Hi Everyone and Happy New Year!
Hard to believe it’s 2018….time really does go faster the older we get! We have a lot of catching up to do, so grab a cup of tea and get cozy!
We left Ohio on New Year’s Eve, it was a balmy 7 degrees! It was great being home again for a few weeks, visiting with friends and family and enjoying the holidays. The time went so fast we didn’t get as many visits in as we had hoped to. As much as we have enjoyed our journey and being in the RV, it was great being home again for awhile too.
We are in the Gulf Shores, Alabama area for the month of January, and then will move about 400 miles east on February 1 to Port St. Joe, Florida. The deep freeze has reached here too, when we arrived on Jan 2 it was about 34 degrees that afternoon. It’s been getting down in the low 20s at night. But, it is gradually starting to warm up, it was 54 today and will be around 32 tonight. I know it’s been super cold everywhere and snow in places that don’t normally see snow like Hilton Head and Myrtle Beach. They had snow not too far from here also.
We spent 2 nights on the road getting here, and I have to say I think we were pretty comfortable operating the RV right out of the gate this time. There were a few moments of, “wait…how do we do that again???” But mostly we fell right back into our RV travel rhythm which was really nice.
The RV was in service from November 16 until December 23rd…. 🙁 A very frustrating experience to say the least. I had prepped the dealership and our factory representative starting in early October for our service appointment, sending lists of what needed done, pictures, measurements, etc. Multiple phone calls to the service department and factory folks to line up needed parts so things would be ready when we arrived. Nope. None of it was ready. In fact it was as if they had never heard of us or what we needed. No matter the email chains that went back to early October…. It was like a brand new conversation every time I called, as if nothing had ever been discussed before. To make a very long story shorter, we still don’t have the storage compartment door (remember it blew off during our last days on the road home in November) and we still don’t have the drawer cabinet front for under the range/oven that was supposedly ordered back in June when the factory installed the range/oven. The dealership ended up delivering the RV to us on December 23rd. This at least saved us the 2 hour drive each way to pick it up. We’ll be going back again in March for the rest of the work to be done. The good news is everything we needed done was covered by warranty so no expense for us which is great.
We had some work to be done on the truck, which Rob took care of for us. Then we also had to replace the 4 rear tires…turns out driving 21,000 miles pulling a very heavy RV wears out the tires!
I have a story to tell you about something that happened on our drive down. We made a reservation at a campground near Montgomery, Alabama for our 2nd night on the road. I had the directions up on Google Maps, and we were nearly to the RV park. The Google Maps lady said to turn left onto “Pappa’s Pond Road” which really looked more like a driveway. BUT, there was a road sign that said “Pappa’s Pond” and we could see RVs in the distance. So we turned. I said to Steve, “strange, there was no RV Park Welcome sign out front like we always see”. So down this long driveway we go, up the hill, to discover it is a PRIVATE DRIVE with 2 houses at the end. And a fence and the RV Park on the other side of the fence. Crap!!! Remember, we can’t back up with any degree of accuracy! But we had no choice but to back up, and aim for one of the “Y” branches in the drive.
So I’m sitting in my seat, looking out the window, directing Steve from my side using the mirror. Yup, I was too lazy to get out of the truck and do it right. It was cold outside, I was tired and frankly didn’t want to be outside walking around in some stranger’s yard. Like we weren’t already noticable enough! So I’m directing him towards the other driveway, thinking that little patch of grass we’re going to go over will be okay. Well, it wasn’t. It actually was a little ditch with a culvert in it. Would’ve seen that had I gotten out of the truck and done it the right way in the first place. Now, the driveway we were on was gravel and dirt. Nice red southern clay/dirt, nice and soft! The truck wheels were spinning and we couldn’t get the trailer out of the ditch! Double crap!!! Steve put it in 4 wheel drive and then the lowest gear (D3 I think it was), and, after digging some nice ruts in the yard and driveway, we got out of the ditch.
Now we were back to attempting to back up into this driveway so we could turn out and get out. We were probably about 15 more minutes, and many, many attempts, and it’s almost dark, and the full moon is rising over the field across the street. I’m thinking it is just a matter of time before some big guy named Bubba comes out of one of these houses, after an afternoon of beer drinking while watching football, with a shotgun. I was already thinking about where my checkbook was and how much should I start with to try to make it okay? $300? $500??? I know, a stereotype if there ever was one. But that’s what I was thinking, I admit it.
Then, out comes a young boy from the house whose driveway we have now made a huge mess out of. He’s maybe 16… could be 14, 15, 17? Dressed in full cammo. I’m thinking, crap, Bubba has sent his boy out to give us a warning before he starts firing. I was so WRONG. This very nice young man says, in full Alabama southern accent, “Y’all need some help?” I said Yes! We do! So sorry for what we have done to your yard and driveway! He says, again, you have to imagine the accent, “Shoot, we have tractors and big equipment back here all the time, we can fix that – want me to back you up? I been drivin’ 18 wheelers all my life, I can do it”. Words cannot express how happy we were at that moment. He jumped into the truck with Gerry and asked “dog bite?” We took Gerry out of the truck thinking it would make it easier for this young boy to do this big back up job…I am not kidding, he had the rig backed up perfectly, first attempt, in about 10 seconds. Literally. We offered money to repair the drive and yard, he refused. We offered cash as a tip for his help. “No sir! Y’all enjoy your evening and Happy New Year!” WOW. People are so nice! And shame on me for imagining the worse!
When we checked into the campground which was the next driveway down the road, we mentioned the ordeal. They said, “Oh, you met Jase, yeah he’s a nice kid. Sorry we forgot to tell you about GPS having our address wrong, we try to remember to tell people that when they make their reservations”. Really.
Life is good. People are nice. We are so grateful.
We arrived to our January home all covered in salt, we could hardly see out the windows of the RV. We had a mobile cleaning service come the next day and in about 2 hours they had it all shiny again. Enjoy a few pictures below. I’ll keep you posted on our adventures in the area! In the meantime, stay warm and let us know how you’re doing!
