When Sh** Happens

Welcome back to another exciting adventure.  This time it’s REALLY exciting!

When we left Williamsburg on Memorial Day, we were so excited to be heading to Lewisburg, West Virginia to visit with family: our granddaughter, Ava, her boyfriend, Chad,  (when did that happen?), sister Harper, brother Levi, her mom Rachel and boyfriend Jayson.  As with so many families, these dynamics are complicated.  It doesn’t matter, however, because everyone is part of our family.  

It’s been many years since we’ve seen Ava. We would bring her out for a week or so every summer, and then the pandemic hit so we hadn’t seen her since 2019.  Jerry hasn’t seen Rachel in years and has never met Levi and Harper.  We were very excited to meet Rachel’s boyfriend Jayson. Needless to say, we were excited to get here and start our 15 days with them.

And, then, this happened;  I had booked the reservations last year and spoke to the owner numerous times regarding the size of our RV.  To remind you, it is 42’ with 5 huge slide outs.  I learned my lesson last year when we were in Desert Hot Springs in a site that was way too small to fit in, and it was a back in.  I know I had told them our size, etc, but we also used a 50% off program.  There is no doubt they penalized us and put us on that site in Desert Hot Springs. It was a nightmare backing into the site!  

Well, guess what?  It happened again.  I called the campground the night before to confirm.  I was told it was all set and we had a GREAT site that would fit our rig.    When we pulled into the campground I went in to check us in and was guaranteed the best site even though it is a back in, there is plenty of room.  When I went outside to get into the truck, I saw Jerry pushing on one of the kitchen slides.  I started freaking out!  “What’s wrong?”, I asked.  He said, “Well, I think we might have an issue with the kitchen slide,” as the right side of it was sticking out of the RV.  He said, “let’s wait and get set up and we will see!” 

We drove to site #29 and looked at each other and said, “NO FREAKING WAY ARE WE GOING TO FIT INTO THAT”.  My incredible husband looked at me and said, “I will get us in this spot.”  Needless to say, it took him over 60 min to get backed in.  I finally called the office and said, someone needs to come out here and help us.  They sent a guy who was very helpful, but also said, this campground is not for big rigs!  NO KIDDING!!!!!  After many tries, Jerry finally did it.  Over 1 hour!  He was drenched when he got it done.  It was nerve wracking!!!

Then, we started setting up.  The bedroom, living room and one kitchen slide on the right hand side opened with no issues, then the kitchen slide (that’s in front of the refrigerator) would not open.  Jerry had to manually push it out so we could get to our refrigerator!  Of course, he was freaked out that he broke it more, but we had to get it pushed out!!!   

I immediately emailed the customer service department at Grand Design to let them know this happened as we were JUST in Indiana getting a list of things fixed and was told they checked all the slides! The RV is ONLY 11 months old exactly, AND thank goodness it’s one month more on warranty! I immediately got online and searched for a RV Tech that would come to the campground and fix this as we cannot tow the RV with a broken slide. And all this happened on Memorial Day, of course!!!

This has been one of my biggest nightmares.  We have read numerous posts on the group Facebook page of our RV model about this happening!  I had to stop reading the post as I was getting incredibly anxious!!!  And now it happened to us!   Trust me, I know that things will break and that it’s not if, it’s when!  Well, it happened sooner than we thought.   Yes, it’s all part of the adventure and if I hear that saying one more time this week, I might scream.  

The good news is that the RV Tech came and was able to fix our slide. It turned out it was the motor on one side of the slide. Jerry asked me to leave the day he was coming so I wouldn’t freak out anymore than I was. Rachel came and picked me up and we had a lovely day together. I even was able to get my haircut by a great stylist named Brittany. When Rachel drove me back to the campground, Jerry came out with a huge grin on his face and a thumbs up.

This has been so difficult trying to have fun with the family with this hanging over our heads this week.  There is still some issue with welding that needs to be done before we leave.   He needs to come back to finish up, but overall, the slide is fixed and once the other issue is fixed we will be able to drive it to our next destination on June 14th.  

Now, to talk about the RV Park.  The park is VERY small.  There are a lot of people who live full time here in their RVs and maybe 10 other sites that are rented out per day.  As you can see from the photo we are on site 29, the corner site.  Of course this is the ONLY site that does not have shade.  I wish I was kidding.  This is a very small park surrounded by beautiful trees and the river is right across the way and we have the only site without shade.  Yes, I am whining.

What NO ONE mentioned in any of  the reviews I read (YES, I read all reviews before I book), is that there is a train track right above the river.  As you can see on the map the river, and right above that is the train track that doesn’t show on the map.  It is so FREAKING close and so FREAKING loud you cannot hear yourself think.  On the opposite side is highway 63.  A VERY busy 24/7 highway.  We thought the highway noise in Maryland was bad!  NOPE, this is worse.  Trains on one side, highway noise on the other.

So, by now, you’re probably asking why we don’t leave?  Well, for one, we cannot until the RV is totally fixed.  Two, I talked to the owner and told her of our issues and she said the policy is no refunds after paying in full unless they can find someone to fill the space for the time we booked.  That’s not going to happen.  So, we are stuck here.  Now, I must admit, it is beautiful when the trains are not going by (especially at 3:00 am) and the traffic is at a minimum. (you can sleep when you die) The area is incredible.  The river is right across from our site and so serene and beautiful.  We plan on kayaking and having the family over to tube and bbq and just plain have fun.  FINALLY 

Now that the stress of the slide is fixed and we know the other issue will be taken care of before we leave, we are now going to really enjoy ourselves here in this beautiful area with our family.  Rachel and Jayson have lots of plans for us  and we are going to experience West Virginia!

Just One More…something breaking on the RV (it’s the life we chose)!