The Trip to Wisconsin Concludes after 10 days at Cliffside Park in Racine County.
Packing and sorting in the back of the truck continued for the last few days at Cliffside. In the middle of the packing I made a call to the manufacturer and found the rep that had made our appointment had left the company. What followed was a back and forth with another rep that could not find anything on the scheduled repair. Needless to say when you don’t have access to the computer that holds all your email correspondence it’s hard to reconstruct all the conversations.
After going through some sent emails on my iPhone, I located an email where the service department was copied on the repair. Next I left a voice mail for the head of service and Trent and I took off in the truck to make a visit to Dollar General. As we were leaving the store, the phone rang and I was told that the manufacturer was ready for us to drop the trailer. What a relief!!!
Trent and I stopped later on to pick up some McDonalds and I finished packing the truck after lunch. When Jennifer arrived later in the day we emptied out our refrigerator and gave her all our perishable food items as we couldn’t very well take them with us after dropping the trailer. This also allowed me to clean and dry the fridge.
The next morning we left about 9:00 AM to head to Indiana. However, first we needed to dump the tanks on the way out of the park. After we completed that task and threw our trash in the dumpster we were ready to leave Wisconsin. We entered the address in the navigation system and rolled out of the park.
I’m not keen on driving through Chicago during the day, but as it turned out, Chicago wasn’t really an issue. What was an issue was the interstate heading out of Wisconsin. At least twice Semi’s came into my lane forcing me to swerve and lay on my horn. This coupled with some pretty heavy winds were a little more than I bargained for. The wind at this point would be nothing compared to what hit later in the day after we had already arrived at the manufacturers campground.
I would like to note here that I got a rude awakening on the charge for using the skyway bridge to leave Illinois. The cost was $26.50 USD. That is ridiculous! Next time I’ll go 30 miles longer to avoid that toll. If I had gone at off-peak hours (which I guess is around midnight to 4:00 AM), I would have only paid $18.00…and that is still ridiculous.
We arrived at about 1:00 PM in Middlebury, Indiana at the Grand Design Repair facility. I met with Valerie who leads the customer service department and we did a walk around the RV and I added a few items for her to investigate.
As I have mentioned on several different occasions; I think this company has the best customer service organization of all the RV manufacturers currently. We owned many different brands and I have to say they are second to none. Of course it would be great if you never needed customer service, but that is just not the real world with travel trailers.
After Valerie finished her paperwork, I took Eva for a walk around the grounds but she was more interested in all the noise coming from the factory. She is a very inquisitive seven month old puppy.
As the day continued, the wind increased. I was thankful we were not under that tree at Cliffside any longer.
The next morning the winds had subsided, and we rolled out of the campground at 7:00 AM EST. We drove straight home, making stops for Eva along the way, over a 900 mile trip. There was also a lot of conversation about upgrading the tow vehicle. I will talk about this in the next blog post.
We rolled into the house at about 11:00 PM; and I started unloading some stuff from the back of the truck. Eva did not appreciate this at all, since she was in the house and unable to help. It led to much barking, which I’m sure woke up Corrine and Jeff. They had arrived there the day before us.
In short order we went to bed; but I knew what was waiting for me tomorrow. Lot’s of cleaning and straightening things out before the October return to Grand Design.
This will not be the last time we go to Cliffside; it’s a yearly trip. We have found very few places that rival this campground. If you decide to visit I encourage you to make your reservations early. You are able to do that online. For information about Cliffside Park click here. You will love this campground!
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