We arrived last Thursday at Tiffin's Allegro Campground after a short drive from Tom Sawyer RV Park in Memphis. Since they were pretty busy, we only got a spot on the "runway" -- which really is an old airport runway, and is used for campground overflow, i.e boondocking -- camping with no electricity, sewer, or water hook-ups.
Fortunately for us, things moved quickly and late in the day we were assigned a site with power and water, while awaiting a full hookup site. Friday, with many folks leaving after their service was complete, saw us move into full service site 39 (which will be our site until we leave), and the wait started for us to get in for service -- our appointment wasn't until Wednesday, the 8th, but we thought there might be a chance of getting in early.
While we were waiting, we had Chris Berry, a TRV furniture maker, over to look at the several additions that we wanted done this trip. He took some measurements and will be putting some cabinets and furniture enhancements in the coach before we leave (we'll post pictures and detail of that in a later blog). We also purchased an external antenna for our Verizon wireless broadband access card, and had it installed on the roof on Friday night by Joel, one of the TRV service employees, who moonlights by doing those type of additions.
On Saturday we took a short tour of Northeast Alabama, and stopped at the Coon Dog Cemetery about 20 miles outside of Red Bay. It is the only pet cemetery in the world for registered Coon Dogs, who are bred and trained specifically to hunt raccoons.
We also went by the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, but only stopped and looked at the fountain at the entrance. We were particularly encouraged by the brick for the Blind Boys of Alabama, since we'd seen them before . . . . . .
One of our pictures of the Blind Boys at Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle in 2004 . . . . . we had very good seats in about the 6th row -- it was a wonderful concert.
On Sunday, Manuel and Connie had Mark, Sue, Mandy and me over for a wonderful breakfast of migas, a traditional Tex-Mex breakfast of eggs, sausage, peppers, onions, and cheese -- all served with salsa and tortillas. They were wonderful, and started our day out right!
On Sunday, one of the couples in the campground organized a Hobo Stew get-together. Everyone that was planning on attending provided some meat and/or vegetables by noon, and he put it all together in a huge stew pot over a propane burner. After about 3 hours we had some wonderful stew, which was served with lots of bread and some good desserts. About 50 people from the Allegro campground attended, and it was good to meet with and speak with other Tiffin owners.
Things cranked up here on Monday morning, but there were no early spots to be had in the service bays, so we didn't get in until bright and early 7 AM Wednesday morning. We were assigned to Nick and Duane, and you would not be able to find a greater pair of service techs -- they patiently went through our list of 60+ items with us, and promptly began on a number of them -- picking the easier ones first.
Its now Friday and we've had a number of repairs and adjustments made, but it looks like we'll probably be here for at least another week to 10 days -- just guessing at this point, but after they complete the "normal repair bay" warranty items we have some minor shower fiberglass repair as well as external paint issues -- both of which have to be scheduled separately from the normal service. We also just found out that we need to spend some time in the welding bay, since our propane tank needs to be replaced -- the interior float mechanism which measures how much propane is in the tank is broken. There also is a bit of re-welding that needs to be done for one of our basement doors which does not seal properly -- no problems, as its better to catch it now while TMH fixes it for free.
In addition . . . . . . the news that we'll be here for a while will probably be in our favor, since we have also made arrangements to have all of our day/night shades in the living area and bedroom replaced by a new type of roller shade, which combines a sun shade (to use for privacy during the day) with a blackout shade (used at night). It will probably take at least another couple of days to get the window valences modified and then get the new shades installed, but we're sure it will be worth it after seeing these new window shades on several 09 Phaetons, and also seeing the results of these being retrofitted to earlier coaches such as ours.
A late Friday update: we got our bedroom valences back with the new shades, and we re-installed them this afternoon, and are very pleased with them. We can't wait until early next week when we get the rest of them. We'll post pictures of them on our next entry.
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