DAY #167
Woke up to light rain and got the trailer ready to hit the road. The plan today was to first go up to Augusta and stop at Camping World (Gander RV) to have the leaks checked, and then proceeding on to the next stop in the journey, Dreher Island State Park outside Chaplin, SC.
On the road by 8:30 and the trip up to Augusta took a little over an hour drive time. I noticed as I got closer to Augusta the terrain began to become more hilly, along with the foliage bursting with life (so green) it made for some nice vistas along the drive.
Pulled into the Gander RV lot by 9:30 am and they opened at 10:00 am. I was able to get the service advisor on it right away. That was a positive start and I thought this might be just like the experience with the water heater, in and out in just a couple of hours.
At around 1:30 pm having not heard from the advisor, I began to suspect that this wasn’t going to be a simple fix. Went in to the building and found the advisor, it seems that they were short technicians (out sick) and they had to get new deliveries ready before they could check my unit out, hence the delay…ARGH!!! A couple hours later, the advisor emailed informing me that they had looked at the unit and determined that the entire roof had to be resealed, that is what was causing the leak. What, no way I thought, the damn things not even a year old. And it just got better, not only did it need to be resealed, the warranty would not cover the cost.
After arguing the warrantability of the work required, and after the service advisor tried to contact Keystone (the manufacturer) and getting no response since the offices had already closed, and given it was Friday and Keystone could not be contacted until Monday at the earliest, I opted to have the work done and I would have to pay for it and see if I could get Keystone to cover the costs after the fact (good luck with that I thought).
The next concern was how long would it take, I didn’t really want to hang around Augusta for days waiting for the work to be completed. Fortunately, they could start the work today and it would be finished tomorrow. This meant only spending one night in Augusta, I could handle that.
The cost of doing this? $550.00 (major ouch), plus the cost of a motel room for the night. Not having much choice, I gave the go ahead and they reassured me it could be completed by tomorrow. I was being tested, big time.
I found a Motel 6 not far from RV Gander and proceeded to book it online. Getting there it looked pretty good on the outside, and the lobby and person working there impressed so I thought, this might not be too bad. I got up to the room and oh oh, things changed quickly. The room lacked a table/desk/chair to sit and the floors were of a cheap looking faux hardwood. The room looked out over the pool (which actually looked pretty good) but the window had a permanent haze to it. The walls and doors looked to have taken a few beatings in their lifetime, and while the bathroom was OK, I forgot my flip-flops and I wasn’t going to stand in the tub barefoot to take a shower, I didn’t want to take any souvenirs from my stay here (like fungal infection). The bed looked alright and the TV was the highlight of the room. Of course, soon after I laid down on the bed, I began itching, was it bed bugs or just my imagination? luckily for me, it turned out just to be my imagination.
I must have been pretty bummed out because all I did was sleep, hell, I even slept through the whole night.
It was not one of my better days.
The Journey. 