Life on the Road: Ready to move on

Time to get caught up. We had to stay another week in Savannah to wait for the slide motor to come in (more on this later in this post). Once it had arrived and our service appointment was scheduled we were able to begin planning our trip up the east coast. As many spots we will be going to are tourist spots and some will be during holidays we wanted to make reservations at some parks. We have our tentative route which is to basically follow Interstate 95 north and then into New Brunswick, Canada going as far north as Hopewell Cape. We will then go west to Quebec City, Montreal and enter back into the United States in New York or Vermont.

We will be stopping in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Washington D.C. area, New York City area, Jersey shore and Cape Cod, plus many other places. It is interesting to see that RV parks are much more expensive in the east, generally older which means it can be hard to find 50 amp electrical service. Our trailer can run on 30 amp but can be a problem when the big main A/C kicks on and you want to use the microwave or some other power hungry appliance. With 30 amp you cannot run both A/C’s at the same time. When it is hot you need both A/C’s to cool the rig. There is so much to see so planning our stops is difficult. The nice thing is that the states are smaller and everything is fairly close. Unlike the west and south where we were traveling 250 miles between stops, this trip our stops may only be 75 to 100 miles between one another. Our plan is to stay at least one night in each state so we can get closer to our goal of staying in 49 states with this RV. We are up to 25 states presently and 2 Canadian provinces.

Now to the repair. I was told it would take 7 to 14 days for the slide motor to come in (I guess they have not heard of a company called FedEx). I followed up after 7 days and was told it was not in and they could not provide any other information. At 14 days I went into the store and the service adviser tells me “oh yes, the part is in”. Hmmm, nobody called me! I did not pursue the issue as it would not matter at this point, but did set up an appointment to have the motor installed and the wheel bearings repacked. The appointment was for yesterday, Friday. We packed up the trailer at 8am and drove it over to Camping World. I was told it would take until afternoon to complete the repairs. We decided to go to the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum which is just down the street (more on that below).

We came back to Camping World at 1pm and I went out to our rig and nobody was working on it. It was clear that the slide had been fixed but I could not tell about the wheels. I ran into the service adviser who told me the repair guy had to go get some heavy duty jacks to jack up the trailer. Huh! An RV repair shop that does not have jacks to raise a fifth wheel???

The repair guy returns around 2pm and tells me all the shop jacks are being used so he went home to get his own. He now struggles for 45 minutes to jack up the trailer and make sure it is properly supported. The story goes on but let me jump to the finish when the repair is completed at 4:45pm. It then takes the adviser 20 minutes to prepare the invoice only to overcharge me and have to redo it. We finally leave at 5:30pm. This is my third repair experience with Camping World and two of them have not been pleasant. I do not think I will be using Camping World for any future repair needs.

Ok, now the Mighty Eighth. What a nice museum. The Mighty Eighth was set up in World War II solely as an offensive unit to defeat the Germans. It was established in Savannah and that is why the museum is here. The gentlemen who provide information throughout the museum are all World War II veterans. The museum is fairly large and has numerous exhibits taking you through WW II. In the back they have a beautiful memorial garden with many plaques and memorials for individuals and units of the Mighty Eighth. They also have a very nice restaurant inside the museum. I would highly recommend this museum.

Here are some pictures (borrowed from the web)

Front of the museum