’re lucky.”
Lucy set up a little work station on the picnic table—all our supplies laid out like we were prepping for surgery. Which, in a way, we were. I climbed back up on the roof, and she handed up supplies one by one, including a couple of those microfiber towels for cleaning.
“We need this area bone dry,” I said, using the towels to wipe down the repair zone. Even after sitting in the sun for an hour, moisture kept showing up in the cracks. Those absorbent towels were clutch—they pulled water out of places I didn’t even know could hold water.
—
I started scraping away the old sealant with the putty knife, and let me tell you, it was worse than it looked. The gap was nearly a quarter inch in some spots. My hands were cramping from the awkward angle, and I was starting to question whether I knew what I was doing.
“How’s it going up there?” Lucy called.
“I’m winging it and hoping RV Mike knew his stuff.”
That’s when we heard a voice from the next site over: “Need a hand?”
An older guy was walking over—probably in his seventies, but moving like he was fifty. He introduced himself as Dale, said he’d been full-timing for fifteen years.
“Noticed you’ve got roof problems,” Dale said. “Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt and the dehumidifier and filed the insurance claim.”
Dale climbed up with surprising ease. He looked at my work and nodded. “You’re on the right track, but let me show you something.”
He pulled out his own battery-powered oscillating multi-tool—one of those compact Milwaukee units that probably cost more than my first car. “This’ll clean that seam out proper without messing up the membrane underneath. Trust me, prep work is ninety percent of this job.”
For the next hour, Dale gave me a master class in RV roof repair. We used his multi-tool to remove every bit of old sealant, then cleaned the surface with the denatured alcohol. It was tedious work, but Dale insisted on getting it perfect.
“See, these TPO roof membranes are tough,” Dale explained, “but the seams are where they get you. You need perfect adhesion, or you’re just buying yourself another leak in six months.”
We applied the Eternabond tape first, pressing it firmly over the membrane tear and rolling it smooth to get all the air bubbles out. Then came the Dicor lap sealant.
“Don’t be shy with it,” Dale said. “Self-leveling means it’ll flatten out. Better too much than too little. This isn’t the time to be cheap.”
I loaded up the caulk gun and started laying down a thick bead of white sealant along every seam around the slide-out housing. It looked like a mess at first—like I’d let a toddler loose with a frosting bag. But just like Dale promised, it started leveling out.
The first raindrops hit just as I squeezed out the last of the sealant.
—
We barely got inside before the sky opened up again. This storm made the previous night look like a light drizzle. Lightning was cracking close enough that you could smell the ozone, and wind was rocking Big Bertha on her stabilizers.
Lucy and I just sat there in the living room, staring at the ceiling where the leak had been, not saying anything.
Five minutes passed. Ten. Fifteen.
Nothing. Not a single drop.
“Is it… actually working?” Lucy whispered, like talking too loud might jinx it.
I grabbed a flashlight and checked every seam, every corner where water had come through the night before. Bone dry.
“We did it,” I said, grinning like an idiot. “We actually fixed it.”
That evening, after the storm passed, we invited Dale over for dinner. I fired up the grill again (different steaks this time—we weren’t made of money), and Dale brought some stories that made our little leak seem like nothing.
“The secret to RV life,” Dale said, raising his beer, “isn’t avoiding problems. It’s learning you can fix them. You two did good today.”
—
Next morning, I climbed back up to check our work. The Dicor had cured overnight into a perfect, seamless seal. The Eternabond tape looked factory-installed.
Lucy was doing laundry in the campground’s facilities—those microfiber towels had saved us, but they’d taken a beating. While she was gone, she’d made a mental list of supplies we should never travel without:
Way more microfiber towels (at least a dozen)
– Backup caulk and sealant
– Battery-powered tools (after seeing Dale’s multi-tool in action)
– A proper RV first-aid kit (for the RV, not us)
– Good gloves
– All the surface prep stuff
“You know what?” I said when she got back. “I’m actually glad this happened.”
Lucy raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yeah. Before this, I was terrified of RV problems. Figured we’d be at the mercy of service centers for everything. But we just fixed a roof leak ourselves. In a campground. With stuff from Walmart and O’Reilly’s. That’s pretty cool.”
I opened my laptop and started a document called “Emergency Repair Kit.” If one leak could happen, others would. We spent the rest of the afternoon ordering supplies on Amazon—backup bottles of Dicor, more Eternabond tape, a decent multi-tool set, more of those incredible microfiber towels, a professional caulk gun, and even a small portable workbench for future repairs.
Three days later, when we were packing up to leave, Dale stopped by one more time.
“Where to next?” he asked.
“Yellowstone,” Lucy said. “Then Grand Teton, then down through Utah.”
Dale smiled. “Outstanding route. Just remember—the journey isn’t about everything going perfect. It’s about the stories you collect. And you two just earned yourself a hell of a story.”
He was right. The leak at Devil’s Canyon is the story we’ll tell. Not the sunsets (though they were incredible), not the wildlife (saw a moose in Wyoming), not even the amazing campgrounds (though some were fantastic).
We’ll tell the story of the night it poured, the roof that leaked, and the morning we learned we were way more capable than we thought.
Because that’s what RV life teaches you: good preparation matters, the right tools make all the difference, and sometimes the best memories come from the worst situations.
Plus, we made a friend named Dale who probably saved us a thousand bucks in repairs.
Sometimes the difference between a ruined vacation and an unforgettable adventure is having the right tools in your basement storage when you need them.
