It’s exactly one month now since we were supposed to get our Alpha and bring it home.  There have been so many delays due to the truck and RV coming from Canada, and the finance company not willing to do anything with the RV until it had an “American” title.  Things are still not complete with the title and the finance company, but they are on the way, so Mike and Joe let us bring the Alpha home today!!  Hurray!!

Tom got off of work early and met me at home.  We hopped into the truck and headed to Grapevine RV.  We had Mike pull the Alpha out into the street off of their tiny RV lot where the RVs are all packed in pretty tightly.  Tom was SO nervous!!  Just driving that big ol’ truck around has been an adventure!  Now, adding a lot of weight and a lot of length (35’) makes things a little (lot) more “exciting”!  Grapevine RV isn’t very far from us at all.  It’s just a few miles away, but on a pretty narrow and curvy road.  Tom did great!  At our street, we needed to make a left turn, and there was a car coming so he had to stop.  He stopped up too far and had to make too direct of a left turn.  The problem was that there is a big dip from the main road and you have a high climb to come up onto our street.  Guess what??  The “frame guards” – that’s what I’m calling them. (They are these very sturdy “poles” that hang down to help protect the underneath of the trailer.)  Anyway, they hang down low and tend to scrape on “dips”, etc.  Mike drug them on the ground when he pulled the Alpha off of their lot.  Well, Tom wasn’t able to go up our little hill on our street because those “poles” dug down into the black top road and we were STUCK!!  Could not go forward or backward!  Our Alpha was hanging out into the middle of the road!  Several people stopped to offer help, but lucky for us, our neighbor, Terry was on his way.  As soon as we got stuck, I jumped out of the truck and started calling Gayle and Terry.  He came right down and was able to help talk Tom through maneuvering out of this mess.  He had Tom just “floor it” and our big ol’ truck used all of its might to back that thing up until it got free.  Then Terry directed Tom on how to better get past the dip.  It still drug the ground a little, but didn’t gouge it like it did before.  Oh my, gosh, did it gouge the road!!  Hahaha!!

Next was getting the Alpha parked at home.  Once again, we were very thankful for Terry‘s help. It probably took Tom and Terry about an hour to get the Alpha parked where we wanted it.  Then we were trying to get it leveled.  We got it situated enough to be able to open the slides.  We opened them up and gave Gayle and Terry the tour.  Of course, they were very impressed and loved it.  It would have been nice to sit down for a bit and have a glass of wine with them, but we were all tired and hungry, so they went home and we went in the house.  Tom had leftover fried chicken and I scrambled a couple eggs for me.  We didn’t stay up too late.