FOLLOW UP ON TRAILER WOES

Here's the update on the trailer woes:

Mr. W took the blow-out tire and the flat tire to the nearest Goodyear store in the Woodlands.  He got 2 of the new "G" load range tires.  The manager at the Goodyear store told him that Goodyear will pay us in full for the replacement tire for the blow-out tire (even though it is a bigger, more expensive tire) and he gave Mr. W an $86 credit toward the replacement of the flat tire.

Mr. W came back, put those 2 new tires on and then took off the other 2 tires, which once you took them off, you could see both had the belt separating on them, and took them to the same Goodyear store the next day and got the other 2 bigger load range tires.  He again received an $86 credit toward those tires.

I sent the paperwork into Goodyear that they require to pay on a damage claim.  One of the requirements was to send the blown out tire back to the Goodyear claims department in Ohio.  You were to do this through a Goodyear dealer.  The store in the Woodlands will do that.

One thing I found interesting is the manager at the Goodyear store was upset that Mr. W had gotten the insurance company involved.  Excuse me?  He told Mr. W that he should not have contacted the insurance company and that Goodyear would have paid for everything.  How was I suppose to know this?  Was it written on the Goodyear tire along with the size of tire and air pressure for the tire? "For blowouts with damage call 1-800-Goodyear?"  I'm sorry, but Goodyear is not the first person I thought to call when my trailer is damaged.  Now granted, Mr. W had planned on calling them to discuss these tires and what had happened.  But my insurance company is the one that said that Goodyear would probably pay our deductible if we would file a claim with them.  The insurance company is dealing with them on reimbursing them for the pay out on the damage but in the mean time, my 5W is getting fixed. So, if you have Goodyear tires on your RV and you have a blowout that causes damage, you CAN call Goodyear to report the damage, file a claim with them, send in the forms, pictures, and repair estimates and wait 4 to 6 weeks for them to review your claim and decide whether they are going to pay out on the claim. To some of you, it would be worth it to do that, to some it wouldn't.  Just sayin'........

I asked the claim adjuster if Goodyear reimburses them, would it not show up as a "ding" on our insurance next year.  He said that it would show up as a claim but it would show that there was "0" pay out and should not affect our rates.  If anyone reading this is in the insurance business, you can please let me know if that is true.

Let's move on to the next thing.

Mr. W had taken Woody (the 5W) to a RV repair place in Livingston, TX.  It is Joel West RV Supply and Repair.  Let me back up a minute.  Our Blackwood 5W is made by Redwood.  Redwood only made them during a period of 1 1/2 years.  Redwood use to have its own factory.  Now, all the Redwood products are made at the Crossroads factory. Crossroads/Redwood are owned by Thor.  Are you confused yet?  Mr. W had called the factory to see if we could bring it in for repair which they said no.  Texas now has a state law that says if you don't sell the brand of RV, you can't call and get parts from the factory.  You have to go through a dealer that does sell that product.  So, in other words, Joel West could only get parts to fix my trailer if they could get a dealer that sells Crossroads/Redwoods/Thor to order them from the factory, receive the parts and then ship the parts to them.  Guess what? They told us that they couldn't find a dealer willing to do that.  What? Do you not have any friends in the state of Texas????

SOOOOO, Mr. W gets on the phone, calls the factory again and talks with the guy who helped us with the broken shackle.  He gives Mr. W the name of a dealer and the name of the supplies manager and tells Mr. W to have Joel West call this dealer.  Joel West calls the dealer and presto..........the parts will be at Joel West next week sometime.  Hopefully, Woody will be repaired the first part of the following week.  If so, we will get to stay on schedule for our fall trips.

Also, Mr. W found where the leak was for the ice maker, was able to fix it, and now there are no more leaks.  He got under the 5W and examined the underbelly and everything seems to be OK with whatever happened under there from the leak.  You can tell that I don't know a lot of details about that.  I am taking his word for it.

Wednesday, my car, that had the crunched trunk should be repaired and ready for pick up.

New tires - check
Reimbursement for new tires - check
Goodyear claim - check
Parts and schedule for RV repair - check
Car repair - check
Ice maker repaired - check

 Life is becoming carefree again.  (Sigh!)

TRAILER WOES

Life is pretty simple living in your RV.  Mr. W and I have gone along for a little over a year with a pretty carefree existence.  So, I guess the moon and the planets or stars or whatever have decided to align themselves to make our carefree existence be not so carefree.

I had decided to leave my car in our storage spot at Marina Village while I went to the hill country. The storage area is secured with a card access gate.  The gate was being repaired when I got ready to leave.  Since I was only going to be gone for 5 days, I asked the guard if I could leave my car parked in the community center parking lot and not worry one of the park hosts by making him go the storage lot, interrupt the repairs, and physically opening the gate so I could get in. She said no problem. 

Saturday, while I was in the hill country, I get a call from the guard.  One of the park hosts had backed into my car with his tail gate down and crunched my trunk on my car.  Accidents happen.  No big deal.  He has insurance.  I'll take care of it when I get back the next day.

 

 

So, Sunday we head back to the Marina Village.  On our way back to the lake, we had to travel through Bryan/College Station.  We had stopped at a red light on Highway 30 and had just taken off when we heard a loud pop. I looked in the side mirror and saw a piece of tire rubber flying off.  Mr. W immediately pulled over but we had damage. Fortunately we were only going about 40mph.

Fortunately, we have Coach Net and in 108 degree heat, a roadside assistance guy came out, changed our tire and got us back on the road in about an hour and a half.  Thursday (the first available appointment), we had both insurance adjusters come out.  They actually got here around the same time.  Both guys wrote up estimates, found all the parts that they felt would be needed, gave us a copy, and sent the repair shops an emailed copy.

Evidently, things are done a lot differently these days with repairs than it was many years ago.  Both repair shops told us that we would have to make an appointment to bring the vehicle (car/trailer) in. A representative from the shop would have to inspect the damage, determine what parts to order, and THEN we could book an appointment to bring the vehicle back for the actual work to begin.  This appointment to have the vehicle looked at were each a week away because that was the first available appointment for this.  Each one of these initial visits lasted 5 minutes for the car and 15 minutes for the trailer.  I then booked an appointment to take the car in 10 days after the 5 minute appointment and because I live in the trailer, I won't be able to book the actual repair appointment for the trailer until they receive the parts from the manufacturer.  The guy told us that the earliest he would receive the parts from the manufacturer would be 2 weeks.  Geez!

Did I mention that the trailer repair place is in Livingston, TX?  Marina Village (the lake) is about 35/40 miles away.  Mr. W and I make the trip to Livingston and as we are pulling back into Marina Village, Mr. W notices that we are having ANOTHER flat on one of our tires.  He tries airing the tire up and can hear the leak.  He starts rubbing his hand around the tire to see if he can feel a nail or something and something cuts his finger.  It is the steel belt coming out of that tire.  It is lucky for us that we had not had another blow out!

I have Goodyear Marathon tires on our 5W.  It came from the factory with those tires.  They are load range E/10 ply tires.  They are less than 2 years old.  If you have an RV, especially a larger RV, I'm sure you have heard the horror stories about RV tires.  Almost all of the load range E and less RV tires are made in China.  Yes, even our Goodyear Marathons.  Hello??? Does anyone NOT see the problem here?

After the blowout, Mr. W had contacted Goodyear because the tires have a 6 year warranty.  We had heard that Goodyear was good about standing behind the tires.  They gave us a claim number and told us to send the tire back through a Goodyear dealer in our area.  Our insurance guy also told us that Goodyear would probably end up paying our deductible too.  We'll see.  Of course, now we are going to have to file another claim on another tire and send it back.  Mr. W has also decided to replace all 4 tires with the Goodyear load range G tires.  Just to give you an idea, the E tires are around $130 a tire.  The G tires are around $350 a tire.  Big difference.  I cannot believe that the insurance companies have not started putting pressure on the RV manufacturers and the tire companies to stop putting these cheap, obviously poorly made, Chinese tires on these RVs.  The insurance companies are paying out the yazoo to fix these things.  Of course, we are ultimately paying higher insurance rates because of the claims.  I'll get off my soap box now.

You would think that would be the end of this saga, but unfortunately, it's not.

Mr. W and I started noticing a small amount of water on the floor around the island.  I thought at first that it was from washing dishes, the floor mat holding water, etc.  Well, it's not.  Woody (our 5W) has a leak.  When Mr. W started investigating that, he crawled under the trailer and noticed the underbelly was drooping quite a bit.  This morning, he pushed on it and water came out.  Great.  We have an ice maker which I love.  But, the line to the ice maker comes out of the island through the sub-floor and floor and goes to the refrigerator.  This line is just a plastic tube and it is down where the slide goes in an out.  Mr. W thinks the tube got a hole in it from the slide.  Another repair.  Woody has a bumper-to-bumper 2 year warranty from the manufacturer.  That is up in November.  I did buy an extended warranty through another company but this needs to be fixed through warranty work.  I'm thinking my plans for the fall may be changing.  At least no one has been injured and the damage could have been a lot worse.

I'll let you know what happens with Goodyear.

TEXAS HILL COUNTRY

The Texas hill country is my absolute favorite part of Texas. It is located in the central part of Texas from San Antonio to a little north of Austin and a little east and west of both towns.  The hills there are pretty and rocky.  There aren't many trees but it does have a few.  You can see for miles.  I think whoever wrote the song, "The stars at night; Are big and bright; (clap, clap, clap. clap) deep in the heart of Texas," was sitting in the hill country when they wrote it.

This past week, Mr. W and I made a short trip to the hill country.  Mr. W has a cousin, Buddy, who lives right outside of Georgetown, TX (in the hill country) and Buddy has been after us to come to their house to visit and to also take a short trip together.  So, we arrived at Buddy's house last Tuesday, we spent the night, and we all left on Wednesday to go to a RV resort on Lake Buchanan to stay until Sunday.

Buddy and his wife, Stella, built a really nice house on 5 acres.  They also have a nice pool, a "shop" (which is big enough to park his 42 ft. toy hauler in), and recently he built a small house for his Mom and Dad to live in.  His driveway on this acreage is plenty big enough for us to pull in and he installed a plug so we can plug in when we get there.  It was nice to get there, get plugged in, cool off in the pool, AND Stella made dinner for us.  We were about ready to say the heck with Lake Buchanan, we want to stay at Camp Buddy!

We stayed at a place named Big Chief RV Resort.  Mr. W found out that the previous owners had filed bankruptcy 2 years ago and the present owners had just bought the place a year ago.  They have done a lot of "fixing up" the place, but there is still work to do.  I really can't say that I noticed that it needed a lot of work.  They have redone the pool and it is very nice.  They have 2 bathhouses that have 2 rooms in each.  Each is like its own private bathroom.  The toilet, sink, and shower are all in 1 room together.  The consensus was that they were nice and clean but they were hot because they did not have a/c in them.

They also have a sprinkler system in the ground, but according to one of the maintenance guys, it has not been run in years.  That is one of the things on their list.  The only big negative I saw was the millions and jillions of grass burrs!  You couldn't walk anywhere without getting your shoes covered in them and they got in your RV and if you towel fell off the drying rack, you guessed it.......They are trying to do something about them too. 

Central Texas has been suffering from drought for the past few years and several of the big lakes have been VERY low.  This place has a boat ramp and in years when the water is plenty, you can back your boat down the ramp.  This year, you had to drive down the boat ramp and around several bends to where the water was to launch but you could.  There are places on Lake Travis where you couldn't get to water if you tried.  So, I would recommend this place and would go back there any time.

Buddy had reserved our sites and they offer "buddy" sites (no pun intended) where 2 people camping together can pull in where your doors are facing each other.  That's what we did.  Most mornings and some evenings, we would let Buddy's garage down on his toy hauler and sit and drink coffee or talk and enjoy watching the lake and the sunset. 

Lake Buchanan

Buchanan Dam

However, by noon, we were looking for water to cool off.  In case I haven't told you this, it is HOT in Texas in August! When you are looking for a way to stay cool in Texas in August, look for a Texas waterhole.  We have lots of them and most are pretty places.

We first went to Inks Lake.  There is a state park at Inks Lake and if you ever get that way, that's a good state park to stay in.  They have water and electricity but no sewer.  They also have a swimming hole named Devil's Waterhole and it is nice!  You can float on tubes, you can float on floats, you can bring a boat in there, and you can jump off the rocks.

Me and Stella walking to Devil's Waterhole with our tubes.

Boy did the water feel good!

People jump off the rocks behind us into the water.  Usually the shore across from the rocks is full of people cheering on those brave enough to jump.

We managed to find a little cove with trees and shade where we could float and stay out of the sun.

The next day we decided to go to Colorado Bend State Park.  This is a relatively new state park and you can wilderness camp there.  But, they have a swimming hole named Spicewood Springs where you can go cool off.  None of us had ever been there, so we decided why not?  You do have to hike back to it and the hike is half a mile.  Now, half a mile isn't much, UNLESS it is 108 degrees and there is no shade or breeze.  By the time we reached it, we were about to melt and the water felt good.  It wasn't very big and it was really slippery but it was one of those rare places that not many people were there because not many people know about it.  One day the state plans to add regular camping to this state park.  I'm sure when that happens, this won't be a rare place anymore.

Along the road as you drive into the park

This is the entrance to the park.  I did the unpardonable. I did not check my battery life on my camera and it was dead. So, no pics of Spicewood Springs.

We decided to go to a place called Krause Springs.  You have to pay $7 pp to get in.  When we got there, there was no place to park.  That should have been our first clue.  We finally found a place to park and walked up to where you enter.  The line was really long and they had 3 people taking your money.  Mr. W asked if he could go check it out before we paid.  He did and we didn't go in.  He said there wasn't anywhere to float or move for that matter.  People were having to stand in the water to have a place in the water. This was on Saturday.  We should have gone there during the week.  Next time, we will know.

We spent one day just hanging out at the pool at the RV resort.  It was a nice pool, the water was nice and cool and it was close to our 5W.  So, when you got hungry or you needed a nap, you didn't have far to go.

Mr. W, Stella and Buddy

Buddy and Stella
Notice the Big Chief on the rocks

Stella, Buddy, and me

We had a great time and can't wait to go with Buddy and Stella again.  We ate and laughed and ate and swam and ate and slept and ate........ On second thought, maybe I need to diet for awhile before we go with them again!

A BUSY COUPLE OF WEEKS

I have had a busy couple of weeks!  Right after the first set of grandkids went home, we had a couple we know that wanted to come to Marina Village to check it out.  They just got a "new for them" 5W and wanted to take it somewhere.  So, they came that Friday and left Sunday.  We had a good time visiting and showing them around.

The next day, Monday, Daughter, SIL, Curly, and Popcorn came to stay with us for a few days.  SIL's job has kept him from coming to the lake with Daughter over the past several summers.  His new job allows him time off during the summer and they were all anxious to be here.

Curly learned to ride her bike with NO training wheels.  I must admit that she was a trooper and I was pretty proud of her.  On one of her first rides, she hit the ground with the bike on top of her leg and got a pretty good chunk of skin taken out.  There was also blood involved.  She got back on the bike and was ready to go again.  I'm not sure I would have done that.

There she goes!  Good job!
 

SIL tried to get Popcorn to try.  But she was having none of that!

So, training wheels are back on with them tilted up.  Shhh! Don't tell her!

Tuesday, Son and his family came up for the day.  The cousins were SO excited to see each other.

 

Nothing like a game of corn hole with all the family together.
 

These 2 will tell you that they are best cousins forever! I sure hope so.

 

Remember how I told you that Son and Daughter have always been competitive?  He skied and Daughter wasn't about to let him show her up, right?

Hold on!

OK, now she's got her balance.......

Now she's showing off!

On Wednesday, Bobbie, Daughter's friend from 5th grade, and her 3 kids came up for the day.  Bobbie moved in with us during their sophomore year in high school.  Two beautiful teenage girls living in our house could be sorta nightmarish on occasion.  Especially for Mr. W!  Bobbie started coming to the lake with us when the girls were in 5th grade, so this was like coming home for her.  She has 3 beautiful children.  Two girls and 1 boy.  They are probably some of the best mannered kids I have ever run across.  Bobbie's middle child, a girl, is almost the same age as Curly and Popcorn so they had a blast.  It was good for Daughter and Bobbie to catch up but I enjoyed catching up with her too.  She will always be my second daughter.  I took a picture of the 2 of them but it didn't turn out very flattering so I am restraining from posting the pic.  But, they are both still just as beautiful.

Bobbie's little man - He has the cutest dimples!

Her 2 girls!

Here they go!

Daughter teaching Bobbie's middle daughter to ride the knee board.

And there she goes! Woo Hoo!

Since Daughter is the master teacher of the knee board, she also had the honor of teaching Popcorn to ride the knee board.  Who knew that Popcorn would even want to ride the knee board!?!  This kid went from being scared to death of the water last year, to swimming and knee boarding this year.  She loved it and kept wanting to do it over and over.  I was very proud of her.

Getting some last minute instructions.

Keep the nose up!

She already had the hang of it.

Daughter and family left on Thursday.  Friday, we went to town to spend the evening with some of our very best friends, Doug and Debbie.  They had invited us to their house for dinner and an evening of playing cards.  It is too far of a drive late at night, so we spent the night.  Of course, every time we are together, we laugh and laugh and have a great time.  If there is one thing that I don't like about this lifestyle, it is not getting near enough time to spend with my friends.  So, I'm taking advantage as much as I can.  Oh, and Popcorn gave me and Mr. W her cold before she left.  Sweet, huh?  She didn't mean to. :)  So, I have not been up to snuff for the past couple of days.  I am leaving tomorrow to go to Lake Buchanan in the beautiful Texas hill country. Whew! I need down time!