Thursday, September 22, 2011

More comments and stories

The RV we purchased was used with only a few thousand miles on it.  Unfortunately it was several years old.  It turns out that while the tires weren't worn, they had dry rotted.  First we had one tire blow.  It made a sound that seemed to come from right below the refrigerator.  None of us could figure out what the noise was, but it seemed to disappear after awhile.  At our next stop, John noticed that the tire treads were loose from the tire itself.  We tried to change to our spare, but the nuts were stuck.  Using our GPS, we found a tire shop and called to make sure they had our tire.  They had to use air tools to loosen the nuts but we were soon back on the road.

Two days later John realized that two more tires were damaged.  Three days and three flat tires!! We ended up finding a tire shop with reasonable prices and replaced all our tires.  John called home soon after to talk to our neighbor.  Our wonderful neighbor mowed our lawn for us while we were away.  But he mentioned that our mower at home got a flat tire.  That's just weird!

The rest of our trip to Washington and back was mostly driving.  Each night we stayed at a new campground.  We found that national or state parks are much less expensive ($10-20 with the senior pass), better views, and larger parking spaces.  Private RV parks were more expensive ($20-50) and had better connections (electricity, water, sewer, and internet connections).  We joined Good Sams club before our trip.  That reduced the price at most of the private parks by a bit.

Our last night out was interesting.  The RV park was a few miles off the main road and we stopped on Labor Day.  There was no office to pay however several people were camping and told us just to find a spot we liked and set up.  After awhile, the campers packed up and left from their long weekend while we remained.  It turned out we were the only campers in the whole park!  Plus, the camp hosts didn't show up until after dark to collect fees.  There was a point where I was remembering those stories and movies about campers on their own when the killer attacks!  Otherwise it was a quiet night and a good campground.

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