We have just been chillin at Joe Wheeler State Park in Northwestern Alabama. The park is on state route 72 about 18 miles east of Florence, Alabama which is the home of North Alabama University. It is a nice progressive city with new buildings going up everywhere you look. Today we went to Florence to pick up a couple of things and decided to go see the downtown. On our way back we saw a Mexican restaurant that was packed and since we hadn't had lunch yet we decided to stop. Well the food and atmosphere was awesome. Below we posted some pictures of the place.
We decided the weather in Northern Indiana is warming up so we plan on returning home the middle of next week. We have a lot of things we want to get done the first of which is getting the truck ready to trade in on what we believe will be a new Honda CRV. We have been researching vehicles to tow with the motorhome four wheels down and narrowed it down to the Ford Edge, Chevy Traverse and the Honda CRV. The Chevy is bigger than what we want so we have ruled that one out. The Ford Edge while it appears bigger than the CRV the actual inside measurements and cargo carrying capacity is actually smaller than the CRV. While we like and have owned Fords we have also owned Honda's and have seen many CRV's towed by motorhomes so we are leaning toward the CRV as of today. We went to a dealer in Florence today and I was impressed with the room inside for a person my size. If we get rid of the truck we will also try to sell our 5th wheel hitch, 19.5 inch Rickson wheels, truck bed tool box, and more than likely our swivel wheeled trailer.
We finally ran into a problem on the motorhome that I can't easily solve. The passenger side camera occasionally comes up on the screen as "No Signal" . After a while it starts to work again. I took out the middle drawers out of the dash and tried to make sure all of the connections to the screen from the camera were tight and they appeared to be. The camera now works great but it seems to work intermittently which may be tough to fix. We called Newmar and made an appointment to take the motorhome in and have them look at it on May 30th. It was a pretty exhaustive deal just to get it in to the plant for service. First you make and appointment and then they send you an email with a form that you have to sign and send back in the mail. The form basically says they will keep your motorhome for any reason they want if you don't pay the bill and they will be the ones to decide if the work is covered under warranty or not. It's probably the least customer friendly process I have ever seen but I am trying to keep an open mind. This process is slightly different than a Tiffin owner here at the park I spoke to yesterday described. He had a problem with his satellite dish that was over a year out of warranty and Bob Tiffin said your right it's out of warranty but I will still take care of it and told the rv shop to do whatever was necessary to fix it and he would take care of the bill. Hope we didn't make a mistake by going with Newmar instead of Tiffin. One reason we went with Newmar was it being so close to Warsaw but it seems it is very difficult to get into the factory since they are normally booking three months out so that may not have been a reason to buy Newmar. We'll see how things go. My hope is we don't have any more problems so we don't have to take it in again.
Right now it is pitch dark and I am outside watching the NCAA final four games sitting by the campfire. The weather down here was great today with highs in the mid 70's. We are going to try and rent a boat tomorrow to explore the water around here. Monday I plan on hitting the golf course then Tuesday we will head toward home stopping in Louisville for one night.
Enjoy the pics.
A little excitement at Walmart with a car fire in the parking lot.
This is a great place to stop for Mexican food if you are ever in Florence, Alabama.
