So, Rover arrived at just about the last possible moment. The dealer got it on Friday , and we were told we could pick up on Monday. We took our trailer – and they removed the Propride hitch for us and swapped mattresses so we could keep our good mattress – which was nice because it was a short queen – so we got that little extra space between the mattress and the cabinets. The bed platform was already shorter than a short queen so a full queen is just a waste of room space.
Wait – who’s Rover? Rover is a Forest River Sunseeker 3050S, class C. It is 32 feet long, one full side slide. We special ordered as we didn’t like the color options that were available on anything we found at a dealer. (why do almost all have dark cabinets?). There were some surprises I just have to talk about. We looked at a model at the dealer and there were some built in items we really liked. But our unit didn’t come with those items. It seems Forest River takes it upon itself to simply drop various features in order to save money. So you’ve plunked down your down payment having looked at a 3050S – and when yours comes, it doesn’t have the same options…… For example: There were two skylights with clear plastic – and pull over room darkening shades. We thought we would really like this. What was delivered was two skylights with frosted plastic and no shades whatsoever. We could of course change out the plastic domes and add shades – for about $400 – but having to pay for what looked like should have come with our unit is REALLY IRRITATING! Second – the unit we looked at didn’t have an oven. I had a nice pot drawer instead and a convection microwave with built in vent above. What was delivered? Standard stove and oven, along with convection microwave with standard vent mounted under it. Why do this? Well FR could build all the units with the same stove/oven – no units with drawers. They could also slip in a standard microwave or convection without having to change the upper cabinets. We would have much preferred to skip the oven and have the pot drawer but are stuck with what they delivered.
We did a thorough walk-through, of course you never find everything. (We had actually gone and seen it Friday and pointed out a few minor things). The next morning we were hard at work testing out the truck hitch, packing trailer stuff into Rover, learning how it all worked again. I tried installing the RVlock – and had issues with it fitting right – so I took it off rather than spend precious time on it. One more day of packing, loading clothes, food etc. and cleaning. The third morning we quickly de-winterized, loaded some water and took off. It was already about noon so we didn’t know how far we’d get. We, at one point, hoped to get on the far side of Altanta’s legendary morning rush hour traffic.
Somewhere on the road I made a google map error and underestimated the distance to Atlanta. (in my defense, Deb tends to every hour or so, ask me the distance to or between various cities – which I work out on my phone). It was clear we weren’t going to get past Atlanta before we all fell asleep, so Deb wanted to get a few hours sleep somewhere and still hit Atlanta before rush hour in the morning. But my map goof meant we didn’t pull over until after midnight – to sleep in a Walmart parking lot. Two hours of sleep, three hours total parking lot time and we were back on the road. We got around Atlanta before the rush hour, but that put us a lot closer to Davenport, Fl . We had planned on two days, and nights, hitting the camp on the third day. We did stop at the Pig for their BBQ and got into the campground late the second day, totally wiped out. A quick visit with the girls was in order because they all couldn’t wait, including GG.
The next week was a blur of Disney visits. Jen had most of our days including Fastpasses planned out.
So, to digress a bit. Either we get a total fail on planning or life just conspires to get even with us on our trips. There was the trip we took to Topsail Beach one year, not realizing we’d be on the road July 4 on the way home. We couldn’t find a hotel anywhere and thus drove straight through, 18+ hours. Then there is going to Moab during a big motorcycle/ATV week. It was us and the kids with their trailer and we just weren’t ready to boondock for a week – thus we parked in Green river – an hour away from everything. And many others…. And this time, going to Disney during Christmas-New Year’s. In our defense, the delayed arrival of Rover contributed to mayhem, but it seems there is aways a reason.
My daughter had annual passes – so they knew all the ins and outs of Disney. When to go where, how to get the most out of Fast Passes, etc. For example, the best time to get on some rides is during the evening fireworks or parades. So we bought our week passes and Jen planned out our itinerary. Now we had already been pretty stressed handling conversion from Trailer to Class C, getting things done at home, ready for the trip, moved in and the long hard drive down. We went right into long days at the parks. We were usually getting there mid to late morning – but staying until the parks closed. 10 to 15,000 steps a day. The kids were with us most of the time as well. I do recommend, if you go to Disney, do your research – how to best make the use of your passes. Find some online resources or someone who is very familiar to walk you through. We got to see and do a lot more than we might have on our own.
BUT – it was Christmas holiday season. That is one of the busiest of the year. We couldn’t even get in to Magic Kingdom on Christmas day, so we spent it at Cocoa beach. And when people travel thousands of miles to come to Disney and thousands on tickets – well they don’t stay in their hotel room if they are sick. So I estimate we came within three feet of several hundred thousand people over that week and it was impossible not to touch things that had been touched by thousands of people that same day.
Its funny – when you see you doctor, one of the questions you ask is “Have you traveled to a foreign country?”. Well, going to Disney is like going to a foreign country in every way except perhaps drinking the water and the kind of insects.
I came down sick first – which is a bit unusual. I missed out on the last day of our park passes AND the Pandora ride… 8^{. On the third day of sick time, Deb and I showed up at a local ER and in my case, Type A Influenza was confirmed. A round of antibiotics, Tamiflu and cough meds was ordered. Deb too had the flu, just the quick test didn’t confirm it. After a few more days, we started to feel better and headed for home. (more on that below). We got to Gulf Shores and found a place at Bay Breeze campground. We had stayed a week there a couple of years ago and they had a spot open for a couple of days. But the next day, I was down again – and a rapid care facility in Orange Beach confirmed – Pneumonia. Some IV drugs, another antibiotic and other meds and I feel OK, now but still not over it all.
So, why did we head for home via Gulf Shores? We barely got out of Savoy before the big freeze set in. While we were getting sick, thinking about how to get home – the freeze was reaching almost all the way to us near Orlando. And there was snow on the roads back home. There was no way to get home in one day or to have to try to winterize the rig on the way up. Winterizing before we left wasn’t really an option because – well, we want to use our plumbing on the trip. In a pinch, we could have winterized and stayed in a hotel but we still wanted clear roads to drive the new motorhome and toad behind.
So, the plan became to head west, then north stopping at a campground we’ve used before just south of Nashville. We scheduled our trip home to coincide with the warmest weather. We stopped at the Texas T campground south of Nashville (nice place) for a night and quickly winterized the next morning before we left.
Sickness aside, the trip home was pretty uneventful. We did have some issues with the TPMS and Braking system, as well as the heat pump, but I’ll cover those in a separate report.
We are now slowly recovering – working on the RV when its not too cold – trying to get it ready for some more leisurely travels.