As with all motor vehicles, Motor Homes require periodic maintenance. Ours, after approximately 2 years on the road, had just turned over 26,000 miles and we had scheduled to go to Lazy Days RV while in the Tampa area to get that done. In addition, while boondocking in Alexander Springs, our generator started acting up (no power out after running for a couple hours). We had also had a couple of minor problems over the past few months which we wanted them to look into.
We camped in their adjacent campground for the first couple of days, and then put the RV in for maintenance. We were hoping all would get done in one day and then we could move back to the campground for the night and head to Sarasota the next day, after taking their free Driver Confidence Course. Ellyn especially wanted to take this to allow her to be able to share in the driving a bit and to be able to take over in an emergency (G-d forbid).
while waiting for the work to be done, we got to sit in the large waiting area with other people, watch the Olympics, and talk about our experiences with our RVs. Sadly, one couple had a brand-new fifth wheel which was giving them a lot of problems. They had a list of about 90 things that had to be fixed. Ugh. We feel so fortunate that we seem to have a coach with very good workmanship. Most of the problems we have had are very minor and most of them our own fault (like breaking a door off the pantry twice while opening or closing the slide. I was able to fix it both times). As bad as their trouble was, they knew of others who had been there for weeks trying to get things right.
Well, they got through most of the work on Wednesday but had to do a little more debugging of some of the issues. So we had to stay in the coach in the repair bay overnight. That was ok, except that there were air compressors running in some of the garages around us, so it was kind of a noisy night.
On Thursday morning, we had to get out of the RV by 8:00 (yawn) and then we went to Lazy Days free breakfast. At 9:00 we went to the class and learned some interesting techniques for driving and parking an RV. In the afternoon, after the free lunch, Ellyn went back to do the driving part. I did not, as they were a bit overloaded with drivers.
We finally got out of there around 5:00 PM and headed to Sarasota, reaching Sun ‘N’ Fun by about 7:30 PM, after a (not too) quick stop at Costco. Yay!
