Patience, patience, patience

I heard that flexibility and patience are key to this lifestyle. Over the past few weeks, Tim and I definitely had a lesson in these skills. About a month ago, we had issues with our slide rooms; they would come in but not go back out. We also had an issue with the black tank; opening and closing it was difficult. Then the pull on the black tank broke totally. Tim was trying to lubricate it and the pull handle came completely off. Repairs were needed before we could leave.

Tim tried to find a mobile tech to come out to our site at the campground but they were all busy until early to mid October. Our initial plan was to leave on October 1 so we didn’t want to wait that long. We found a local RV dealer who was willing to do the work on our site and submit it to the extended warranty company. They were also busy but came within a week to look at the job and get parts ordered. I didn’t realize how long the process takes. It took more than a week for the parts to come in and then another few days for them to have time to get to us for the repair work. By then, we had a list of items for them to fix; we figured get everything looked at that we could so all would be in good shape when we started traveling.

Luckily they were able to fix everything that we needed except the slide rooms still would not work after they replaced the solenoid. So, they had to order another part and expedited delivery for it. Even with expedited delivery, we had to wait for another weekend to pass before the part came in. We were past our planned departure date by this point. That part came in and the RV was repaired on October 7.

We had planned to take a longer route to Kentucky where we planned to meet our daughter Kim for a few days to tour the Bourbon Trail. Our thought was to take it slow and go through Ohio to visit a cousin and then some friends in Zanesville, where we used to live. Since Kim only had a few days off, we had to get to Kentucky much faster so we decide to skip Ohio. Tim had ordered tires for the trailer and we planned to get those on first thing in the morning before we started our drive.

We packed up the evening before with plans to leave by 8 AM. Best laid plans do not always work. After connecting to the truck, we could not get the leveling jacks to come up. When we pushed the retract button, they kept going down and were lifting the RV off the ground. Luckily we were able to call Lippert’s help line and they talked us through fixing it. I guess the way they repaired the slide room had the leveling jacks not working properly. We had to switch the wires on the solenoid to get the jacks up. Finally left at 9 AM, got tires and were on the road a little before 11 AM. Everything is working now, but we have to remember that the slide room in button is now out and vice versa for the out button. We can live with that.

Crossing our first state line

Kim was anxious for us to get to Kentucky to spend time with her on Wednesday so we had a longer drive than initially planned. We still took a longer way to avoid major cities and for the entire drive on Tuesday to be on interstates. Tim did a great job driving it for the first long trip and we learned how to get diesel at truck stops. That was definitely an experience. We found a KOA with a pull through site to make the overnight stop easier. We left the camper hooked up for the night to make the next day an easy and quick start.

Remember what I said before: Best laid plans do not always work. Since the tires on the trailer were new, Tim wanted to check the air pressure before getting on the road and all but one of the new tires was low. He has a compressor that connects to the truck battery and it worked great on the one side. He moved to the other side and could not get the connection to work. It wasn’t long enough to reach from the other connection. We are learning that there are many challenges to traveling like this! The campground staff was very helpful and moved us to their barn where they had a compressor and we were able to inflate the other tires. One more delay but we were on the road again.

Some morning sunshine as we were checking the tire pressure.

Slight delay and then on the road again into Kentucky and our stop for the next week.

We got to our destination in Kentucky, Kim arrived, and we started touring the area. Look for more on that in the next blog entry.