Travel plans changed… off to the Keys!

“Our plans crashing and burning”

Well after spending our time in the customer service lobby at the Gaffney’s Oasis Freightliner service shop we were informed that our rig was finally finished and we could pay the bill and get on our way. Hooray! However, they weren’t able to do the wiring for our toad so we decided it prudent to spend one more night in their back lot to find someone along our route who could fix it (Camping World in Columbia,SC hopefully on Wednesday) before traveling on…

  

The folks here at Freightliner were friendly and efficient but we hope that we never have to come back here. Although if we are ever in the area and in need of maintenance or service we would not hesitate to return and use their services and as a side benefit we met some nice RV’ers here as well.

So now the big news for us – our travel plans have changed!!! While we were here the last three days waiting for service we made a few inquiries down to the Florida keys to look for any places that could take us for this winter for a few months. Well not only were there no vacancies (you have to book at least a year out apparently), we also found that the rates were rather exorbitant (some places up to $4000 per month – YIKES!). We also had inquired about a possible work camper position at a resort only to be informed that it was filled. But after a long and lengthy discussion with this RV resort she had an offer for us…

After they had reviewed our resumes and talked with us a bit via phone she insisted we come down to the keys now, if we could, as she could accommodate us at a heavily discounted rate with the proposition that we are pseudo-interviewing for the next work camper opening. We wanted to go to the keys pretty bad this winter but we were on our way up north for the summer… and it was difficult to decide. After a long and lengthy discussion with each other we said what the heck…WE ARE GOING TO THE KEYS!!!!!

I always said to my kids and was now saying it to us “Doors open and doors close.”  If we were going to the keys this year it was going to have to be now since a door had opened… so we off to the Florida key’s and will be spending a month or two (maybe longer) at the Bluewater Key Resort at mile marker 14.5 just 10 minutes north of Key West. Funny how things turn out at times…

Hello Gaffney, SC…

Our last night in Spartanburg, SC meant that we got to experience one more severe thunderstorm warning… Yeaaa for us!!!  Well as most of you know being in a motorhome during these type of events is no fun… so we made plans our last night to go over to the RJ Rocker’s microbrewery in downtown Spartanburg.

We had planned on visiting this place and since it was our last night and the weather was dicey we went for their “Tour and Taste” Thursday event and had a very enjoyable time. We enjoyed our tour and beer samples as the severe weather passed through the area. You can read more about this place and event on my Road Treats blog. Thanks RRJ Rocker’s we really enjoyed our last evening in Spartanburg, SC.

The next morning we broke camp and headed just a short distance to the east of where we were to the town of Gaffney, SC. Well the initial address I plugged into Alice (our GPS) took us right to their corporate headquarters which would have been grand but it wasn’t their service center. I wondered why their didn’t appear to be any parking in their lot for large RV’s… Why we came here was to get the motorhome serviced at the Freightliner Oasis Service Center in Gaffney. The web wisdom has nothing but praise for this place so here we are.

Another five minutes later and we pulled in on Campus Drive and pulled into the Freightliner Service Center. The center has 6 bays for servicing rigs and about 20 slots in the back of the service center with electrical hookups (for those of us that live in our RV homes). The waiting room below is where I suspect we will spend a good part of the day on Monday. We checked in with the lady at the counter to let her know we were here and that we had an appointment on Monday.

We stopped along the side and filled up with water and backed into site 15 which is adjacent to a small stretch of woods (we are parked in the lot in the picture at the top). We will be here until our service appointment on Monday and only stay longer if we need to. With a dinner of some homemade split pea soup done in the crock pot along with our first attempt at artisan bread we settled in for a nice evening…

Our future plans from here were to go north towards Boston where we planned to summer in the New England states, however, an interesting proposal the other day may have us heading south. Nice thing about this life style is that there are no real plans and your soft plans can shift on a dime… so we will see if our future travel plans change or not in a day or so…