The First Night - A Draining Experience

We settled for the rv and took advantage of the overnight offer on the back lot of the dealership - a shakedown cruise of sorts.  We were smart, brilliant even, to video record the salient points of the three hour orientation given by the service specialist for that very task of breaking in newbies like us.  What is the opposite of smart and brilliant?  I'll let you fill in the blanks as I couldn't get the sound to function on the cheap video cam and proceeded to erase all of the videos in the process.  Oh well.

We had electricity as our only hookup, but were anxious to try out the new digs, rigs, whatever.  A frozen bag dinner was cooked after the first experience of lighting the oven from a long nosed lighter while bending over to what we guessed was the pilot light (see erased video above).  It was cold outside in April, but we got the heat going and it was fairly toasty - toasty being a relative term for my wife, whose ancestry must have Eskimos, deeply and firmly embedded in the gene pool.

The dogs needed to be walked and being a good egg on this rare occasion, I went with them.  The dogs were reluctant to take care of business and it was a good twenty minutes before we got back.   As we approached the rv, there was a solid stream of water coming from the side of the rig.  A fish allusion such as, "Holy mackerel," is in order here as there was certainly enough water for their survival.  I rushed into the rv and a moment of awareness not consistent with my panic, turned off the water pump.  We had no water and it was nearly eight o'clock at night.  Wonder of wonders, the salesman who sold us the rv appeared to check up on us as he was leaving.  He arranged for the second shift service folks to help.  They did.

Service is an interesting concept.  They were terrific in running a 300 hundred foot hose to our rv and replenished the water tank - remember, no water hookup.  What caused the leak?  Service had left the outside shower faucet on from the 2 million item checklist that this dealer and every other one assured us that they have.  Well, 2 million may be only a slight exaggeration to what they promised.  More on this later with our hot water heater.....

We slept terribly as expected, but it was our doing as opposed to any rv issue.

Next, the towing adventures the next day to go home....