Displaced From Our Trailer

After leaving Asheville, NC, it was finally time to go get our trailer serviced. We headed east to Trailers of the East Coast. This would be our first time not living in our trailer since we started, well, living in our trailer. I worked really hard to make sure the transition was smooth for both us and the animals.

When you're displaced from your home-on-wheels, you can look at it one of two ways. 1. You can be stressed and upset that you're leaving your home, or 2. You can use it as an opportunity to go stay somewhere really nice. No matter what, things will get stressful. It's not like packing for a vacation. When you vacation from your home, you will still have power, so you can leave food in your fridge. Unless you have a house sitter, people won't be going to your house, so you can keep your valuables there. Not the case for us when we're dropping our RV off. We needed to take all our food, make sure nothing valuable was out in the open, and ensure that the service techs could easily get to the places they needed to when making repairs.

Knowing that packing would be a lot of work, we didn't want to have a long travel day to the dealer. We only had about a 2.5 hour drive, mostly on the interstate. We also wanted to give ourselves plenty of time to unload our trailer, so we asked East Coast if we could drop it off on Sunday for its appointment Monday morning. This worked really well because we ended up needing two trips to get everything we needed out of the RV and safely into where we were staying. Not gonna lie, it was a lot of work. We do also have a desktop computer and 3 harps to deal with, along with everything else. Plus it was a really hot day. We were exhausted by the end of it, but so happy with our accommodations for the next few days.

Something we need to think about when booking accommodations is the level of pet-friendliness. Lots of places are dog-friendly, but we also have a cat. It's important to make sure cats are allowed as well. We narrowed our choices down to a hotel about 15 minutes away, or an Airbnb only 6 minutes away. We opted for the Airbnb, a guest house that was a beautifully renovated studio above the host's garage. The listing was pet-friendly with no other restrictions, but to this day we're still not sure if the host knew we had a dog and a cat, as when we arrived he mentioned our "pups." Hmm. Well, it's possible Lily was living undercover for a few days, but we were extra diligent about keeping her kitty areas clean. This was Lily's first time at an Airbnb, so it took her the first night to adjust, but soon she realized that it's just another adventure with more fascinating views.

Tanner, on the other hand, was his usual self, not caring where he is as long as he's with his humans.

Whether we choose a hotel or Airbnb, a kitchen is essential. We don't need a full kitchen, but we at least want a fridge to store all our food. A sink is also a big plus. This studio had a kitchenette with full-size fridge, sink, microwave, and toaster oven. We also took our Pizzazz pizza oven (non-Affiliate link) from our RV, because we had a frozen pizza waiting to be eaten. It also works wonders at heating up leftovers. We highly recommend it as a small appliance for an RV. We could write a whole blog post on how much we love our small appliances. Perhaps a topic for the future!

The Airbnb had a king-size bed, living and dining room areas, and a bathroom. (Imagine the weird feeling when I realized I hadn't showered in a non-RV shower in almost 3 months). The bathroom was downstairs which made for some interesting middle-of-the-night trips, but we made it work.

The hosts also have a huge yard with a hiking trail and a pool, which guests are allowed to use. We didn't partake in a swim but did enjoy the yard and trail.

The best part about the Airbnb, though, was that it was just so nice and peaceful. The hosts don't use their garage when they have guests, so we never had to worry about garage door noise when we were upstairs. Even though we didn't swim, the pool area had a fountain and koi pond, as well as some of the most beautiful cacti we've ever seen, blooming bright for springtime. If there was any place to help us unwind during the stress of our displacement, this was it.

We also had all the conveniences of Mocksville shopping and dining only a couple streets away, something that we never take for granted considering how many campgrounds are off the beaten path.

The plan was to book the Airbnb from Sunday to Wednesday, with our service appointment being Monday and Tuesday. That way, just like with the early drop-off, we have plenty of time to pack everything back in and make sure the rig is in good shape. We also purposely booked a short travel day of only a couple hours on Wednesday, allowing for extra time at the dealer, should we need it. We'd hoped to be able to go see the trailer Tuesday night after the service appointment was finished, bring a few things back, and do the rest in the morning. It almost went to plan!

Let's do a quick recap of the pressing issues we had for the service appointment.

• Top of our list was to figure out what the heck was going on with our water pump. The first pump never worked properly and eventually burned itself out. We got a replacement that also wasn't working properly, leading us to believe it's probably less of a pump issue and more of a water line issue. We were convinced there was some small leak or perforation happening in the water lines under the trailer where we couldn't easily see.
• Possibly related, when we were in Daytona we discovered that our fresh tank had sprung a small leak, right near the tank heater. From that point on, we kept our tank only 1/3 full, which lessened the pressure enough to not have too much leaking, but we needed to get it fixed pronto.
• Once upon a time, a well-meaning tech at East Coast installed our hitch wrong. This led to a domino effect of problems, some of which we fixed on our own or with the help of other RVers. One problem that remained was a very finicky hitch latch. In laymen's terms, when you hitch a trailer using a ball hitch, the coupler cups the ball, slides over it and then a latch locks it into place using a jaw mechanism. In order to get our latch to work, we needed to be very precise with our placement as the coupler lowered onto the ball, and sometimes the jaw wouldn't latch in properly. We learned that in order to ensure that the latch worked, we'd need to almost push on the ball as the coupler was lowered onto it. It's a whole big ball thing. Case in point, we ordered a new coupler under warranty and East Coast was going to install it for us, so we could go back to cupping the ball normally (yes I hear myself. Get your mind out of the gutter).
• Our ditch sitch back in October busted an electrical outlet cover on the side of our rig, so we were finally getting that replaced. We had been wrapping it in electrical tape for the past 7 months.
• Then we had our regular annual maintenance done, where basically the techs make sure everything is in working order, the wheels are aligned, etc.

It was so weird being back at Trailers of the East Coast. It brought back a lot of feelings of overwhelm, since the last time we were there, we were picking up the RV, towing for the first time, and our future was looming over us. Prepared as we were, we had no clue what we were getting ourselves into. Returning to the place it all started, we felt like different people. Buggy was our home, we know how to tow, and we have so much more confidence and comfort with our outlook on life, our future, and the decision we made. As we were getting ready to leave, one of the workers asked us if we needed help hitching up. After saying "No, we got it," we paused for a second and thought about how it wasn't too long ago that we did need help hitching, and how awesomely helpful everyone is at East Coast. We've never regretted getting our trailer there.

RV servicing is always a challenge, even at the best dealerships and mechanics. Things don't always go to plan. On Tuesday evening when we got the call that everything was finished, we ventured over to take a look. Sure enough, everything that we knew needed fixing, was fixed! It almost felt too good to be true, and it was. The following day, we checked out of the Airbnb, returned to Buggy, and packed all our stuff back in. Right as we were about to hitch up to leave, I quickly used the bathroom, and that's when I discovered...our water pump was acting up AGAIN. My heart sank.

So there we were, in the parking lot of East Coast, hoping the techs could figure out what was going on. Why did it seem fixed the day before but was now giving us problems again?! When we spoke to them on the phone, they said that they believed the water pump wasn't getting the adequate pressure needed to work properly, due to the leak in the fresh water tank. Turns out when we ran the tank heater back in the winter, there was an electrical short that burned a hole in the fresh tank. My guess is that's also when our first water pump died. It's concerning that we were having an electrical problem. I've said it before, but we never want to worry about anything pertaining to electric and water. We were still left questioning how it all tied together, since our water pumps were acting faulty even before we ever used our tank heater. But when we checked the pump on Tuesday night and it was working, we decided to stop questioning...

...until the next day. We spent a couple hours with the techs, as they worked to troubleshoot our pump. They did find air in the lines and purged it out. They believe whoever adjusted our pump the day prior did it wrong, and so over the course of that night, air started building up in the filter area. So is it possible that many issues are at play here? Of course. But do we fully trust it? No. All we know is that, when we left East Coast, our water pump was working. Now we will continue walking on eggshells every time we use our pump, wondering when it's going to act up again. We will also be a lot more closely monitoring our tank heaters the next time we need to use them, which won't be for a while.

Despite the small water pump hiccup, our service appointment went great. We highly recommend to anyone who needs to leave their RV for a bit, to give extra time on either side of your repair appointments. Overbook your hotel/Airbnb stay, don't expect to do a lot of driving on either side of your appointment, and most of all, treat it as an experience, where you get to spread out and enjoy the sticks-and-bricks life again for a little while.

Though we left East Coast later than expected, we still had plenty of daylight to make our way back west towards the mountains. It was time to continue our RVing adventure!