You know that both Jeff and I are planners. We carefully research and choreograph our travels well in advance. That works great …. until it doesn’t.

You may remember our recent tire issue that was caused by an alignment problem with our motorhome’s front end. Needing to address that issue as soon as practical, we booked an appointment with a shop in Idaho Falls, located conveniently on the way from West Yellowstone to our next stop. We packed up the night before and left at dawn to arrive at the shop for our appointment, only to discover that the shop’s alignment rack was down. Waiting on parts. Maybe fixed later that day, maybe not. Not wanting to just wait around for some unspecified time frame, we elected to head on and deal with the alignment later.

It’s actually not all that easy to find a place that DOES motorhome alignments. Car shops can’t do it, and semi-truck places don’t want to. Even authorized Spartan chassis repair facilities don’t usually do alignments. After much internet searching, we found a chain (GCR) that actually services both trucks and RVs.  And they had a shop not too far from our current location. Cool! We called and made an appointment for next week. In order to give us more time for travel logistics, we decided to push out our Moab resort’s check in by one day. So Jeff called the campground to adjust our reservation and that’s when the fun really began.

Now, we booked this reservation 6 months ago, and had difficulty finding availability then. It’s a very popular time in Moab. We made a deposit and had a confirmation number. But, as we discovered, the campground intelligently booked us into a 35 foot space for a 43 foot motorhome. Not cool. And, so sorry, the big spaces are all booked up. Nothing we can do. REALLY not cool! So, we quickly went into damage control mode, attempting to find someplace to live for that 2 week span. I really detest when something upsets my carefully plotted schedule!!

Jeff started calling around while I hit the internet. After several calls, he managed to find an 8 night stay at a much nicer, albeit pricey, resort closer to town. I looked farther along our route and found a very nice full hook up casino campground near Durango Colorado, for the bargain price of $19.50/night! We’ll end up spending less time in Moab, but will have a few days to explore a different area. We booked nicer campgrounds, for a combined cost less than we would have paid at the first place. So there!

And, it was really a blessing in disguise. What if we had arrived at Moab next week, and discovered the problem then? We would have had nowhere to go! Having some notice allowed us to make the necessary adjustments.

It all works out in the end.