Waiting in Hurricane

When we made the decision to purchase the 2016 Coachman Mirada, I felt an instant relief. We had a new RV, so if anything happened on the road, we’d be covered. I’m the sort of person who likes that feeling of comfort an umbrella can bring on a sunny day. Nothing to worry about, right?

Well, I am here to tell you that I was mistaken…

Getting a coach repaired isn’t as easy as one might imagine. Take our recent predicament. When we arrived in Hurricane, Utah, one of our slides (a slide is the area that slides out to make more room for you when you park) made a racket when we tried to extend it. Clunk, clunk, clunk isn’t a comforting sound. I will admit that I felt an unpleasant burst of adrenaline when I heard that noise.

We’d only planned to spend one night at the Hurricane Walmart. We were on our way north to cooler climes. It was a very nice spot though and the children even found a kid fortress within the patches of wilderness. Camille had begged me to spend just one more night. Well, she got her wish! Who knew we’d be extending our stay soooo long. After a few nights we moved to Sand Hollow State Park, which had full hookups.

Now, you might imagine that service people would flock to come to the assistance of the Roadschooling Shermans in their hour of need. That would be nice, but we’ve discovered that any time we’ve had RV issues the western whistle has accompanied tumbleweed, as repair shops turn into a ghost towns.

And we’re not alone! As it turns out, very few people will perform warranty work on an RV. It’s not an easy process for them and they prefer a customer with cash in their pocket. Some shops will, but the waiting list is months. Here’s what one manager said to me.

“Well, ma’am, the first step is to diagnose. That will take us a few weeks to do, because we have forty people ahead of you. Then we’ll need to order the parts and they could be on back order. That could take another month or two. Then after we get the parts in, well, we can look at getting you on the books for the service, but that might take another month or two.”

Okay, does that sound as completely unreasonable to you as it did to me?

Ah, yes, I hear your voices through my computer screen. “Laura, why don’t you just explain that you’re full-timing and that you have three kids and that the lack of slide means you have half the space in your already tiny home?”

Believe me, I tried that. The man just gave me a blank I could care less look and repeated that it would take months, if we were lucky.

Pushing for a sensible solution, we found a Camping World in St George Utah, who agreed to help. However, since the mechanism was still under warranty, they needed to provide a continual stream of photos to the manufacturer before they would supply the parts needed. With each set of photos, the manufacturer took 3-5 days to respond before requesting new photos. The whole thing didn’t make sense, but we were stuck in the middle of the process.

When they finally they shipped the parts, they didn’t expedite it, despite my request. As a result, the parts took another three weeks to arrive. So, we ended up waiting for two months!

This would have been okay, because we really aren’t on too much of a schedule, but when June hit, the temperature immediately soared. I will admit I freaked out a little when I saw that the temperature would rise to 110 and stay in that range. ACK! I don’t do well with heat (Warning: Gross understatement embedded in previous words).

Now our brand new RV is equipped with two ACs, but the problem is that neither ever really worked well. I couldn’t figure out if they were lemons to start or if they just couldn’t handle the extreme heat. After all, we’re now living in a giant oven when the sun is overhead.

We decided to leave the RV after noon each day, but soon discovered that it was still unbearably hot at 11pm, so handling the ACs  began to be a vital issue.

Learning from the previous experience with the slides, we decided to just replace one of the air conditioners and not go through the warranty process. Guess what? The work was done within two days. No two-month wait.

On the bright side, I will say that I have loved getting to know Hurricane! We are very close to Zion, which is gorgeous. And when the weather got too hot we went to the lovely Hurricane Library, which we all love. It’s wonderfully cool and has lots of space for us to read and play our board games (Agricola is our current favorite). They even have a conference room we could reserve to spread out a bit. The kids have been reading up a storm and are given weekly prizes by the library for their effort!

So, all in all, I have gotten a lot out of this experience. I feel that I’ve gotten to know this community and really enjoyed living and breathing Utah a bit. The next time around the country, I hope we can return for a visit. In winter or spring!

Laura Sherman

My husband and I have been married since 1993 and we have three amazing, talented, bright children! I’m known as Laura the friendly ghostwriter and have written almost twenty books and hundreds of articles. Dan and I are so excited to be able to homeschool Cole, Camille, and Serena on the road and wanted to share our experiences with you.