This is going to be a long post, so grab a cup of tea and get cozy! A lot has happened in the last few days, some good and some not so great. But even out of the not so great are lessons learned.
We (finally!) left the factory in Indiana Friday, at almost noon. Way later than we expected. We were due to meet Guy at a State Park in Minnesota that evening. When I realized how late we were going to be, I changed our campgroud reservation to a different State Park, one that would be about 2 hours closer for us since we had to drive straight through now. Still was a good 9 – 9.5 hour drive, but doable, and we gained an hour on the way from the time zone change, so that helped too. I carefully planned our route from Howe Indiana to Whitewater State Park, MN on both the Rand McNally GPS tool and Co-Pilot, another RV GPS tool I had purchased awhile back (I like Co-Pilot better). We had to go by Chicago, and while both GPS tools wanted to take us right through the heart of the city (on the freeways, like the Ryan Expressway), I knew that was not a good idea for us newbies. So I created a route around Chicago, it worked great, and the drive went really well. Steve did a great job driving, and Gerry slept the whole way – we only stopped twice to let him out for a quick potty break.
First Lesson: always remember to secure the refrigerator doors with a strap or bungie – or else the V-8 juice (large bottle, of course) will fly out of the fridge while cruising and spill all over the floor and carpet. Yup, it happened. Happy to report the carpet cleaned up really well.
We arrived at Whitewater State Park right at the same time as Guy, Steve checked in at the park office, received our pass and directions to our camp site. The lady confirmed our equipment (large 5th wheel) and sent us on our way (this is important to the story, trust me). Our assigned camp site was down the road a bit, in a smaller, sort of “annex” to the regular campground (red flag should have gone up) and we turned into the entrance to see that all the other campers were in tents (LARGE red flag should have gone up). Us newbies however didn’t notice all the red flags and proceeded into the “loop” of all the campsites. At this point every one of the tent campers were watching our giant rig attempting to squeeze down their quiet little tent camping lane. We immediately knew it was a bad idea and we were never, ever, going to fit into the camp site. We decided immediately to leave – but, leaving meant we had to get out of the place….it took about an hour, and the help of a super nice guy who directed Steve on backing up and manuvering in small increments at a time to finally get out of the campground. But, a tree branch snaged our roof and tore a gash about 6 inches in the rubber roof.
Lesson # 2: don’t assume the campground reservation system will accurately assign an appopriate camp site just because they require you to input your equipment type, length, height, etc in order to make a reservation; don’t assume the nice lady at the camground check in office is actually thinking and/or listening when she asks what equipment you are driving when she confirms your campsite and, most of all, when you look down into a campsite “loop” and you ONLY SEE TENTS – DON’T DRIVE INTO THE LOOP.
So we drove to a Walmart about 30 minutes away and camped in the parking lot. Never thought I’d be so glad to see a Walmart. And we got there in time to get food from the Texas Roadhouse in the same parking lot 30 minutes before they closed, what a bonus. Got to bed after midnight – then the CO2/LP gas alarm went off at 6:00 am. It wasn’t the full alarm, just the every 15 seconds “chirp” that lets you know your battery is too low to continue to operate the alarm….I find the manual for the alarm, figure out how to turn it off. Decide to go ahead and make the coffee and….no power in the outlets!!!! You will recall we had this GFCI outlet issue on our very first night, it was on the LIST of things to be done at the factory, we just spent a WEEK at the factory, and they said it was fixed!!!
Lesson #3: don’t drive away from the factory without testing everything they said they fixed.
Now, on top of figuring out another campsite for the night so we could salvage some of our visit with Guy (he’s asleep on the sofa bed during all this), figuring out where/how to repair the roof, I now have to also figure out where/how to get the outlets fixed. I’ll shorten this part of the story: found a great spot at the Autumn Woods RV Park in Rochester, MN, which was only 12 miles from our Walmart; researched online and found out they make this great roof repair tape that Steve and Guy put on without any trouble and fixed the tear in the roof; discovered all RV service places are closed on Saturdays and Sundays, including the ones near us that accept the special service/warranty plan we purchased. Called and left unhappy messages for persons at the factory about lack of actual fix on the GFCI outlets, did tons of research online (these RV guys really put a lot of info online in forums) and figured out there was a GFCI outlet on the side of our Inverter (which converts battery power to electric power in the outlets). You can’t see it due to it’s practical placement against the side of the wall in the storage unit, but Guy was able to get his hand into the spot and reset the outlet and – it worked! Now, when we are not hooked to shore power (plugged in), and we are using the generator (such as when staying in a Walmart parking lot), all of our outlets have power now.
Lesson #4: We can fix things ourselves…who knew?!
We packed up and got ready to move to Autumn Woods RV Park. It was now 1:00 Saturday afternoon….the parking lot was busy, cars parked everywhere, even though we were in the back of the lot. We were standing outside the rig, looking in all directions for the least terrible way out, when Jim and Diane came by and said they would help us. They stood at strategic places and blocked traffic, Jim directed Steve on how to back up, and got us out of our fix. Earlier, while I was outside the rig looking at the generator trying to diagnose the outlet problem, and Steve and Guy were out buying the roof fix tape, Jim and Diane had stopped by and asked about our rig and what we were doing. They shared they had also purchased an RV and were 1 month away from leaving for their fulltime RV life…
Lesson #5: When parking at Walmart get out early the next morning and consider your escape route when chosing where to park the night before.
Lesson #6: There are a lot of really nice people out there.
Got a “pull through” site at Autumn Woods (no backing in required, you just pull through) – I think the universe knew we needed a break. It was 93 degrees and 40 mph wind gusts. However, the universe was not done with us yet….I made a terrible mistake when setting up. There is a sequence of steps to be followed when arriving at a campsite and unhitching. I know this, Rob taught us, we practiced it with him, and I have done it a few times now at our stops. BUT, I was flustered, tired, hot. I failed to put the front jacks down on the trailer, so that when Steve pulls the truck away the trailer has something to stand on. Nope, we undid the hitch, I told him to pull away and bam! Front end of the trailer fell right onto the bed of the truck. In a very loud, spectacular fashion of course!
The good news here, if there is any, is that the already damaged Tonneau cover rails (the thing you pull closed over the bed of the truck) took most of the impact and the truck itself is hardly damaged. If you have been following the blog, you may be thinking…hmm, I don’t remember the Tonneau cover getting damaged. You’re right, I didn’t mention it before. I was trying to save some ego, but hey, now that we have all this to share, why not share it all??? Remember our first campsite, in Michigan, where the nice guy named Steve was riding his bike by us and offered help, and backed us our rig into the campsite for us? Well, what I didn’t mention in that story before was that while we were attempting this feat ourselves, we jacknifed the truck/trailer at a 90 degree angle, caused the hitch to swing into the Tonneau cover rail and broke it. I didn’t realize the hitch could swing that far and wasn’t watching for it while helping guiding my Steve. So we were standing there staring at our broken Tonneau cover rail when Stranger Steve came by and offered help. There – now you have the whole story!
Lesson #6: Always, always, always put the front jacks down before pulling the truck away when unhitching! Stop, think and go slow no matter how hot, tired and frustrated you are.
Got everything set up, got air conditioners on and put Gerry inside while we did a couple of things outside. Came back in to find Gerry having fun with a roll of toilet paper….
That’s the end of all the bad stuff. We had a great visit with Guy, made a great dinner Saturday night on the new little grill we have, and enjoyed spending time together until he left this evening (Sunday).
While I was lamenting all the things that had gone wrong, apologizing for not being at a camground sitting around the fire, fishing and hiking, Guy said, “mom, we are all healthy, our family is in a good place now, and we’re together, what is there to complain about?” Indeed.
Lesson #7: Being together, the love of family and friends matters most of all.
We will leave Monday to head west. We will drive through Minnesota, North Dakota, to western Montana. We have a reservation near Glacier National Park starting Friday, we’ll stay there for several days before we head north to Canada and Banff.
