Due to earlier mishaps, Tom finally arrives home somewhat upset. He looks around the garage and finds a jack. (We have a 5th wheel, remember). And we’re off to Lake Dallas to get our 5th Wheel. We arrive and the RV park isn’t but about 20 miles away. Well, Tom puts the jack on one side and then the other and finally decides it’s not big enough to jack the RV up. So we are off to find a Pep Boys to get a jack. (Remember this. This is a pivotal part of the story.)
We’re traveling down I-35 towards Denton and see a Pep Boys. We take the off ramp and come to the street where the Pep Boys is and it’s one-way coming towards us. So we take the first right and drive in and around a neighborhood looking for a street to come in behind the store and up by it. We find a street headed in the right direction. We come up over a hill…..dead end. So, we take a left, go in and around the neighborhood some more and finally end up on the street we had just turned off of. We came back and turned in to Calloway’s Nursery and go through their parking lot and into Pep Boys parking lot. Whew! We get parked, Tom walks to the door and they were closed three minutes earlier.
But never mind, there’s a mall across the street and a Sear’s. All is not lost. We go to Sears and find what we’re looking for. Okay, by this time we’re hungry, so we stop and eat. I keep telling Tom, “This is a learning experience. It’s all an adventure.”
Back to the Storage Lot and Tom jacks up this side, then jacks up the other side, and back and forth, back and forth. Finally, we get it up high enough the truck, with some groaning and crouching down under, gets under the RV and we quickly hook up and are ready to hit the road. So, we arrive at the RV park at 10:30. The gates closed at 10:00. Well, the park keeper was in an RV right by the gate and she came out and opened the gate for us. As Tom was walking back to the truck, she asked him if our front jacks weren’t too low. “No,” Tom said. “They’re supposed to be that way.”
Well we get to the lot. It’s on a slight angle with the lot across the street from where we’ll be backing in at an angle that when Tom began backing in, he could almost make it except for the car in the drive across the street was in the way. I kept asking him if he wanted me to go ask them to move their vehicle. The TV light was on there, so I figured they were still up. But NOOOOOOOOOO! So he backed in and pulled out and backed in and pulled out and back and forth and back and forth. Finally, he got the RV started in perfectly. Once again the car across the street was in the way. He got out of the truck, stood there and raised his arms up to the sky and said, “Get in the truck, we’re going home.” So we got in the truck, but I looked back and the door to that trailer was open and a woman’s head was poking out. I said, “Hold it. Hold it. There’s a lady there. I’m going to see if she’ll move her car.
I got out and went up to her. “Have you got a problem?” She asked. I answered, “Well, we’re having just a little problem with getting our RV backed all the way into the lot. You see, we can get it all the way in, but we’re going to have to take the front bumper of your car off.” “Oh, don’t do that,” she cried. “Well, we really don’t want to do that,” I assured her. So it was decided she would back her car back towards thier trailer and give us some room.
So, instead of backing it on back, Tom pulls the RV out on the street, and starts all over again. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Then the lady decides she’ll back up some more and give him some more room. She puts her auto into reverse and hits her accelerator and BAM, she slams into their trailer. About that time, their trailer door comes open and her husband sticks his head out the door and his eyes were as big as saucers. I saw all that happening in slow motion and I wanted to laugh right out loud, soooooo bad.
Finally, the trailer is backed in. Because of a few certain things we had to take into consideration, he had to pull it up and park it over a little further, but that was not a big ordeal. You see, first of all, the trees were too close, we couldn’t open two slides. If he had backed up too much further, he would have backed into the lake. We couldn’t put out our awning because unless we were very alert coming out the door of our RV, we would fall down a 4 foot embankment. We decided this lot was not made for a 36 foot RV. The bedroom stuck out over the street. Nowhere to put the truck, Tom pulls in by the trailer on the grass.
Now, it’s time to hook up. The water hook-up first. Oh, we don’t have a water hose. Oh well, it’s 11:00. Who needs water. We know where the electric cord is. We go to hook it up. We have a 50 amp. They have 30. We have no adapter. Oh well, it’s 11:00, we have enough battery juice to slide the bedroom out and enough light to get to bed. We left the front room slides in.
We went on to bed. It was dead quiet and I said, “Sooooo, what have we learned tonight?” Dead silence. Pretty soon I heard, through what sounded like gritted teeth, “Lola, I love you.” Dead silence. I smiled a little smile and knew I’d said enough and went off to sleep on the board the dealership calls a mattress.
Next morning, we’re up and going again. Tom stopped at the keeper’s guard house and asked them about an adapter and while they didn’t talk like they had one, they quickly chastised him for parking on the grass. Anyway, Tom went to Camper World and got a hose and an adapter. I went to teach my yoga class. When we got back to the RV Tom went to hook up the electric and someone from the park had come and put an adapter on for us. Oh well, we never know when we’ll need it. On to the water hook up. Well, I had gotten a starter box for the RV with a coupon we got and in it, guess what I found, a water hose. Oh well, never know when we’ll need another hose. We bought a water regulator and we had one of those in the starter box. We also found an electric adapter. Oh well, extras are nice.
Well, the rest of the weekend went rather smoothly, comparatively speaking. We couldn’t get the TV antenna working so we just watched movies. Who goes RVing on a weekend to watch TV? Come Sunday we’re getting ready to leave. The unhooking and all goes well. We’re about ready to jack first one side then the other and Tom opens a door on the side of the RV and guess what he finds? A switch. One direction says “Extend”. The other direction says “Retract”. THERE’S A SWITCH FOR THE FRONT JACKS. Needless to say, I had a great laugh, right out loud.
Submitted by Lola McClane of Lawrence, KS/Phoenix, AZ as a part of the RV Centennial Celebration “Share Your Favorite RV Memory” contest.
Do you have a favorite RVing or camping memory you’d like to share? Submit your favorite memory here!