Bang

May 30 2024 – Day 76

Lake Manawa State Park, Council Bluffs, IA

We woke up in the morning ready to get the chip in the windshield taken care of. Around 8:15 we started to get ready to leave camp. We had a 9AM appointment and it was on the other side of Council Bluffs, IA. Paul started up the RV and it was running rough. BANG…BANG. Paul shut if off. He crawled under to see if anything had broken or exploded but everything looked ok. He started it again and it was fine. We drove to the glass shop. The revs dropped at a traffic light. He put it in neutral and it wouldn’t rev up. The light turned green and he drove it uneventfully to the glass shop.

Glass shops have ladders!

We left the shop, went down the street to a Family Dollar parking lot. It felt a bit sketchy part of town. The plan was, well, there was no plan. Susan realized that our campground had a 3pm checkout time. Lacking anywhere else to go we returned to our site and made lunch. While eating we considered our options. We could leave but it was getting a bit late in the day for that. And where would we stay if we did go? Or we could try to book another site where we already were. We chose that option.

(susan here: Funny thing is when I was first putting this trip together the plan was for staying here for 5 or 6 days to explore Omaha. We altered our plans significantly before we left and took this off the table. We hadn’t planned on traveling this path. But that’s the thing about RV life. Be prepared for your plans to go sideways.)

So the night’s lodging has been figured out and we were left to consider what to do next. Continue on and maybe get stranded in the middle of nowhere Iowa? Or try to find some place “nearby” to look at it and possibly work on the engine. We chose to try to have someone look at it. Paul spent hours calling various Ford dealerships that were listed on the fordpro.com website that deal with big rigs trying to get an appointment. After a lot of effort he found a place 120 miles east and on June 12th. (Hey Ford in Lincoln Nebraska, we’re still waiting for that callback!)

Our Facebook group mentioned that our “towing” service, CoachNet, was more than a towing service and they could assist in finding a garage! So Paul called them, spoke with several people, and the technician found us a garage we could get into that day!

For the second time today we pulled up stakes and drove the 15 minutes to the shop. We left the Jeep to “guard” the campsite, which actually isn’t that strange a thing to do. We’ve booked the site, but a person walking in might miss that and setup camp there. Then we have to get them to leave. (susan here: It’s RV version of lawn chairs in parking spots in Boston after a snowstorm.)

We rolled in and parked where they told us to park. Awesome, the bays were full but there only 2 trucks ahead of us.

Paul spoke with the service manager, and he was immediately disappointed, and the service manager was deeply apologetic. They were a big diesel shop only. Our CoachNet service had let us down. We got back to our campsite, setup again, called CoachNet who apologized and did…nothing. Hours later they called again and asked about us, their notes were confused. We explained we were still in limbo. They responded that someone would look into it in the AM and they’d get back to us.

After a big rainstorm we were treated to this lovely rainbow.