Back On The East Coast

I can’t believe it has been over a month since I last posted.  I left off in the last post in Little Rock.  Nice place and I had forgotten how friendly the people are in the south.  We spent a nice three days there in our spot by the river.  We went to the Bill Clinton Presidential Library which was interesting though nothing compared to the Reagan Library.  I probably shouldn’t have done that one first because now none of the others will compare.  Anyway, on September 13th, we prepare to leave and guess what?  That darn slide that we had been having trouble with decided to completely stop while still extended out.  Motor was smoking and it wasn’t budging.  So Kean gets out the manual and I start calling around to find a mobile repair company.  I find someone that can come out in a couple of hours, which I have to tell you is a complete miracle.  Well this guy comes out, gets into the small space where the motor is located and pulls it out.  With him using a drill to ratchet the broken side and Kean using the motor to move the other side — they get it all the way in so we can move on.  Of course, now we can’t use that slide at all now.  It appears that the motor came unseated and turned which crushed some wiring on the outside of the motor.

So off we go to West Memphis.  While there I call around and find a Camping World in Mississippi.  Sounds like a long way away but really we were parked in the corner of Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi.  We drive the Jeep out to this repair place with the motor and see if they can order another within the six days we will be there.  Well they tell us it will take 5-7 days to get the new motor so that won’t work.  We go back to our now “smaller” home to see if we can find the motor somewhere else quicker.  We get online and find one in California that will overnight it to us.  We get it within 20 hours of placing the order!  So the next day when we have the new motor in hand, I call back to Camping World and say we have the new motor; can we bring the RV and motor in.  They say yes, so off we go.  They get the motor installed but tell us that there is another problem which is causing the motor to turn and they will have to order a part.  Again, we take our smaller home back to the RV park.  They tell us they will call us the next day and let us know what part and when they can get it.  Next day, with not hearing back from them and not being able to get them on the phone, we drive the Jeep back out there.  They tell us — “Oh, our parts person called in sick so no one has worked on it”.   Nothing else we can do with them so off we go.

While in West Memphis, we drive into Memphis and have lunch on Beale Street.  Lots of restaurants and music everywhere, a lot of it live music.  The music all blurs together.  I can’t even imagine what it must be like in the evening when all the places are open and playing music.  Though I don’t have many photos for the blog this time, I did take a couple while we were here.   

Next stop was Asheville NC.  We stayed at a nice place up on a hill.  Quite a challenge for Kean to get the beast up the hill and more importantly back down.  He said he was in 1st gear and still had to ride the brake down.  I was safely in the Jeep staying far away. 😉  We didn’t even try to find a place for the slide repair there because we knew we were not going to move the motorhome up and down that hill but once.  (We booked an appointment at a place in Myrtle Beach where we knew we would be for a while.)  This park in Asheville was a  nice peaceful place to kick back.  Take a look.   This site had a  nice view over the trees.  One issue that we had was the hundreds of stink bugs that were very attracted to the RV.  We got infested last year in SC and it took months to get rid if those little guys so now we have them again.  It must be a southern thing.

From Asheville we head down to Charleston SC.  We stayed at a county park that I had found during my preliminary work a few years ago.  I had started a spreadsheet of RV parks that people had highly recommended.  This was one of those and the people were absolutely correct.  It is not often that we find parks that we can fit in with trees.  Look at us nestled in there.    Somehow, we even got satellite reception. The county park itself was huge so we got the bikes out and did a little biking around.  We drove to downtown Charleston to walk around and play tourist.

From Charleston we head to Myrtle Beach.  Our plan was to park the RV there and drive the Jeep up to Virginia Beach for a golf tournament and stay a couple days to get some other things done.  Well Hurricane Matthew had other plans for us.  With the storm honing in on SC we decided to take the RV up to Emporia VA and park it there.  We didn’t think that taking it all the way to Virginia Beach would be a good idea even though the forecast wasn’t saying the storm would hit there.  You just never know and in fact, the storm did turn and there was a lot of flooding so we made the right call.  We had a good time in Virginia Beach seeing our good friends at the Seabee Memorial Golf Tournament.  We played with Roland Smith and Kevin Raad and visited briefly with Mike and Carol Conaway.  Since we were only there for a couple of days seeing everyone else would have to wait until we go back in November.

Well we drive through quite a bit of rain to get back to Emporia and our home.  The plan was to drive the next day back to Myrtle Beach.  The hurricane, though gone. was messing with those plans.  The roads, including a large part of I-95 in NC was, and still is, closed.  We ended up staying two extra days in lovely Emporia (basically exists only as an exit off I-95) before we could find an open route back.  In fact, on Monday, we took the Jeep and drove all the way back — 4 hours each way– just to make sure that we could get here okay.  The roads were open then but when we drove the RV back the next day, the road was now closed a couple of miles from the park.  We dropped the RV in a church parking lot, got in the Jeep and tried to find a route that was open to get us there.  It took a couple of hours driving and turning around before we found a road that wasn’t flooded and closed.

So we arrived.  The next day we closed back up and drive to the RV repair place.  At this point, I have to tell you, I am tired of being in a vehicle.  They installed the new motor and say they have to order a part that keeps the motor from turning.  Sound familiar?  That was yesterday around noon.  It is now 3:30 and I still have not heard back from them on this allusive part.  Someday we will have our whole house back though when, I can’t tell you.

We are here until the 29th before we head to Virginia Beach.  The water is still rising so we might be stranded at the RV park for a few days but what the heck.  Maybe it will dry up enough while we are here to get in some golf.  Fingers crossed.