States & Provinces visited on this segment: Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming
Dates: Wednesday, August 29 to Thursday, August 30
Miles Driven: 824 (12,179 total to date)
Summary: Wednesday morning we said goodbye to my parents. They headed east, and we started the drive back home. We dropped down to I80 and started the long drive home. We are planning to take 5 days to go back home so we need to average about 400 miles a day. The scenery on Wednesday in Iowa was basically trucks on I80 with fields of corn in the background. Corn, corn, and then some more corn, with an occasional field of soybeans thrown in for variety. Then we entered Nebraska and it was more of the same – lots of trucks on I80 and more corn, corn, corn. We went ~430 miles on Wednesday, and stopped for the night at Fort Kearny State Recreation Area.
On Thursday we got up a little bit earlier and were almost ready to go by 9, which is early for us. One of the last things we do before leaving is to put in the slides on the trailer. When we went to put in the main slide, the front part started to go in and the back did not move. I crawled under the trailer to see what the problem was. The slide has two gear driven shafts that move it in and out. However, there is a single motor which directly drives the gear connected to the front shaft. The rear gear is driven by a rotating rod that connects to the front gear. I found that the bolt connecting the rod to the front gear had sheared off, causing the rod to not rotate when the front gear moved. I had a bolt in my tool box that was the correct size so I reconnected the rod and attempted again to put the slide in. This time I had Karen manually crank in the slide in so I could see if everything was working properly. Unfortunately, only the front part started moving in and the new bolt sheared off, just like the original bolt. I spent a bit more time trying to figure out the root cause of the problem before resorting to calling the technical assistance line at Holiday Rambler. It was a long and frustrating morning as I was put on hold multiple times, then told they would call me back in a few minutes (which apparently means they will call back in 30+ minutes), and so this continued with me providing the same description of the issue to multiple people over the next 3 hours. Finally they dispatched someone to come out. Once the guy was on site it took less than a half hour to get everything fixed so we could proceed on our way. I will give the guy who came out an “A”, and Holiday Rambler a “D-“. I wouldn’t have even bothered with then except the trailer is under warranty so if I didn’t work through them I probably would have had to pay the bill myself. We finally left the campground at about 1:40 PM. Despite the late start we still managed to drive ~390 miles, crossing the rest of Nebraska and making it ~100 miles into Wyoming, stopping for the night in Laramie as it was getting dark. When we drove through Cheyenne I stopped and bought a large adjustable wrench so I could manually turn the gears on the trailer slide if they ever get stuck again. Hopefully it will never happen again, but if it does I don’t want to lose 4 ½ hours getting someone out to fix it. I would hate to think how long it would have taken if we were in a more remote place.
The only bright side of the issue in Kearney (the town has two e’s in its name but the fort only one which was another source of confusion with Holiday Rambler that took up more time) is that Karen and the kids got some time to go see Fort Kearny. Originally we weren’t going to go to the fort as we didn’t want to get going too late. However, when it became apparent that we weren’t going anywhere quickly when dealing with Holiday Rambler I unhitched the truck and they drove the ~3 miles from the campground to the fort and spent the morning doing something fun. I don’t think they would have wanted to listen to me complain all morning about the poor service from HR tech support. The kids enjoyed looking at the exhibits and going through the recreated stockade. At least they had fun before being strapped in their seats for the rest of the day.
Photos (to be loaded soon): http://picasaweb.google.com/bryan.vacation/Part21drivehome1
Next up: The final 3 day drive to get home
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