With the last of the repairs to our RV completed, we left Tiffin’s Red Bay, Alabama Service Center on Tuesday around 10 am.
Once again Tiffin stood behind their RV, fixing any item that would normally be covered by warranty even though the one year warranty period is over. Tiffin appears to have survived the same economic downturn that has put dozens of RV manufacturers out of business; I’m convinced it’s because of how well they treat their customers ‘after the sale’.
Face it, RV’s are complex assemblies of vastly different systems: 2 wiring systems (110v as in your house & 12v as in your vehicle) 3 ways of powering the RV (diesel generator, shore-power, and via a battery/Inverter combination) a plumbing system with 3 separate components (fresh water, grey water and black water), an entertainment system containing 3 TV’s, a CD/DVD multiplayer, satellite TV receiver, HD TV receiver, and a satellite radio system plus a myriad of other system complex systems: diesel power, truck chassis/suspension, automatic leveling system, mechanisms to fill/flush various tanks, monitors for determining when to fill/flush various tanks, fridge, microwave, etc. etc, etc. The list goes on & on.
To top it all off, RV owners drive these big conglomeration of systems down our deteriorated highways at 65 mph, on bumpy and dusty back roads and, when we get to our destination, onto less than perfect fields, deserts and campgrounds. After all that, is it any wonder RV’s need on-going maintenance and repairs? I figured all RV’s regardless of manufacturer would need quality after sale support and that was how I evaluated RV vendors and ultimately led me to select Tiffin. They stand behind their product.
Sorry, I just realized I sound like a commercial for Tiffin – Just to be clear, I get nothing if any of you buy a Tiffin RV.
This leg of our trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma took us north through Mississippi into Memphis, Tennessee, and west across most of Arkansas, where we stopped for the night in Russellville, Arkansas. Of all the states we’ve been to so far, Arkansas has been the biggest surprise. It is a beautiful state, especially the western portion. It is also home to some of the worst stretches of I-40 we’ve driven on so far, especially east of Little Rock.
The couple in the fifth-wheel had just retired and this was their first night camping in their new RV. You should have seen how excited they were. Russellville is about an hour east of the Arkansas/Oklahoma border so we knew we had about a three hour drive to reach Tulsa.
What’s that you say Dale? Tulsa?
Yeah, yeah, I know. We said we were going to go south and stay south to avoid the cold. Originally we planned to go to New Orleans when we left Red Bay, Alabama however there was a huge break in the weather, with temperatures in the 60’s in Arkansas and mid-50’s in Oklahoma. We wanted the opportunity to see our son Christopher and Rachael and their new house however Tulsa’s freezing temperatures and ice/snow storms had us thinking we would have to wait for spring…
Welcome to the beauty of traveling by RV! Changes in the schedule are easy, especially when your schedule is a ‘loose’ as ours. We are headed to Palm Creek in Arizona however we have no specific time/requirement to be there on a specific date (or week or month for that matter). We get there when we get there. And so, with a huge warming trend predicted to last a week or more we shot North to Tulsa..
Last night in Arkansas we experienced some incredible thunderstorms, complete with thunder, lightning and incredibly hard downpours that made the RV’s roof sing. We awoke to sunshine and by the time we left around 9 am the temperature was already 67 degrees. It was a glorious day, at least for most of us. The guy getting the ticket pictured above probably didn’t think the day was quite as wonderful as the rest of us.
We arrived in Tulsa around lunchtime and, after getting the RV set-up at the campground, spent the afternoon with Christopher, Rachael and their three nieces. The girls are beautiful, full of energy, spirit & life and growing up way too fast.
And again tonight, as I write this around 1 am, we are being hit with an incredibly hard thunderstorm. Good thing the temperatures are well above freezing; I wouldn’t want to see all this rain as snow; we’d never get out of Oklahoma…
So we’ll stay in Tulsa for a few days visiting Christopher and Rachael, probably leaving sometime this weekend (or at the first sign of freezing temperatures).
When we do leave we’ll head due south into Texas towards Fort Worth where we’ll turn west on I-20 towards Casa Grande, Arizona. Along the way we hope to spend some time at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Our good friend John recommended we see Carlsbad last year however the weather didn’t cooperate. Hopefully this year the weather will stay nice enough for us to spend a day or two in Carlsbad.
See Ya!
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