August arrived and found us outside of Nashville, TN at a nice park with sites right on the lake. We enjoyed the outdoors considering it cooled down nicely during out stay.
Site on the lake 
Adele on the lakeshore 
Nice place to relax
We also caught up with Jill’s 2nd cousin, Casey and had lunch on the lake (plus her first time ever seeing our home on wheels!). The only excursion we made was to do the obligatory visit to the Opryland Hotel. We were amazed that they charge $29 to park at the hotel but we found a cheat where you can park at the Opry Mills Mall next store for free and sneak in the back!
We wandered around the inside of the hotel, enjoying the views of the various areas but after less than an hour, we’d had enough. It is pretty, nice gardens and a river with a river boat cruise, but not really of big interest to us. But at least we could tick it off our bucket list!
Our next stop was across the Ohio River from Louisville, on the Indiana border. We camped at the nice quiet state park of Charlestown. Not much around but the park itself is huge with many hiking trails and much of it borders to river.
One day started cool enough that we decided to try a 3 mile hike to Rose Island. The hike in is pretty easy and includes walking down a paved path from the bluffs above to the river. The challenge was coming back up with a steep half mile climb out of the river gorge.
Rose Island is actually a peninsula of land on the Indiana side of the Ohio River. This land was developed in the late 1800’s as a cool resort destination for those living down the river in Louisville. Over the years, they added a hotel, cabins, an amusement park (including a ferris wheel and a zoo), a pool, and dance hall. People either got on a ferry boat from Louisville to cross the river and visit of, for those on the Indiana side, they would park their cars at 14 Mile Creek and pay 25 cents to walk across a wooden suspension bridge.
The park saw its peak in the 20’s but as the depression settled in, attendance dropped. The final blow was a disastrous flood in 1937 that washed most structures away, leaving only some stone walls and foundations. Today, you can walk the grounds of the resort that has now been mostly taken over by the forest.
Now, before we go further, scroll back up and take a look at our campsite. You will notice Lola 2 has a nice set of stairs that come out below the door. These open automatically when you open the door and can also be locked in the open position. They are supposed to go in whenever the engine is on and the door is shut. We started having issues with this back in Nashville where the stair was not going completely in. We worked on cleaning the gears and slides and working some silicone spray on and that seemed to help. Well, the title of this blog tells you, that wasn’t the end of the story.
Leaving Charleston on Sunday, August 8th, our destination was the American Coach Service Center in Decatur, Indiana (yeah, pretty much in the middle of nowhere with Fort Wayne being closest city, 30 minutes to the north). We had a pretty good list of things on our list for Warranty Work but none of it seemed that complicated. And we felt ahead of the game since we had already secured parts for those repairs that needed them. A partial list of things we needed fixed:
- A roof leak that we had tried in vain to repair three times
- A leak coming thru the front windshield
- A dishwasher leak that had prevented us from using it since day one.
- Captains chair arms that were broken and needed replacing
- A kitchen drawer that would not remain closed while underway and had come off it’s tracks and ripped out it’s hardware.
- Potential overheating issues with our heated tile floor
- Front decorative grill was coming loose
- A light under the microwave that had exploded
- A few other minor hardware issues
We had the new chair arms with us along with a replacement lens for the microwave light. We also had the replacement motor part for the dishwasher. They offer the option of staying in your coach at night but that means getting up and out of the coach at 6 AM each day and getting your coach back around 3:30. With a dog and everything else (plus being in the middle of nowhere), we opted to rent a house in Fort Wayne. But, before we could get there, we had to park overnight at the service center because check in was 6 AM! So, after a long drive up thru Indiana, we pulled into the parking lot (which does provide power hook ups) and then, while backing up, took out part of a light pool with our stairs that had not fully retracted. It was a gut-wrenching moment for us – we had never hit anything since we started in early 2018 and now we had damaged our new coach. All we could do was hope we could get this added to the list and fixed/replaced.
So, Monday morning arrives, Dan is ready to check in at 5:45 AM (Jill and Adele were already at the house we had rented (more about that later). No matter when you arrived or checked in, you waited to be called by an all-powerful “advisor” who’s main job is to tell you what they will work on, give you vague answers about timelines, and make promises they will never keep. When I was called up, a technician was also with the advisor. I reviewed all our items on the list and then discussed the damaged steps. They had indicated previously (before they knew about the steps), that three days would be enough time. Regardless, we had booked the house thru Saturday so they would have 5 full days – no rush! They seemed very positive that it could all be done, IF they had the parts. And of course, other than a replacement step, I had brought all the parts they would need!
We were told that we should expect a call back before middle of the day Wednesday and if we hadn’t heard from them by then, feel free to call. That’s when things started to turn. On Tuesday, the Advisor (we’ll call him “Greg” because that is his name) called asking more about the dishwasher part. It appeared to be the right part (although they had yet to pull the dishwasher to really check) but they couldn’t understand how I had gotten it. I told them their own customer service got it to me. Then I was informed that since it is warranty work, only a certified technician can work on the dishwasher. They would have to see about getting someone out to look at it. So, they knew for three months I was coming in about this, they knew I had the part since it was on the work order, but they were only now figuring out how to fix it?
And so it would go. Each day, Greg would promise to call back and never did. Each afternoon, we would call, get his voicemail and never get a return call. On Thursday we were finally able to talk with Greg and basically found out there was no step, they were still working on finding an appliance guy to come in an oh, they had to order a new front grill because the original one was too damaged to repair. How long would all that take – have no idea!!!
This is evidently what it is like to try to get an RV repaired. If the work can be done without needing parts, then they may get it fixed somewhere near the time they promised but they won’t keep you informed and you’ll just have to drift along and wonder. If a part is needed, they will drag their time ordering it and will not give you any ETA of when it will be in.
We met one man who had been sitting for 3-months waiting for some repairs since the parts weren’t in. Another had driven back and forth to the service center 3 times (that’s a total of 3,600 miles for him) to get the same work redone.
As Friday neared, we escalated our concerns to customer service as well as driving back out to the service center to meet in person with the tech working on the rig. The complaints got Greg’s attention because he called us mid-day to review everything with us in detail. For the first time we found out:
- Most items on the list had been completed (but he couldn’t tell me details on what was found, how it was fixed, where were the leaks, etc. – thus our visit with the tech that we had to initiate).
- The grill still had to be replaced, no ETA on that one
- The steps could not be repaired (they only figured this out Friday morning) and a new one was on back order (and they hadn’t even bothered ordering it yet)
- A dishwasher tech “might” get to them the following Friday.
At this point, we had already decided we’d stay one more week and start also working on other options because we were damned if we were going to stay in no-where Indiana more than 2 weeks. We had to get out of the house we were renting so we put Adele in a local kennel, stayed in the coach Saturday night, and found another house to rent starting Sunday.
Oh, you ask, why didn’t you go back into the first house you were in. Well, let’s just say it was sub-par. We’ve lived in “transitional neighborhoods” before but this area had not started the transition yet. We were in a 100+ year old home that had been semi-revived but was surrounded by seedy, run down houses and yards. It rained several nights which meant the basement sump pump would run and make lovely grinding and banging sounds every few moments. The bed was small and seemed to call back to the times when people slept on potato sacks filled with hay. The washer and dryer were in the basement and the steps leading down seemed to be original and it appear that railings are optional. Jill thought she heard gunshots a few times but we couldn’t be sure – probably just one of the old cars backfiring.
So yeah, we found us another place which we moved into on Sunday, August 15th. Seems much better and more to our liking. Granted, there’s not a lot to choose from in Fort Wayne between VRBO and Airbnb.
Today, Monday, August 16th, we found out the grill replacement wouldn’t be in to the following week. How convenient since we are leaving on Saturday! So, now we are just hoping the appliance guy can get to us on Friday (anyone want to put a wager on that one?). We are already working on some other options to get a replacement step ordered and installed when we are back in Atlanta. In the mean time, looks like we’ll need a step ladder.
Dan didn’t have it in him to take a picture of the damaged steps before they were removed but below is a pick of what it looks like with no steps (note the steps borrowed from the shop) and also what we’ve got on order from Amazon as a potential interim solution.
Lola with manual steps 
Our solution
So, that’s our big news for now. If all goes well (wouldn’t that be nice), we’ll be on our way back south on Saturday, stopping in Kentucky, Virginia, and South Carolina before arriving back in Atlanta on Sept 5th.