Absolutely Awful

I started writing this on Monday, which was a terrible day. Honestly, the whole trip had been a bit of a disaster. It began with us racing south daily over just awful highway roads. Long drives are never fun and aren’t good for my back.

We’re supposed to trade in our motorhome in June, and the deal was set assuming no tariffs. At that time we were in the midst of having the exterior fixed up for $3,000 (all prices in Canadian dollars). On our first night, we found out the hard way that our house batteries were now pretty worthless. The fridge stopped working and the RV felt like a freezer the next morning. We bought two new batteries and later added another ($860). If we were keeping the RV, we’d have gone for lithium but that would have cost quite a bit more and we would have to make a number of other electrical changes which would also increase the cost. Thanks to Trump and his tariffs our new motorhome purchase is in limbo.

A massive storm forced us to hunker down in a Cabela’s parking lot for three nights. When we finally moved on, Mike discovered that no sewage came out of our black water tank when we tried to empty it after a full week of use – potentially a nightmare scenario. I pictured all our sewage running around below our floor tiles. It wasn’t in the tank and it wasn’t on the ground. YUCH. We tried a couple of RV dealers, ending up at Camping World, where we paid to have them to look at the RV and tell us that to just get to the black tank for the initial analysis would cost over $2,000 in labour. They said that the cost to replace the tank would be at least $15,000. Customer support warned that if it needed replacing it would usually take months, but since we lived in the RV, they promised to “rush” it. Oh, great.

To make matters worse, during their initial testing, our bedroom was flooded with fresh water when the mechanics tried flushing the tank from the outside. What they didn’t know (because we didn’t tell them) was that the exterior flush had NEVER worked. The dealership did their best, bringing in a vacuum cleaner to soak up the water. Even after that, the carpet was still too damp to stand on for the next few days. This made getting in and out of bed very unpleasant. Once we got to the campground, we discovered that all our laundry soaps were ruined, and it took two days to figure out if we could dry out the TV remote control enough for it to work.

After about two hours of Mike and the mechanic working together, they found a much better possible solution that didn’t require removing the tank. Even though it appeared the tank was empty from above, the mechanic felt that it probably wasn’t. They were thinking/hoping that the tank was actually full but that the outlet was blocked. I still didn’t understand how, after a full week, we wouldn’t be able to tell if it was full. A remedy plan evolved. The plan was to sell us some solution designed to dissolve the blockage. We’ll see how it works in a few days. $600 later, and still unsure of what will happen with the tank, we headed to the campground. This was the destination we had been aiming for to “start” our trip.

When we arrived, we were greeted by a swarms of tiny bugs, small enough to fly through our screens. It was awful. We were definitely not in a good mood. As usual, Mike hooked up the RV to the electricity, and I pushed the button to open the slides. NOTHING HAPPENED. The slides had worked that morning but now nothing! At this point, this entire trip felt like it was cursed. Mike and I were both exhausted. I suspected the issue with the slides was likely related to the RV dealership’s water leak over a fuse panel in the bedroom. Mike wasn’t convinced. We did a quick emergency diagnosis, but didn’t get anywhere. And we still couldn’t empty the black water tank. We just gave up. For the first time in 12 years, we slept with the slides tucked in. This meant Mike, at six feet tall, was too long for the bed which is 10 inches shorter with the slides closed. He spent the night kicking cabinets and dreading having to crawl over me every time he needed to get up. Not a great night.

The next morning, Mike spent hours troubleshooting, only to realize all of his multi-meters were still in Canada (he owns 3 of them). Off to Home Depot we went, to buy his fourth multi-meter. The verdict? The motor powering the hydraulic slides and levellers was dead (we think). After hours of talking to the motor manufacturer and the maker of our RV we finally got a model number for the motor. We had no choice but to order a new one delivered for $1,200 and hope for the best.
Meanwhile, the black water tank nightmare still loomed. I was still picturing a week’s worth of sewage sloshing around beneath my feet. Following the dealership’s instructions with the solution designed to dissolve the blockage got us nowhere. After wasting hours, Mike had a eureka moment and figured out his own back-flushing method – and miraculously, it worked. The tank wasn’t cracked. No sewage lurked under the floors. We narrowly avoided a $15,000 disaster. For the first time in days, we had a victory.

As I write this on Saturday night, we’re anxiously waiting for the slide-out motor to arrive on Monday. I swear, this RV knows it’s being replaced and is taking its revenge. We’ve never had a trip like this before. At least we’ve started biking the Natchez Trace Parkway. I’ll share that in another post. Assuming, of course, nothing else goes wrong.

Note: I believe that I created all the cartoon pictures in this post using ChatGPT given that we haven’t taken any photos yet. This was my first time trying this and it worked great.