And so it begins......

Well we finally hit the road but not without a few mishaps along the way. I am sure that will be a repeated theme as time goes on……

We got the rear levelers replaced on Wednesday and decided to leave the next morning. We started breaking down everything around 8:00 a.m. Now remember, neither Sean nor I have ever broken down or set up this rig (or any other fifth wheel) OR put it on a hitch or moved it anywhere so this is a big job. I knew a lot of things since I have lived in it for almost a year and Sean has become an RV Utube expert.  He also created a checklist, which will be a work in progress for a long time to come. But eventually we got everything ready to go and Sean got the new hitch on the RV and we were ready to raise the front levelers as the last task before we leave. Well, these haven’t been touched in almost a year and one was frozen solid. After 20 minutes Sean got it unstuck and we were ready to go to Discount Tires but we were about 30 minutes late.  We called and let them know and they said they would fit us in as soon as possible.  So now we are ready to only drive about 15 minutes down the freeway but Sean has never pulled anything other then the tent trailer we had when the kids were small. Somehow pulling a 15,000 lb, 39 foot fifth wheel is slightly different.  So off we went…me silently praying and Sean handling it perfectly.  We got to Discount and they had us wait off to the side while they finished another truck/trailer before us. Let me just put in a plug for Discount Tire here. They were the most courteous, polite and helpful group of people that you could ask for! You couldn’t ask for a better company to get your tires from.

By the time we got to Discount Tire it had to be 100 degrees and 75% humidity. Sean and I were soaked and exhausted. We were more then thankful to go into their nice air-conditioned lounge and drink copious bottles of water. It took the crew about 1.5 hours in that heat, laying on hot asphalt to put on the new tires and install the tire pressure monitoring system on the Chevy. They didn’t charge us a penny to install the monitoring system on the Chevy and they did have to remove the tires to do so. They also had the best price on the tires by far over any other store I checked. By the time they were almost done and were putting the spare on the jack under the rig, the manager called Sean over and told him the spare tire jack was bent and they couldn’t get the tire on it. He said it looked as if someone had hit something very hard and bent it. I am starting to see a theme here….bent rear levelers, bent tire jack….hmmmm. I haven’t moved this RV once but I know who did and I will be giving him a call soon! I had the rig inspected before I bought it and hired a guy to move it from the coast where we brought it to Sean Jr.’s house and from there to Texas.  He knew I would not be moving it for about a year and I think he decided to just not tell me anything about what happened on the trip to Texas. I’ll update you on that issue after I get a hold of him.

Anyway, we had them throw the spare in the back of the truck and off we went. Again, my husband handling the driving and me with the silent prayers but he seemed to handle this huge rig really well but I could sense his apprehension. Within about 20 miles we hit bumper-to-bumper traffic. I was silently sweating bullets but Sean seemed fine. We eventually broke out of the horrible traffic problems and made our way to Sanger.  Now, for those of you know Sean really well, he did not cuss or yell once. That in it self is a miracle!

Once again we were parked and ready to begin a process we had never yet experienced. Setting up the rig to sleep in. We took our time and eventually got it all accomplished. It was still probably 95 degrees but maybe only 50% humidity but we were still very, very hot! We cranked the AC and decided to take a few cold ones to the pool. Let me tell you, beer and the pool never felt so good!  We had done it! Our first night in our rig after our first day on the road….and we were still alive!

 

We set our alarms to wake up by 6:00 a.m. so we could get our morning walk in and breakfast before our instructor arrived at 9:00 a.m. He went over the process of taking down everything and hooking up. Even though we had successfully accomplished this task yesterday, we still had many questions. Then from there we went to our driving lessons. We spent a while doing right turns, then left turns, then we spent a better part of the day backing into RV spots here at our park. Sean did a great job but I know we were both very tired by the end of the day. Our instructor, Art, took us back to our site where we then went over the whole process of hooking up again. He gave us many tips and suggestions. This whole big rig lesson idea has been money well spent! Tomorrow we will continue on the backing up and parking and then we will go to a high school parking lot and practice many other scenarios. We have decided after the day ends at 1:00 p.m. with our instructor to just continue on and get a few hundred miles under our belt before we end our day. We hope to get past Oklahoma City. We don’t want to get hit with any of their tornado weather and a storm is set to come in.  More in a few days!