From swanky Santa Monica to a Wal-Mart parking lot – aaah, the lap of luxury. The road trip has begun! Our first night in the RV, we rolled into the Palm Desert Wal-Mart for some shut eye. Believe it or not, we were one of five RV’s parked there overnight.
Waking up in the worst company in the US’s parking lot at 6am with a coughing 2 year old and a whiny infant has a certain way of making you look at the day differently. Taylor, however, was shopping in the ginormous store by 6:45AM. Back at the RV, the toilet that we hadn’t even used yet was leaking into the parking lot, making a wonderful smell – we called the RV company to see about getting it fixed somewhere in Palm Springs and they said they would “let us know”...
A quick batch of DB’s delicious cowboy coffee (boiled water with grounds and no filter!) we headed to our friend’s parents - Julie and Gary’s place - in La Quinta. Cold ham, croissants, fresh scones, juice and real coffee. Excellent company and grub, plus the use of a working toilet and we were off for Phoenix where the RV company said they would fix the problem.
Some road trip shots. Yes, we did fix Dylan's hat moments after we took the picture below...
Jamie opens a gift from Aunt Beth and Uncle Jon.
What’s this? Rain in Arizona?
The RV help line directed us to Mesa, AZ (just outside of Phoenix) where they could service the toilet today or tomorrow or even, heck “build a new RV if we wanted”.
We were polite and replied “No, just fix our toilet, please.”. We pulled into Mesa right on time but forgot about the one hour time change so it was a mad dash in rainy Friday before Christmas traffic –we got to the RV headquarters/service center and everyone was gone.
The RV help line guy named Dick (seriously. And he was one, too) was upstairs in a locked room and wouldn’t come out to greet the irritated LA gaggle. DB went into the lobby and was told that the service department would actually NOT be working tomorrow and that his best bet was to open the shit trap himself and see what was in there. Upon leaving, we discovered we were locked inside the gated RV facility. They don’t mess around with the 5PM work whistle – it blows and the place becomes a ghost town. Except, of course, for Dick. He had the controls from the upstairs building and let us out. Dick promised to call us in the next few hours to tell us where we could get the toilet serviced either tonight or early tomorrow morning. He never called. Ever. Customer service at its finest.
Dinner was great – a family place for the past 60 years and we were lucky to get a table. Unfortunately, two year olds don’t like being cooped up in car seats and RVs for hours on end, so most of DB’s meal was spent shoveling food and chasing a child around the restaurant. Taylor didn’t fare much better with a hungry 6 month old who likes to grab everything in sight these days.
This picture pretty much sums up Jamie’s mood the entire evening we were there.
Rather than sleep in the restaurant parking lot & knowing we would never hear back from the RV help line, DB checked out the toilet trap on the RV and did some fancy handyman work & voila, it was fixed. We were off to Tucson…We found this great RV park just outside downtown Tucson.
The park was a little community –very clean and safe. We kept trying to hack into somebody’s wireless internet but there was none to be found.
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