protractor: StaleElementReferenceError when interacting with browser

Hey there, thanks for the project, it really simplifies angular UI testing!

I’m very new to using protractor so this very well may be user error, but I’ve tried everything I’ve seen online and not found a solution that addresses my issue.

• Node Version: 8.7.0
• Protractor Version: 5.3.0
• Angular Version: 5.2.4
• Browser(s): chrome
• Operating System and Version OSX 10.3.4
• Your protractor configuration file

const { SpecReporter } = require('jasmine-spec-reporter');

const config = {
  allScriptsTimeout: 11000,
  capabilities: {
    browserName: 'chrome'
  },
  directConnect: true,
  baseUrl: 'http://localhost:4200/',
  useAllAngular2AppRoots: true,

  framework: 'custom',
  frameworkPath: require.resolve('protractor-cucumber-framework'),

  specs: ['./e2e/**/*.feature'],
  cucumberOpts: {
    require: ['./e2e/_shared/setup.ts', './e2e/**/*.steps.ts'],
    tags: [],
    format: ['node_modules/cucumber-pretty'],
    strict: true,
    dryRun: false,
    compiler: []
  },

  beforeLaunch: function () {
    require('ts-node').register({
      project: 'e2e/tsconfig.e2e.json'
    });
  },

  // Work around for EPIPE errors that I was running into (serializing execution
  // as recommended by https://github.com/angular/protractor/issues/4294#issuecomment-357941307)
  onPrepare: function () {
    let currentCommand = Promise.resolve();
    const webdriverSchedule = browser.driver.schedule;
    browser.driver.schedule = (command, description) => {
      currentCommand = currentCommand.then(() =>
        webdriverSchedule.call(browser.driver, command, description)
      );
      return currentCommand;
    };
  },
};

exports.config = config;

• A relevant example test I am consistently getting a StaleElementReferenceError when interacting with the ProtractorBrowser. Specifically I’m testing against when I call browser.get('/') or browser.driver.getTitle().
• Output from running the test

StaleElementReferenceError: stale element reference: element is not attached to the page document
  (Session info: chrome=66.0.3359.181)
  (Driver info: chromedriver=2.38.552518 (183d19265345f54ce39cbb94cf81ba5f15905011),platform=Mac OS X 10.13.4 x86_64)
    at Object.checkLegacyResponse ([...]/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/error.js:546:15)
    at parseHttpResponse ([...]/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/http.js:509:13)
    at doSend.then.response ([...]/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/http.js:441:30)
    at <anonymous>
    at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:188:7)
From: Task: WebElement.isEnabled()
    at Driver.schedule ([...]/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/webdriver.js:807:17)
    at currentCommand.then ([...]/protractor.conf.js:47:27)
    at <anonymous>
    at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:188:7)

• Steps to reproduce the bug It seems to only occur along with certain cucumber scenarios that I am running, but I’m really struggling to understand what state could be saved that is triggering the error in the first place.

Some notes on what I’ve done:

1. I don’t interact with any WebElements directly (in fact I wrapped all my ElementFinders in functions just to be sure I was generating a new one every time I interacted with it)
2. I have added try/catch retries around the failing code
3. I’ve tried adding sleeps before the failing code

Any insight is much appreciated, let me know if you need more information. Thank you!