Day 65 Sunday October 12, 2025
We departed at 9:30 for our 120 mile drive to Red Bay Alabama. We are scheduled for our annual chassis service Monday morning at 7am, followed by a wash and polish job on our very dirty motorhome at 11am. We have been in some very dusty conditions for most of the last 64 days and it shows. When we get home a thorough inside cleaning job is in order also.
We got to Convenient Campground about noon. This is owned by Sabrina that will be doing our wash/polish job tomorrow. She has been using a parking lot beside another business for a few years. Last year she bought this already established small campground and build a nice 2 bay metal building on the same property to do her detailing business. This will be the third time she has detailed our motorhome. She is a hard working woman. She has several people helping her with the detailing.
When we pulled into the campground we noticed a couple at a motorhome that had 3 Fantasy RV Tours stickers on it. After we got setup we walked over to talk to them for a minute. They have been on 15 tours and have 10 more booked. I guess they must like Fantasy RV Tours.
Lena took the breast of the roasted chicken we bought yesterday and made chicken salad with it so that was our lunch today. Very good.
Day 66 Monday October 13, 2025
We were up a little after 6am to make our 7am appointment at Bay Diesel this morning. I took the motorhome over to Bay Diesel and Lena went to McDonald’s to get us some breakfast and to the IGA to get a dozen fresh donuts to give the mechanics at Bay Diesel. They do a very good job servicing our motorhome and I thought some fresh donuts might brighten their morning a little.
We had a lot done on this years service, some of the service items are only done every 3 or 5 years and they were due to be done this time so the bill was much higher than normal plus their labor rate went up a little since last year. Two mechanics serviced our motorhome and I watched them and I was amazed how much they did in about 2.5 hours. They have enough mechanics they can work on 3 motorhomes at a time with 2-3 mechanics at each motorhome. All they do is service motorhomes.
Then we returned to the campground and waited for Sabrina and her crew to wash and polish the motorhome. And it sure did need it. They finished about 3 pm.
We had an appointment tomorrow morning at 6am to get the roof inspected at RV Solutions but we also got the call from Tiffin to be at the mechanical bay at 7am. The owner at RV Solutions was in our area this evening so he stopped at our site and did the inspection so we didn’t have to go to his shop in the morning and he didn’t charge us anything to do the inspection. He said just keep him in mind for any work we might need in the future. We did ask him about replacing the little bit of carpet in the motorhome maybe next year. He and his crew are experts at replacing carpet, tile and other types of flooring in motorhomes.
Day 67 Tuesday October 14, 2025
We got up early and I got the motorhome over to Tiffin Service Center for our 7am service time. I pulled into bay 43 and the service technician asked what my issues were. I told him the leveling system and the front air conditioner/heat pump failure. He said the mechanical bay technicians didn’t work on the ac/hp on the roof so I would need to get that fixed in a regular service bay. UGGG! First I have heard that. That means waiting in another service queue.
I sent Paula, the lady that handles the service queue, an email about this and she acted like it was the first she had heard of our ac/hp issue. I summited my original “call ahead queue” request for service September 4th and sent a request to add the ac/hp on September 10th.
I got a call about 8:30 from the mechanical bay that they had our leveling problem fixed so I walked over to talk to them. They used a laptop to recalibrate the leveling system and they have exercised the system several times and have not had it to fault again.
When I went to the office to pay our bill Paula said they don’t close out the bill until everything is fixed and she hopes to have us into a bay this afternoon or in the morning to fix the ac/hp issue.
I was sitting outside about midafternoon reading when I heard a crunching sound across from us. There is another small campground that adjoins this one and a couple in a 45’ motorhome was pulling into their site and scrubbed the power pedestal on the site beside them and destroyed the power pedestal and damaged four of the basement doors on the couples motorhome. That is a good reason to have someone spotting for you when you pull into a campsite. Especially when the sites are fairly close together as these are. This couple was not practicing that bit of caution. Even after doing all that damage, the driver pulled on past the damaged power pedestal, got realigned and then backup in his site, still didn’t have his wife outside watching for his.
The couple at the damaged site had to find a different campsite because the damaged power pedestal will have to be replaced.
Well we didn’t get called to go back in for our last issue this afternoon nor did we get the call to be at a service bay at 7am as we had hoped. So we are in a waiting game.
Day 68 Wednesday October 15, 2025
We have had breakfast and are still waiting the call to report to a service bay. Sure hope it happens today. We are ready to head home.
We got called into a service bay about 12:30. When I explained the problem to the two technicians they stated that they would check the AC but Tiffin did not replace any bad parts only replace the AC with a new one. I was not pleased with this information. If the only problem is a bad capacitor the repair would only be about $70 and labor but a new AC is over $2,000 plus labor. I told them to do their diagnostics but don’t replace the AC before talking to me first.
Then I went to the office to talk to one of the service managers and he told me the same thing. At this point I was not a “happy camper “.
I called the repair shop that originally installed the AC in January 2023 to get their opinion. After talking to them and Lena we decided if Tiffin thought the AC was bad to have them replace it.
The technician called and said he was not sure but he also thought the problem was a bad capacitor so I returned to the shop and got the motorhome and went to the office and paid our bill which was just over $100 for the fix on the leveling system and no charge to check the AC. If it is just the capacitor I can buy a new one and Robby can install it for us.
So we are headed home tomorrow.
Day 69 Thursday October 16, 2025
Lena has picked up the cold I had a few days ago so she is not feeling 100%. We had a light breakfast and pulled out about 8:15 for our 248 mile drive to Mount Carmel Baptist Church on the West side of Atlanta Georgia. This is a Harvest Hosts location that we have stayed at one time before.
After about 50 miles we filled up with fuel and were on our way. The roads were good today, not too many bad places which is nice for a change.
We got to our destination about 2:15 and had some lunch. Another Harvest Hosts guest arrived about 3 pm.
Day 70 Friday October 17, 2025
Lena was feeling better this morning, not coughing so much. We had breakfast and pulled out about 8am for our 350 mile drive today. Not looking forward to all the traffic getting through Atlanta GA. Sometimes we get lucky and get through fairly easy. This morning was not so bad, just one slow down where traffic is trying to get on the I285 Atlanta bypass. Still it took us an hour to get past Conyers GA.
We made good time, stopped twice at rest stops to take bio breaks and stretch our legs. We got to South of The Border and checked into Camp Pedro Campground and set up in site 158 just after 2pm. We make this our last stop before arriving at home if we are coming by here. It is a good place to do our final grey and black tank dump so the tanks will be empty when we get home.
After we had lunch we sat outside and enjoyed the nice weather.
Day 71 Saturday October 18, 2025
We had breakfast, did our trip prep routine and headed out for the last leg of this trip. We only have about 130 miles or so to go.
We got home just before noon and were really glad to be safely home again. We really enjoying see this great country of ours but there is nothing like coming home either.
We got to experience some really amazing places, beautiful scenery, some good food and met some nice fellow travelers along the way. We didn’t experience any problems that kept us from continuing our journey, just the leveling issue and the one AC/HP but that was minor compared to a breakdown. The leveling issue had been resolved and if the AC/HP problem is what I hope it is that will be a minor issue to resolve also.
Now the inside of the motorhome needs a thorough cleaning to get rid of the dust we picked up along the way.
We traveled just over 6,000 miles with the motorhome. It climbed lots of steep hills and never complained one bit. When we were near Wilmington NC today I noticed our elevation was 20’ above sea level. At times on this trip we were over 11,000’ above sea level.
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