Sunday, September 6, 2015

Headed North!

Tennessee Mountains

We said good-bye to our friends and the great state of Georgia, and started heading north towards the mountains.  Our destination was London, KY for the night, and we were having a great travel day.  The weather was good, traffic was light, and then, about 20 miles from the Kentucky border, I thought I heard a “Pop!”, and then a flapping noise.  Tom thought it was just the truck in front of us rolling over the rumble strips on the side of the road, but then Bryce came up alongside us, motioning us over to the shoulder.

Oh, no . . . not again!

Luckily, there was a nice wide shoulder on I-75 and we could get the RV safely pulled off the highway.  This time it was a blow-out on one of the RV tires, and at least it was on the curb side.

I was going to call AAA, but Tom thought he and Bryce could take care of it faster than it would take them to arrive.

Not an ideal location, but we got it done

The tire was torn up pretty good, and wrapped around the axle, but luckily it didn’t do any damage to the RV!

It was a bit of a mess under there!

Tom and Bryce got to work, and got the old tire off, after cutting it away from the axle.

Uh oh!  Blown tire!

 

Getting the old tire off wasn’t too much trouble, but getting the new one on was a bit of a challenge!     Got the old one off!

 

Bryce got the spare down and aired it up, which turned out to be a mistake . . . they could not get the RV jacked up high enough to put the new tire on when it was full of air!

 

 

He ended up letting all the air back out of it, and they kept struggling with the jack until the got just enough height to get the new tire on!

Getting the spare tire on

We did figure out that our outside plugs run off the inverter . . . that was a bonus, so we didn’t even have to fire up the generator to run the air compressor!

With the tire change complete, we were back on the road in about an hour!  Not too bad!

Made it to Kentucky!

We crossed into Kentucky, and made it safely to our destination – Day Bros. RV Center, where we were going to spend the night while we toured some of the motorhomes they had on their lot.

They shuffled some RVs around to make room for us, and we got hooked up to water and electric.

All set up at Day Bros. RV Center

It was getting late when we arrived, so our first order of business was to find a tire store to put a new tire on our wheel.  The RV salesman we were working with called around and found a place that had the right tire, and Tom & Bryce headed right over there!

By the time they got back, it was almost dinner time and the dealership was getting ready to close.  The salesman gave us the code for the gate, in case we wanted to go out, and a ring of master keys to get us into all of the RVs on their lot.  He told us to take our time and look through anything we wanted, and he would see us in the morning!

So, after dinner, we did just that – we wandered around and looked at all of the diesel motorhomes, until it got too dark to see well.  There was just one motorhome that we couldn’t get unlocked . . . and that was one we wanted to see!  In the morning, we met up with the salesman and he let us in that last motorhome . . . and it had a lot of potential!

We ended up talking and talking and talking . . . and took it for a test drive . . . and then talked some more . . . and they gave us an appraisal on our truck and RV . . . and it looked even more promising!

It got so late that we ended up staying for a 2nd night in their parking lot, with the keys to that motorhome so we could spend some more time going through it!

By the time we left the next day, we had given them a deposit on the motorhome and a long list of “issues” that would need to be addressed and corrected in order for us to complete the transaction.

Here’s just a teaser glimpse . . . more to follow later!

20150820_112819

From Kentucky, we decided to drive all the way to Shipshewana so we could spend the weekend there, before going to Mor-RYDE on Monday for our appointment.

We took I-75 into Ohio,

Crossing the river into Cincinnati

and then backroads to Shipshewana, where we pulled into the Shipshewana South Campground just before the office closed at 5pm.

We got set up, and spent the evening relaxing . . . with the windows open for the first time in months!

Set up for the weekend in Shipshewana

We always enjoy the neighbors and the view when we’re here!

Campground Neigh-bors!

Amish country sunset

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we were done with our shopping, we took a drive over to the campground where two of my sisters have seasonal sites, and we spent the evening with them, enjoying a nice campfire.

On Sunday after mass, we moved the RV over to Camp Mor-RYDE . . .a whole 20 mile drive!

Camp Mor-RYDE

After we got settled, we contacted fellow RV-Dreamers Walt & Tina through facebook and made plans to meet for dinner in Elkhart.  We met at a little pizza place, where we enjoyed a nice dinner and got caught up on each others’ travels since we last saw each other in Marion, NC.

We thought our Monday appointment wasn’t until mid-morning, but they were knocking at our door at 6am on Monday morning!  We quickly got up and got the RV hitched up to the truck, and Bryce backed it into the garage!!  He did a really good job – got it in the garage on the first try!

We were here just to have our suspension, brakes and pin-box checked out, but on the way north from Georgia, we had discovered that the integrated brake controller in the Chevy truck did not communicate at all with the electric over hydraulic disc brakes on the RV . . . so we drove the entire way back with no trailer brakes!

Fortunately, Mor-RYDE had an adaptor they could install that would make the brakes with our truck, so they installed that as well as fixing a brake line that had apparently gotten pinched by the tire that blew out on our way up.

By 8:30am, they were done, and we got ready to hit the road.  We had originally planned to spend one more night, but since it was so early there was no point in hanging around.

We had another good travel day, and by noon we had returned to our home state of Michigan.

Camp Lord Willing site #5

We arrived at Camp Lord Willing in Monroe about an hour later, and got settled on the site that we will call home for the next couple months.  It’ll be nice to be stationary for awhile!

1 comment:

  1. Just getting caught up today after having a busy weekend ourselves.
    Those darn blowouts are a real pain and even with the tire monitors they still happen. Glad you didn't have too much damage to your rig.
    That sneak peak looks like you'll be enjoying your dream sooner than you'd planned considering the setback because of the truck.
    We'll have to look it over when we see you this winter.
    Be Safe and Enjoy!

    It's about time.

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