Travel Blog

The Good:
On our way down to the Lower 48, we saw lots and lots of creatures. Here's what we saw, in no particular order: a moose, a bear, mule deer, eagles, a fox, coyotes, caribou, reindeer, big-horn sheep, dall sheep.
We got no pictures to share with ya'll because there were no good places for a big RV to pull over and take any. It's too bad too because the moose and the bear were pretty darn close to the road, and all the other ones were, well, in the road. Ha ha.
The Bad:
Our RV is broken. We're in Bakersfield, CA, right now awaiting a phone call telling us how many appendages we'll have to sell to get the sucker fixed. You see, on Saturday night, we stayed at a park and got all set up like we usually do. When we went to leave on Sunday morning, we couldn't get our living room slide-out to come back in. The motor just "rrrurr-rrrurrred" but the slide didn't move. Crappo. When we bought the RV, the folks told us there's a manual override for it, but we didn't know what the heck we were doing, so Phil went down to the office to ask if they had any recommendations for help. As it happens, the woman behind the desk had a boyfriend who worked at an RV service place, so he came to help Phil while I got lost trying to find an ATM to pay whoever helped us. When I got back, Phil said the dude couldn't help, but he had a number of a mobile RV fixer who was coming to see what he could do. So help arrived, but only in the form of manually cranking our slide in. He couldn't fix the problem. So remember, this was a Sunday. No service places were open, so we decided to travel on down the road, stay overnight somewhere, and call service places first thing this morning. And we did. But unfortunately, everywhere we called this morning said they were booked solid for weeks at a time, and couldn't help us. We finally got a number for a place in Bakersfield, and the woman who answered the phone was really friendly and they said they could squeeze us in. We were 70 miles away, but made it before 11:00 a.m. It's now 2:43 p.m., and we're still waiting for the diagnostics to be done to see what the heck's wrong with the thing. So we don't even know if it will be fixed here. We do know that we're roasting in the 87-degree sunshine and that whatever they're doing now will cost us at least $120. That's not to fix it; that's just to tell us the problem, and to let us know if they have time to fix it. Can I cry now?
We were supposed to be in LA tomorrow morning, but I just don't see that happening. Denise and Eric, our bosses down there, have been super understanding, and we're keeping them abreast of our ETA. It's just a bummer. But for two years of heavy use, this is the first major problem, so that's more good news. Let's just hope there's no more bad news.
PS: If Steve and Tara are still reading this blog, please tell your friend Donna that a friend of hers, JoAnn, is looking to get a hold of her. She has a response to our blog about meeting them at the store in Skagway if they want to read what she had to say.