Wow this podcast is really growing in popularity. On September 5th 2019 we arrived at sleeping Bear dunes national Park. At first we were confused about the actual hike over the dunes. The information on the websites was confusing. But if you don’t think about it too much basically you pulling into the parking lot and walking over the sand dunes to lake Michigan. Now in New Jersey shore it takes about a minute to walk across the sand dunes. Here it’s two plus miles to lake Michigan. This Sand dune is definitely something to see and not an easy one to walk the first one plus miles it’s uphill and sand and the rest of it is downhill and sand. You don’t get to see the lake until you’re almost off of the dune. When we arrived at lake Michigan after the hike we walked along the beaches and it was really beautiful. We found this hike to be tougher than what we expected. There’s four miles of hiking in sand plus any additional walking you do on the beach. We thought it felt like about an 8 Mile hike. The weather definitely takes its toll also. At points we were chilly and other points we were hot and it’s still other places we were really cold. It all depended on elevation wind and sun. After we were done we drove over to empire bluff trail. It was pretty in a much shorter walk. Although there are some stairs and a small hill. The next day we went to Frankfort. Which is a nice lakeside town. We kept having to remind ourselves this is not a seaside town. Remember lake Michigan is unsalted. Lol. We rode the bike for a while on the path to other towns. We saw two jetties protecting the harbor there was a lighthouse out on the end of one of the jetties and the tops of the jetties were paved. I decided I wanted to walk out there even though it was windy and chilly and to get some pictures. I was walking out the jetty I got three quarters of the way to the lighthouse and a wave came and soaked me and my Canon camera. When we got back to the rig I took out the battery and the memory card and left to cover open. I took the lens off and left that open. I left it that way overnight the camera all dried out and worked fine the next day. We then headed south on Michigan’s West Coast we drove past Manistee it looked cute so we parked the rig and we walked the Riverwalk following the Manistee river. There were nice restaurants, shops and bars and also a casino with free parking. It turns out they have a Christmas parade and we saved it on our Google maps and will revisit it in the future. We then drove to our next boondockers welcome location. We met our host was in really nice guy. We hopped in our toad and drove to fennville Valley vineyard. They had a lot of excellent wines we bought a few bottles also got a t-shirt. We then went to the saugatuck brewing company you got a flight of beers and played shuffleboard on their tabletops. We then played bumper pool which we had never played before we were trying to read the instructions when a young mom and her son approached us and taught us how to play. That was a lot of fun. The next day we went to douglas. It’s a small town with a lot of expensive shops. And he also had an accessible kayak put in which was really cool. This town is on the Kalamazoo lake. We passed by Holland that had an amusement park but didn’t visit it. The next day we packed up and finally arrived at 4:00 we arrived there September 8th. I went through the rig I unscrewed the L brackets and beams that were holding the slide in.

our appointment was September 9th we set the alarm for 6:15 a.m. the service manager arrived at our rig at 7:05 a.m. which was a lot earlier than the year previous. I talked about that visit in episode 12. This time Jim met us right away he reminded us that the repair will not be covered under a factory warranty. Which we already knew. We gave him a list of things that we wanted to be addressed the bedroom door wasn’t sliding as it had fallen off the track, we had bent our ladder pulling in to a site so we wanted that replaced. One of our basement compartments were leaking water when it rained and I wanted a new antenna up on the roof. But I told him our priority is getting the slide fixed. Jim asked if I had an extended warranty and I told him absolutely not we got rid of Good Sam because their coverage was terrible. I talk about that in episode 12 also. Here’s a link to that episode https://relaxrv.org/2018/10/22/relax-rv-podcast-episode-12/

They took a rig into the shop and we went for a ride in the toad. At 10:00 a.m. Jen and Jim cold with bad news. She explained that at least one of our motor mechanisms were shot they cost between the part and labor about $1,000 each side each slide takes two. I explained to them that if only one mechanism is bad I expect only pay for one mechanism and not the two of them. She said they may have one left over from another repair but that’s not how they typically sell mechanisms. I said well then how come you have one left over from another repair? smh. We got to the rig that afternoon. Thor only keeps the rigs in the shop till around 3:00 in the afternoon and you can stay in the rig in the parking lot overnight with their hookups. When we got to the rig we saw a note by the slide switch don’t bring slide all the way out. They didn’t mention this to us when we’re on the phone with them. So that afternoon we brought the slide halfway out which gave us a little bit of leg room. The next morning I asked about a price for the ladder and antenna the ladder was going to be $500 including labor. Ouch. And the antenna was $15 they said that they did find one mechanism and being we only had one bad they would replace that. Jim had fixed the bedroom door from sliding. He also changed the gasket in our basement bin and explained that I had too much weight in that plastic bin. Now remember this is not a diesel pusher with metal basements. This bin is where I kept my tools stored and the weight of it was pulling the bin off of the mounts at the top of it. So I reconfigured my tools storage to get some of that weight out of there. I carry a lot of tools in our rig as we travel. And I’m really glad I do. To mount the L brackets for the slide and to cut the 2×4 to hold the slide in, to mount the d-ring for when the door lock broke, a chisel which I used to get the old lock off of the door etc. I like having tools handy. The next day all the work was done. It cost us $1,586. We felt that with Thor only charging us and doing one mechanism that they did us a huge favor and saved us a lot of money. He thought that perhaps Thor’s service has improved over our previous visit in episode 12.