Will this day ever end? Today is actually Sunday, July 21, 2019 but you won’t read this until Monday July 22 or later…
The day started out great. We were going to go ahead and leave Arrowhead RV Campground in Wisconsin Dells (a Thousand Trails Encore Park – we’ve been here two weeks), a day early and head on to South Dakota. But evidentially, that just wasn’t in the cards. Things went downhill quickly and continued. You can’t make this stuff up, guys, you can’t make it up!
We’re all packed up and ready to go and we’re bringing the slides in at 10:00 a.m. – We get three of them in just fine… and then the one with the kitchen in it…. decides to go stupid! I let off the button.
Trapper, from outside yells, “What’s wrong?”
I reply, “This slide is acting stupid and coming in crooked. Maybe that bolt broke that the “guy we bought this from told us about!” Long story short the bolt had sheared off, Trapper replaced it and we tried again.
Bottom Line… here’s what happened over the course of two hours… the heaviest slide we have is completely out-of-whack! And the last time we brought it in there were all kinds of creaky sounds, etc. and I let off the button. I yelled out… “There’s too many creaky sounds going on in here and it’s still not straight!”
So let’s talk about the creaky sounds I was hearing! Do you see below how my kitchen counter is buried into the wood that is home to an inset cabinet and the back of the shower wall? Yea, that’s not suppose to look like that!
Do you see at the back of the picture there’s about 1/4″ space between countertop (slide) and cabinet/shower wall… and at the front NONE!
And let’s not forget the moment I realized…. We actually moved that wall!… look at the gap between the wall and tile! I can’t believe this! I’m just sick to my stomach.
We’d spent almost an hour on hands and knees cleaning out from under this slide. This slide houses the kitchen (not the fridge though) and a couch and a bunch of storage. A family of five lived in here before us so yea, there were a bunch of crayons, markers, mini barbie stuff, marble stuff, etc. that we pulled out from crevices but it didn’t solve the problem.
We got the slide in as best as possible. Yep, our plan was to head onto South Dakota with our slide like this until we ran into a place that could fix it. But that wasn’t in the cards either.
Most of the places we contacted were like, “Oh yea, we can fit you in – sometime in August!”
I had to stop taking pictures now because things were getting serious. Our plan was to drive with the slide like this. Period.
We left our spot and went to dump the tanks. Plan was to attach the Jeep while the tanks were dumping.
Of course – because today is cursed! We can’t get the Jeep to disengage to 4-Wheel Neutral… so it can be towed 4-Down and … it’s 1:30 – 2:00 p.m. by now.
We enlist the help of the maintenance guys working at the park. Both of them took us under their wing and found us another site to camp at for the night and the other helped us with the mechanical issue with the Jeep.
Perfect! The one worker radioed the office and they sent us to overnight in site 70 and the other showed up after work to show us what was wrong with the Jeep. It’s a $24 dollar part we need to order. Great, Awesome…. only $24! We ordered it and figured a work around!
So we maneuvered to Site 70 and semi-settled in… It’s a good thing we ate out tonight, because otherwise I would have been in one ill mood about now if I’d been in the middle of cooking dinner!
I see a 5th wheel come in and stop right behind us. They stop one of the camp hosts folks and explain they are suppose to be in 70! I kept hearing site 70 and told Trapper – “We’re in their spot – but the campground said it was ok for us to overnight here.” What the heck?
Stay tuned…. more on this tomorrow… campground etiquette, what would you do, differences in rigs, getting ours fixed and we get another job offer only 300 miles away in Upper Peninsula of Michigan! Maybe I can come up with some pictures… it was such a long day for us today!
Bless you! What a day, whew. Hope things got better the next day and your able to get things fixed. This sounds like something that would happen to us. There must have been a major reason you weren’t suppose to be on the road! Have a good week.
I totally agree…. I told Mom tonight, “There’s a reason we’re not suppose to be West right now or on the road for long!”