We recently bought a new travel trailer and having owned two other trailers before, we never imagined what a learning curve we were about to have. Both of our previous trailers had been purchased while living in Washington State, so now living in the Southwest we had an unfortunate major lesson. Being the maiden voyage on a new trailer, we wanted to stay within three hours of where we purchased the trailer in case we needed to get back if things went wrong.
Hoping to escape the 118° weather we were having, we headed North to a higher elevation only to experience a 105° heat wave in Cottonwood, AZ, where we booked our camp site. We arrived at the check-in time of 1:00PM, and while pulling into the campground, realized there were very few trees to shade our site. This, of course, meant we had to set up the the unit in the heat. My first priority (I thought) was to get the refrigerator and the AC going asap to cool things down. I turned on the AC unit, nothing. I tried again, nothing. I checked the circuit breaker box, went outside and checked the electrical cord connection, nothing. Inside the trailer, it must have been about 130° or more at this point. Darren and I had to keep getting into the cab of the truck to run the air conditioner on us. We spent over two hours in the heat trying to set up the trailer. Our hearts sank. We thought we were going to have to pack it all back up which would take another hour to do and come home. By this time, we had started to experience heat exhaustion and both of us were feeling nauseous. My face was magenta red and were were both extremely weak, and had to keep sitting down. My husband decided since we just bought the trailer, we should call the service department and ask for help. The service guy started through the check list of possible answers and it was everything I had already checked. Then he asked, "Did you flip the power switch at the box?" I walked over and NOPE, it had not been flipped on. Now remember, we have had TWO other trailers before this! Really!! We have never forgotten this once.
Another crazy thing that happened was that the motorhome next to us couldn't get their electric to work either so they too were suffering with the heat. It turned out the electrical box they plugged into was actually broken and a maintenance worker had to come and replace the box. The park people asked them if they wanted to move sites, but they declined, because they had done all the leveling and hook-ups and were suffering with heat exhaustion too.
The lesson we, and I'm sure the couple in the motorhome learned, is that as soon as you pull into a camping site, don't unhitch the trailer or perform any of the set up until you plug into the electrical box and turn on the water make sure everything works. Then once you know all is working, finish setting up your trailer.
Unfortunately, once you have heat exhaustion, you don't just perk back up. We spent hours putting ice on our heads, faces and chests and drank tons more water, all while taking it very easy.
No comments:
Post a Comment