On Saturday, December 3rd, we officially received Holmes into our possession. We had a walk through with a dealership employee who showed us how everything worked. We found four minor problems that needed attention: a missing end cap on the bumper, a missing lock pin on the tailgate bike rack, a loose slat under the bed and one of the recliners would not recline. No problem, a service tech came and fixed everything. While the repairs were being done, a very nice tech, named Shannon (of course, all Shan(n)ons are awesome, male or female!) arrived to help us learn how to hitch Holmes up to Watson, our truck. Thomas and I have hitched up travel trailers in the past, but never before have we worked with a fifth wheel. For those who are unfamiliar with fifth wheels, the trailer hooks up to a special receiver hitch that sits in the bed of the truck.
Well, Shannon the tech didn't let us down. He showed us some tricks that made the process go smoothly. The techs left and we made up a list of things that we needed to buy, especially groceries. Before we left to shop, Thomas noticed that the water from Holmes' roof was not dripping from the little spout that is built in for that purpose, but running down under the trim of the back wall. We decided to talk to the techs in the morning. They normally don't work on Sunday, but we had been told we could call the on-call tech if there were any problems. So, off to shop and grab some dinner.
We had an uneventful night. The mattress that came with Holmes was pretty uncomfortable and I ended up sleeping on one of the extremely comfy recliners instead. We had actually ordered a Sleep Number bed from a RV supply store called Camping World, but we could not get it installed until the following Friday. More on that in the later posts.
So, the next morning, we called the number that had been given to us to talk to the service folks about the leak. We also discovered that the one recliner still would not recline (or so we thought!). Plus, the refrigerator kept flashing an error code. Thomas looked in the manual and the error code showed a problem with the propane. Luckily, the fridge ran on electricity with no problems. We never got a call back from the tech. We decided to go to the sales center and ask what we should do. We were afraid that if we left the service lot, they would not be responsible for any repairs. Well, the manager at the sales center found out the tech who was on call was sick with food poisoning! They told us to go ahead and move to the campground, which was on their property, just across the street and to come talk to the service people in the morning.
We hitched Holmes up to Watson with very little struggle and then held our breath as we pulled away for the first time. It actually went very smoothly. Watson pulls the load easily and as long as you take the corners wide, it is not that hard. We checked in to the campground and headed over to our spot. It was a nice, centrally located spot. But, it was across from the campground clubhouse and there were a ton of golf carts parked directly across from it. We did not relish the idea of backing Holmes on a 90 degree angle to get into the spot. Our neighbor came out and explained that since the lot behind him was empty, he had simply gone around the block and pulled straight through. The space behind us was empty as well, so we did the same thing! So much easier.
We unhitched Watson from Holmes and connected up all of our utilities. In a future post, I will explain everything that has to be done in order for us to have electricity, water, sewer and cable hookups. But for now, we were happy to settle in and prepare for Thomas to head back to work the next morning. The reason we chose to stay at the Lazy Days campground was because not only did we want to check everything out, I wanted to attend the many free seminars that Lazy Days holds during the week in order to learn all that I could about our new lifestyle. So, all was well until I went into the bedroom. I opened the closet door to find our new washer lying facedown on the floor of the closet! They had not fastened it down well enough and during our move, it just toppled over.
You can imagine our frustration and disgust at this point. We decided to take care of it the next day and get some sleep.
In our next post, I will detail the hair-pulling-out experience we had getting all of the problems fixed. They did all get resolved, we have learned a lot and we are still very happy to be moving on with our plans. Even though we have weathered a lot of struggles so far, we still feel fortunate to be able to follow our dreams. As we keep telling ourselves, an adventure is just that. Not every moment of an adventure is fun, but it is still worth having!
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