Change of Plans – Heading Home

On August 15th we left Oroville, WA and headed for Spokane. A lot of smoke on our ride from the many forest fires going on in Washington. Our route took us right by the Grand Coulee Dam and it is an awe inspiring structure. The rest of our ride that day was through small towns and along the way we passed a couple of firefighter camps. What these firefighters are doing in the NW is unbelievable.

South of Grand Coulee - West of Spokane
So dry everyone is just waiting for heat lightening to start a fire

Some of these people fight fires for 24-30 hours straight and most days they fight fires at least for 18 hours per day. When we arrived at our RV park in Spokane we found that we had a dead battery in the Subaru so after we got settled it was off to get a new battery. The rest of the day was spent getting settled. We plan to stay here a week and we were looking forward to a couple of days of relaxing. 

We spent the next day watching the US Open golf tournament and taking it easy. At this park we were allowed to wash our RV so we spent one day doing that. It was pretty dirty so we spent most of the day washing the outside and wiping down the inside to get rid of all the dust and dirt from Alaska and Canada.

Our Black Pearl (the manufacturer's name for our coach color) looked really nice when we finished. As we drove around Alaska, we had noticed the coach leaning to one side. This happened after the panels in the water bin moved so much that we were afraid our water system would be sheared off by the pressure from the bin boards. We were not sure what caused this and the coach seemed to drive just fine. On the road the RV seemed normal. We couldn’t find anyone in Alaska to look at the problem so we made an appointment with a Berkshire dealer in Spokane. The dealer could not figure out what was wrong so he sent us to the local Freightliner dealer who informed us that their chassis was not the problem.

Compare the tilt on the RV to how level
the car on the left seems

They felt the body of the coach was the issue. Finding someone to figure out what the actual problem is was a lot more difficult than we expected. After many calls we finally found a repair shop in Phoenix who would deal with any issue we had. We picked Phoenix because we were heading that way on our trip so although it was a long ride it seemed to make sense.

After two days of checking the coach body this repair shop said the aluminum rails supporting the coach had cracked and in order to fix them they would have to take our RV apart and install new supports. This work would take up to two months to complete and cost a lot. Fortunately we have an extended warranty and it looks like this policy will pay for almost all the repairs needed.

We spent a week at an Extended Stay America Hotel in Phoenix while all this transpired. We toured some historic places downtown and went to a Diamondbacks game one night. But 110 degrees is too hot for us. So we spent a lot of time in the hotel waiting for information.

Odd to watch baseball in an air conditioned stadium-
but necessary in Phoenix

All this means that we will be heading home on September 1st in the Subaru and coming back to Phoenix some time after Thanksgiving to pick up the RV. We do miss out on the Balloon Festival in Alberquerque and spending some time around the Four Corners area but it does leave us something to do in the future. So we’ll be on the road this week and hope to get back to NC by Friday, September 4th. We'll keep everyone up to date on the goings on.

Thanks for following our blog and we’ll let everyone know when we get our coach back and we’re back on the road.