Day 23 - Again

Yesterday....  On Friday from Chicago we arranged for a Monday Afternoon repair of our three warranty issues with our trailer.   The RV place was very accommodating.   Our slide out issue turned out to be pretty minor.  The loud groaning wasn't the motor but the rubber surrounding the slide out.  It was a lubricant issue and they told us how to fix it, so Martha and I took care of that.   The door lock which was disintegrating (two locks, one had fallen out on the road and the other was nearly unusable) had to be replaced completely.   They took measurements on it and ordered a new one, it would arrive Tuesday early.   The refrigerator quit working and that required a refrigeration person to come out and look at it.  He couldn't arrive until Tuesday early afternoon.   So with the promise to have everything done by 3pm on Tuesday we got a motel room and decided to keep our RV Park reservation for Tuesday night and make the five hour trip to Cleveland after picking up the trailer.  That would get us to the park by 8 and still daylight.   So we now have until three on Tuesday to ourselves.

This picture is from Monday on the way to the RV repair place in Elkhart.  I wanted to get a better picture of this castle appearing factory, but noticed the height of the underpass.  Our trailer is 12'6" and we have to be aware of height issues.  I was warned to be especially careful when we get to Pennsylvania.

So with our Tuesday morning free time we took the 20 mile drive to Notre Dame.   WOW! What a campus that is!   Beautiful, beautiful.   We checked out of our motel at 8am. (The trailer being in the shop)  and had bagels and coffee (not Starbucks) on the Notre Dame campus.   Then spent a couple hours walking the grounds.  What a place to go to school.

The Cathedral was unbelievable.....  This picture does not do it justice at all.

Every building is just incredible.  

The grounds immaculate.   

The stadium was closed off.   The white square in the center is actually the field, the reflecting sun caused the loss of green on the field.   This is the chute the players run down to enter the stadium.

Today was actually the first day of class and at the top of the hour the grounds filled with students.

After a few hours at Notre Dame, we headed into Michigan.  We took an hours drive through the countryside and a few small towns.

After leaving Michigan we returned to Indiana.  Goshen, Indiana near Elkhart.  We had arranged for a tour of the Keystone factory.   Our trailer was actually built right here before its journey to Arizona where we bought it.  Amazing place, the hour and a half tour was nearly private, only one other couple, and amazing.   Keystone Montana and Keystone Cougar are the number one selling fifth wheels in America.   They are really well built.   Montana is and upgrade from our Cougar.  Getting to see the newest ideas for 2017 and a unit that is the first one of a new model being built was cool.   Great new ideas put into action.  Makes a person wish that they had waited to buy.

This location puts out 17 completed units a day.

 

We got back to Elkhart late, at 4pm to discover that they had received the wrong door unit.  So that issue was not taken care of and when the refrigeration guy showed up, the trailer had not been plugged in to electricity so he said he could not do anything unless the trailer had been plugged in for 12 hours prior.   So that issue was not taken care of.  Why he didn't tell the RV people to be sure it was plugged in to power prior to his arrival I can not guess.  So they wanted to keep it another day.   We decided we would deal with those issues another time, hopefully in Buffalo, and head out to Cleveland anyway.   It was now 4:30 and that meant arriving at the next park in the dark.  If you have ever tried to find a camp location in the dark, well, it was a hassle for sure.  We were able to have the RV place do a couple of other things to the trailer while they had it.  We added three roof vent covers that will allow us to keep them open during transit and bad weather.   Also the rough roads jerked the truck around quite a bit and I knew that couldn't be good for the transmission.   So we added a hitch gismo that absorbs the shock and makes a smoother ride and much easier on the truck.   It was expensive, but worth it.  What a big difference it made as we discovered during our trip to Cleveland.  So we did accomplish a few things with our RV repair, just not all things.  Today, now Wednesday, we are hanging out at our Cleveland park, Round Up Lake.   My family, all seven of us,  lived in a cabin here for six months while a home parents had bought was being completed.   That was 60 years ago.   I was seven years old.    Among just exploring the grounds we are going to call a place in Buffalo to arrange for the additional repairs next Monday.   Hopefully that will get accomplished.  I will be giving them exact door lock specs, and informing them that the unit needs to be plugged in prior to the arrival of a refrigeration guy.  Live and learn.  These issues are not upsetting as they were expected.  We have an ice chest and we don't keep much food in the trailer anyway so no big deal.  It will eventually get done, hopefully before the lock falls apart completely.