Southwest Trip - Issues on the Trip

 

We were blessed to have traveled over 6800 miles,with no major issues. Thank you Lord!

No flat tires, no blow outs, no truck issues of any kind.

We have always said we would be honest in our social media postings and we did have a few minor issues. 

The Camper

Tires:  We experienced a valve stem failure in the New Mexico desert which was no fun. Don was still recuperating from Covid and did not feel well, and I wanted him to save his energy for driving.

I contacted both AAA and Good Sam Roadside Assistance by phone and it was a nightmare. Both sent us a text to locate exactly where we were as we sat in a sketchy roadside ‘picnic area’ which is essentially a paved area for truckers to pull off to rest with no bathrooms.

Apparently since we were more than 20 miles from any civilization and in the New Mexico desert neither AAA or GS could find us. AAA finally contacted us with a 1.5 hour wait time.

GS said they would have someone contact us with an ETA but we never heard from them again. I will cancel GS; it is useless.

Note: there was a mix-up with our State Farm Roadside Assistance. The App said we did not have RA on our policy but Don and I both knew we did. Calling them did not get us results either but our local office has since taken care of that issue.

Bottom line, Don changed the tire while feeling awful and we were safely on our way. I will be cancelling and rethinking Roadside Assistance options in the coming weeks.

Lesson: 1) Know your Roadside Assistance options and information such as contact phone numbers, policy #, Membership Info, etc. I had it all printed in our trusty Travel Binder in case we had no cell service, 2) have your tire change kit ready (Impact wrench, extender, jack big enough for your rig) and, 3) make sure your spare tire is in good shape.

Refrigerator: We did have an issue with our Refrigerator cooling when we began the trip with temps over 100 degrees. We routinely do not travel with our propane on, but after losing quite a bit of refrigerated food (we packed our 2 coolers with all we could), our only option was to run the fridge on propane while traveling. Not optimal, but necessary for us in this circumstance.

On cooler travel days, we could turn the propane off and the fridge stayed well within the safe temperature parameters the entire travel time.

Slide: Our Camper has the infamous Schwintek slide in the bedroom. This slide has been and still is notorious for issues (social media folks keep asking why they even use it, but that is another story).

We actually had experienced sporadic problems the past 12 months, but Night One of our trip the slide did not want to go out. This is important because this slide has our bed in it and must go out for us to have access to our Dresser which contained all our underwear😕, shorts, and t-shirts.

While the Slide eventually worked, we experienced on/off again issues during the trip. By the time we left AZ we had taken out undies and essentials from the dresser and left the slide IN a couple of nights. We were afraid if it went Out, we could not get it In and if not In, we could not travel.

We were just trying to make it to the Grand Design Rally in Texas and hoped to get help there from the techs. And we did!! The Techs found we had a cable issue, repaired it and the last 4 stops of the trip the slide went in and out wonderfully. Thanks to Grand Design for that!!!

None of the above issues were terrible and we worked around them.

Roof Damage

          The only real ‘bad’ thing that happened was we pulled the camper under a large limb that tore the roof.

          Thankfully it did not rain for weeks and thankfully we had Eternabond tape for such an emergency.

          We will be getting a new and much better roof installed in the coming weeks.

Happy Trails and be Safe on the Roads!!