09/07/2026
So… where have we been? ❤️
If you’ve noticed Happy Days RV Rentals has been pretty quiet on Facebook the last few months, there’s a reason.
We’ve still been running our business, taking care of our guests and sending RVs out, but a pretty big part of our summer ended up being spent doing something we never expected.
Helping families who suddenly didn’t have a home.
When the Brantley County wildfires happened this spring, we had an opportunity to help Emergency RV with campers being used as temporary housing for families who had lost their homes.
We thought we were stepping in to help with a few things. It turned into a good portion of our summer.
Our lot became a staging area. RVs started coming in from generous donors across the country, including Florida and as far away as Virginia and Kentucky. Some needed very little. Others had been sitting in fields or driveways for more than a year and needed a LOT.
We coordinated transportation, received and staged RVs, inspected them, figured out what needed to be repaired, found parts and technicians, cleaned and stocked units, scrubbed and sealed roofs, hooked campers up to water and electricity to test them, handled repairs and service calls, moved units and helped get them delivered and set up.
Basically, if there was a gap somewhere, we tried to figure out how to fill it.
By the time our involvement started winding down, we had contributed in some way to at least 120 RVs getting at least one step closer to being ready for families who needed them.
And I want to be careful with that number because we absolutely did not personally repair, prepare or deliver 120 RVs. Way too many people put their hands, hearts, time and money into this for us to ever take that kind of credit.
Our role became a little like a command center. We built a system, kept track of a ridiculous number of moving parts and tried to make the whole process as efficient as possible with limited time and resources.
We took delivery of around 31 RVs at our location.
Approximately 15, give or take a few, went to Brantley County families after the wildfires.
A family from Texas came here to pick up an RV after losing their home to a disaster.
We later delivered and set up 3 RVs in 3 days for hurricane-affected families in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area who needed immediate housing.
Then we made the trip from Kingsland to Kerrville, Texas and back in a weekend, delivering and setting up 2 RVs for families who lost their homes in the flooding.
Another 7 RVs were ready or very close to being ready for families as our involvement started winding down.
The rest of those 120+ RVs were somewhere along the way. Some had roofs sealed. Some had repairs made. Some were inspected, cleaned or tested. Some needed parts, transportation or simply someone to figure out what was wrong and what needed to happen next.
And there were a LOT of roofs.
One of the larger projects alone involved 31 roof services through our team, completed out of state, in addition to other roof work that had already been done.
We spent a lot of days and nights away from Georgia. Ridiculous heat and humidity, thunderstorms, early mornings, late nights and sleeping wherever we could. Sometimes an RV. Sometimes a hotel. Sometimes a truck.
Through all of it, we tried to be mindful that the money available needed to go as far as possible because every dollar spent in one place was a dollar that couldn’t help another RV or another family.
Our kids were along for a lot of this too.
They gave up a pretty big part of their summer vacation. They spent days and nights away from home, rode more hours in trucks than they probably ever want to again, slept in RVs and hotels and watched our plans change about a thousand times because something else needed to be done.
They probably learned more about RVs this summer than they ever wanted to know. In fact, I think they may actually prefer the laundry duty we used to threaten them with. 😂
But they also got to see something we hope they remember for the rest of their lives.
They got to see people helping people.
And honestly, THAT is the part of this story we really want to tell.
There is one family just a couple miles from us that we couldn’t tell this story without.
When help was needed, their whole family jumped in - husband, wife, grown children, cousins, sister-in-law and others.
They opened their personal cargo trailer and turned it into what looked like a little store. Donations were sorted and organized so people could actually find what each family needed. They drove all over picking things up, brought everything back, organized it and stocked RV after RV.
One member of that family was a front-line firefighter during the Brantley County wildfires. He had already spent the fire protecting homes and lives in his community.
Then the immediate danger passed and he just kept serving.
Their grown kids put in more hours than a lot of people would at a full-time job offering unlimited overtime.
Except there was no paycheck.
Their family cleared land for free. They picked up donations, stocked RVs, drove wherever they were needed and spent time supporting displaced families.
When rain threatened to stop roof work, they opened the covered RV area on their own property so people could keep sealing roofs overnight.
At that point, people were still sleeping in tents and on benches, and it was raining.
Every RV finished a little sooner meant somebody might have somewhere dry to sleep a little sooner.
So they opened their property and everyone kept working.
What most people will never know is that this family took care of us too.
There were some really rough days behind the scenes. We were exhausted and trying to keep track of more than we ever expected to be responsible for.
Sometimes we needed somebody supporting us.
They were those people.
They listened. They encouraged us. They made us laugh. They helped us remember why we were doing this when the problems and exhaustion started getting louder than the reason we were there.
We’ll never forget what they did for the families.
We’ll never forget what they did for ours either.
And they weren’t alone.
A 22-year-old young man who had recently bought an RV from us heard we were sealing roofs and offered to help. He showed up the next day.
Then he came back two more days and brought friends with him.
Free.
A woman we had never met, already working two jobs, messaged us and asked if she could come clean RVs between them.
She didn’t have extra time. She made time.
Free.
One Saturday morning, a Federal Law Enforcement Officer, a retired attorney and a self-employed general contractor got up around 5 a.m. to help haul RVs. They spent about an hour getting the campers road-worthy and then made a roughly five-hour trip in the rain to get them back to our lot.
Free.
A working man with a family of his own heard propane tanks were needed. He had five he could donate, so he loaded them up and brought them over.
A woman we had never met came after her book club collected money for the families. She went to Walmart and spent hundreds of dollars on basic living items.
Then apparently she enjoyed helping too much to stop there. ❤️
She went back and did it again, returning with another vehicle full of brand-new items she had thoughtfully separated by family.
One of our former Happy Days rental guests, who also works on our trolley, already had a booked schedule. He made time anyway.
He cleaned. He repaired. He helped.
Free.
Several RV technicians stepped in too. Some volunteered their professional time for a few hours or days. Others were paid technicians who prioritized these calls and slightly reduced their normal rates to help the available funds stretch farther.
Over Fourth of July weekend, two of our friends left their families in Tampa, drove 6 hours to Central Florida and slept in an RV in a parking lot so they could get up early and seal roofs until evening. Then, they got up and did it again. On a holiday weekend. For people they didn’t even know.
And there is one picture from this summer that I don’t think I’ll ever forget.
A 24-year-old working right alongside me, running on about the same thing I was by then - pure exhaustion and passion.
Just a couple days after making the round trip, towing an RV from Kingsland, Georgia to Kerrville, Texas, it was right back to working out of state.
Ridiculous humidity. Thunderstorms. Sleeping in a basically bare RV. Long days. Very little rest.
And somehow, that 24-year-old was still happily putting notes on RV windows and drawing little smiley faces on them. 🙂
We were TIRED. But there was still excitement when another RV moved one step closer to being ready for somebody. There was still a smiley face going on the window.
That pretty much sums up this summer for us, less a few gory details.
It wasn’t polished and it definitely wasn’t comfortable.
It was wet clothes, early alarms, dirty hands, Walmart receipts, locating parts, tracking RVs, finding RVs, flat tires, water guns for sanity, propane tanks, cargo trailers, trucks, tools, exhausted kids, strangers cleaning RVs, friends sleeping in parking lots, hosting guests in our driveway in our RVs and smiley faces on windows.
And most of the best things happened when nobody was taking pictures and nobody was worrying about who got credit.
We learned from each other. We taught each other.
If somebody knew how to do something, they showed the next person. If none of us knew, we figured out who did.
Everybody brought something different.
Some people had money. Some had professional skills. Some had trucks, property or tools. Some had a few hours between two jobs. Some gave up entire days or weeks. Some were simply good at sitting down beside a family who had just lost everything and being there. Some had to face the tough decisions and stare into the difficulties needing to be brought to light.
Nobody had everything. But an awful lot of people were willing to give something.
And I have to mention my husband here, even though he specifically asked me not to.
After over 21 years serving our country in the Navy’s nuclear submarine force, he retired earlier this year.
He took a job in the Washington, D.C. area after retirement, but ultimately decided being home with his family was more important and walked away from tens of thousands of dollars a year in salary to come home.
He finally came home to spend more time with us…
…and found his family in the middle of this. 😂
So after 21 years of service and giving up a significant amount of income to be home, he spent countless days, nights and weekends right beside us doing this work. We haven’t yet had time to throw his retirement party. Open to suggestions! (HELP!)
He never wanted recognition for it. Actually, he asked me to never mention it, but it deserves to be mentioned, at least once.
He came home because he wanted to be with his family. His family just happened to be spending their summer hauling, inspecting, repairing and preparing disaster-relief RVs.
So he joined us!
Between the transportation, roof work, professional services, administrative hours, repairs, cleaning, supplies, donations, logistics and an unbelievable amount of volunteer labor, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work and resources went into moving these RVs closer to families who needed them.
Were we perfect?
Absolutely not.
This became something much larger than we expected when we first agreed to help. We learned as we went, made decisions with the information we had and took on responsibilities we never planned on having.
But we understood the amount of trust that had been placed in us, and we did the best we could with it.
For the people involved whose hearts genuinely stayed focused on helping the families, what was accomplished was pretty incredible.
That’s the part we’re choosing to carry with us.
Were there a couple of people along the way who reminded us that not everyone shows up for the same reasons? Absolutely. But they don’t get to take up much space in this story. To them, we’ll simply say… BLESS your heart. ❤️
We also want to be clear about where things stand today.
Happy Days RV Rentals is our own independent, Veteran-Owned small business. We are not part of Emergency RV and are not involved in its day-to-day operations.
Any involvement going forward is only on an as-requested basis when there is something we can help with. Therefore, any requests for assistance with their RVs or request for an RV should be directed to them.
Our focus, for now, is back on our family, our customers and our amazing guests at Happy Days RV Rentals.
But we wouldn’t take this summer back.
We know the people we met along the way come from many different religious and spiritual backgrounds, and we respect that.
For our family, though, our faith is part of this story. We believe God put us there.
Not because we knew everything. We DEFINITELY learned that we didn’t. 😂
We believe He put us there because He knew what we COULD do, and He knew our hearts would be willing to do it. We COULD do it again if God called on us again. With our combined skills, it comes natural.
We had trucks. We knew RVs. We had tools. We had a place to put them. We could organize a whole lot of moving pieces, solve problems and, when we didn’t know something, find somebody who did.
Looking back, we think God knew what a lot of other people could do too.
Nobody had to do everything. They just had to be willing to do something.
Sometimes that “something” was five propane tanks. Sometimes it was cleaning an RV between two jobs. Sometimes it was opening your property during a rainstorm. Sometimes it was getting up at 5 a.m. to haul campers. Sometimes it was filling shopping carts.
Sometimes it was leaving your family over Fourth of July to sleep in an RV parking lot and seal roofs.
Sometimes it was giving up a chunk of your summer vacation because your parents said there were families who needed help.
And sometimes it was drawing a smiley face on an RV window after another really long day.
Put enough of those little “somethings” together and a whole lot gets accomplished.
Most importantly, families got help.
We’re grateful for every person who trusted us, worked beside us, supported our family, taught us something, learned something from us or simply showed up and asked:
“What needs to be done?”
And we’re incredibly proud of our kids for sharing so much of their summer with families they didn’t even know.
So…that’s where we’ve been. ❤️
Somewhere in the middle of all of this, Happy Days kept running, but on a limited scale. RVs were still going out. We had vacations, festivals, campground trips, deliveries, new additions and a whole bunch of Happy Days memories that never made it onto Facebook.
Now we’re finally catching up.
So when you start seeing pictures from two or three months ago, just go with it. 😂
We’re a little behind. Now you know why.
To every person who showed up while we were part of this - thank you.
YOU know who you are.
The families you helped know what you did.
And that’s what matters. ❤️
Happy Days RV Rentals
🇺🇸 Proud Veteran-Owned Small Business
