I'm a planner, always have been, probably always will be.  I always have a plan A, plan B and sometimes plan C.  Well, this time we've made it all the way to plan F and it's been a frustrating journey.  We had planned on vacation in the Grand Canyon and then 4 more stops before flying out of Phoenix for our family Thanksgiving visit.

29 days ago a sealed bearing failed and we ended up being towed to Fort Mohave. The repair shop specialized in tires, brakes, axles, etc, not your standard RV shop but made us feel confident that they could fix the rig and get us back on the road.  However, the bearings with a new axle had to be ordered from Lippert and before they could ship it, it had to be manufactured so we were told 2.5-3 weeks and with a great deal of help from the shop, got ourselves relocated to an RV park, limping down 0.5 miles down the highway on 3 wheels.

Then we had to prove to the Extended Warranty company that our bearings were sealed bearings because they called Lippert who said they didn't manufacture sealed bearings, but they did in 2010, so I had to get the build sheet with the axle serial numbers from DRV, then get a written statement from Lippert that our bearings were sealed when manufactured.  Finally got the Extended Warranty company to approve our claim after much angst and lots of emails, phone calls, etc.

Lippert was late shipping the axles, they told our shop they went out on Oct 9th, shipping documents show they went out on the 12th with 5 day shipping.  The shipping company said they tried to deliver on the 19th, but no one answered the phone at the shop and claimed their voice mail said they closed at 4:30 which is a bald faced lie, I've heard the voice mail, it's clear they close at 5:30.  I had to then track down the shipping company to get them delivered on the 20th and they acted like they were doing me a huge favor when they messed up in the first place and their driver lied. 

The only folks who were truly easy to deal with in the entire process was the local repair shop and we're thankful they were so persistent in getting our rig repaired.

So, we now have new axles, bearings, brake line is fixed, shock replaced, brake caliper replaced, new tire and wheel, etc. and are finally mobile again.  We have 2 repairs left to complete that were caused by damage done during the towing process.

And we've cancelled multiple reservations, changed our scheduled flight for Thanksgiving, found new pet sitters (thanks to Allen & Donna, aka Fergizmo), we've finally gotten to Plan F and at this point I'm hoping for NO MORE changes.  We've cut our family visit short by 3 days and have a drop dead date of Dec. 3rd to be on the road again due to Dale's art show schedule.  1 of the 2 repairs due to the towing damage will be done on Monday, the other one will have to wait until after the December art shows are complete. 

Breathing a big sigh of relief right now.  I've always been good at logistics planning but my patience and flexibility has been stretched to my limit this time around.  For those of you offering words of advice and encouragement over the past month, thank you, having this RV Dreams family to share the frustrations with helps me keep things in perspective!!