We are camping at Oceanside RV Resort in Charleston, Oregon.
Yesterday, our Mesquite, Nevada neighbors, Galen and Sherry Carnicelli, rolled into the park in their new (for them) motorhome. It is (I believe) a 2018 Coachman Mirada that had only 12,000 miles on it when they purchased it in the Spring.
It is their first Class A motorhome.
We went on a short weekend “break-in” with them to Cedar City, Utah back in June. They were quite apprehensive about driving, leveling the unit in an RV park, and hooking up to utilities. They did fine.
They did not do fine when they began this trip to Oregon. About 30 miles out of Tonopah, on their second day, they experienced a flat tire on the passenger rear axle. When the AAA guy arrived, he pointed out that both of the tires on that side were ruined. The mobile repair took them about four hours. The blown tire also did some cosmetic damage to the rear skin of the motorhome and also tore up a fitting to their propane tank…which they were not aware of at the time. After the tire replacements, they drove about four hours to their next destination…with a leaky propane line! Wow, that could have been a disaster!
On their way over to Oceanside RV Resort to join us, they took a nasty GPS “shortcut” for fifteen miles through the woods, featuring narrow logging roads, steep hills, and narrow, windy stretches that scared the Hell out of them.
We had a nice Taco night with them upon their arrival. Galen mentioned that his rig seems to labor quite a bit going up hills (automatically shifting to low gears with high revs) and seemingly shifting into an engine brake situation (allowing no more than 40 mph) when he hits a downhill. He’s not too happy about this. I reminded him that I’d recommended a diesel engine to him, but he went ahead and bought the Ford V-10 anyway. Good luck with that.
Later in the evening, Galen came to my door and said he had a problem with his toilet…standing water (and poo)…it wouldn’t flush. We spent a half hour dumping his black and grey water, flushing his holding tanks, and so forth to no avail. Eventually, he used a length of water hose to punch open the blockage under his commode. It appears that the Missus was not flushing her business with sufficient water, and a large clog of dry toilet paper was blocking the chute into the holding tank.
Gee, it reminds me of some stupid things we’ve done over the years:
- Backing up over a large rock that tore up the back end of my rig
- Driving too close to the road shoulder, scraping my passenger side to the tune of mucho $$$
- Using blocks to level the coach, resulting in a cracked windshield
- Driving away from the utility pedestal with my electrical line still attached to the rig
- Leaving a park, while towing my car, with the Jeep’s parking brake engaged
- Breaking my passenger side rear view mirror by nudging a telephone pole within an RV park
- Breaking another guy’s mirror while parking my rig in a tight RV park
- Not addressing my leaky air bag problem until after it had caused damage to other parts of the rig
We’ve also had our share of adventures (i.e. just bad luck), like the drenching we took in Oregon one year when we had a roof leak while it rained for a week. We were also stuck for a week in the Avenue of the Giants (Hwy 101, N. Calif) when our dinette slide wouldn’t retract. And, then there was the $1,000 futuristic commode that did an absolutely shitty job until we replaced it with a $200 gravity flow toilet.
Our television experience has been rough, as well. We have a Dish satellite receiver which does a good job when it wants to. However, reception issues, tech issues, and hardware have given us fits over the years. I have spent scores of hours on the phone with Dish techs to the point that I should probably be eligible for a Dish pension or at least employee benefits.
The newbies (the Carnicellis) have all of this to look forward to. They will be here at Oceanside RV Resort for the next week, then they will relocate to some other parks in this part of Oregon. We will see them again in Brookings at Driftwood RV Park beginning on August 10th, assuming that their rig (or ours!) doesn’t succumb to another malady.
RV’ing is not a job, it’s an adventure.