Harvest Hosts, Broken Camper, and a longer than expected “vacation”.

On Sunday, October 20th, we packed up to head south from Maine to Florida. With four Harvest Hosts stops, then a 5 night stay at a campground for our “vacation”, then one more Harvest Host before our final stop in Florida. That was the plan…

We packed up the camper and I took pictures of what it looks like when we are all packed up to go since someone had asked. Here are the pictures before the slides are pulled in. That is not a bag of trash, it is a bag of clothes I need to donate. We do not take anything off the walls, and it is very rare that anything falls off, thank you command strips!

Once we put the slides in we noticed one slide (the slide with the dinning table and recliners) was coming in sideways… Brian took a look and found that the bar that brings the slide in was rusted and broken. Ok, this is something that we can fix when we get to Florida, but we cannot put it back out until then.

Our first stop was the Cog Railway in New Hampshire. It was beautiful! Full of fall colors, which normally I don’t care about, but mixed with the mountain views, it was beautiful! We did not ride the cog railway since we got there too late and the first one leaving in the morning was 9:00 and took three hours. We needed to get on the road. We did stop at the gift shop and museum that they have. We got breakfast and some souvenirs. The lot that we stayed the night in was not very level, but we made it work and got a good nights sleep.

The Cog Railway

Once we left New Hampshire, we went to stay at March Farm in Connecticut. This was more than a farm, it had a playground for kids, a pumpkin patch, apple picking, a petting zoo, and a store that they sell produce from their farm and some other items. For all you Gilmore Girls fans, the town of Woodbury is nearby March Farm and it is not far from Hartford! I am a big Gilmore Girls fan, so seeing the signs for these neighboring towns was exciting! We bought some great stuff at this farm store; apple cider (so good!), apple cider donuts, salsa, spiced peaches, raspberry vinaigrette dressing, vodka pasta sauce and locally made pasta!

March Farm

After we left March Farm, we went to New Jersey to stay at the Farmers Market. We stayed here on our way up to Maine in April and they were closed, so we had to go back to check it out and make our purchase! We bought fresh romaine lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini, colby cheese, mozzarella, ranch seasoning, dirt pudding, peach pie, and candied nuts. I of course had to purchase some barn yard feed to feed all the barnyard animals!

We left New Jersey and went to Megawash in Virginia. We got our truck and camper washed and we just sat in the truck. We try to wash the camper at least twice a year ourselves, but it’s nice to just pull up and have someone else do it for you! Only one picture from this location. It was nice and somewhat level. They had a 30amp electrical hookup that we used and were able to run our AC. It was around 80 degrees while we were here.

Megawash

Thursday, we left Virginia for South Carolina, our 5 night vacation at Pedro’s Campground, aka South of the Border. We got here and put our kitchen slide out, and it broke… It will not go back in. I immediately called Grand Design customer service and they asked a bunch of questions, and I said it will not go back in and we are only at this campground for 5 nights. They referred some RV Mobile Techs to come and give an estimate. We found one on our own and he was here within the hour. He got an estimate and all the part numbers and emailed Grand Design, so now we are just waiting on them to approve this and send the parts. We are pretty much stuck here until it is fixed. The RV Tech said there is nothing wrong with pushing the other slide out manually and we cannot break the kitchen slide anymore by using it as we normally do, so at least we are not sitting on lawn chairs in the tiny bit of space in front of the recliners. You should never sit or stand on your slide while it is pulled in, it can cause more damage than you think.

Pictures of the damaged kitchen slide. The first picture shows the the broken “shoe” stuck in the gears and the second one is from the inside, we should not see the gears from inside… This is the second time this slide has broken. It broke on our very first camping trip in April of 2022. It was in the shop for over 100 days, THE ENTIRE SUMMER.

We will keep you all updated on the progress of the repairs. In the mean time, we are trying to make the best of the situation.

~Happy Travels!