King's Highway: A Week at Red Bay

We arrived at the campground at the Allegro factory service center on Friday, 25Sept2009 for our Monday, September 28 appointment. Except for attending the Mule celebration on the following Saturday, we basically spent the entire last 10 days at the campground. Here’s our campsite….

We started our service early on Monday morning, and they worked on our list for four straight days. We had a good tech, and although I had the agreement of the service center manager that all of our list was held over warranty work, I was presented with a bill for over $2700 on Friday. Needless to say, I flipped, but after a 45 minute argument, the bill was zero’ed out! We did get everything on the list fixed……. which was a first!!

We had excitement during the week. Our neighbors were here to watch their 2010 43ft Allegro Bus being built, so we watched it with them. Here is Sidney, the better part of the couple resting outside…..

I also ran some errands for people who knew we were in Red Bay, to pick up supplies and mail them, as well as take pictures of rigs for them. I browsed the Allegro store at the campground for a lot of ‘spare parts’ for my Bus. I also made the purchase of over 50 ceiling lights and some switches for my buddy, Mark Didelot, who is replacing all of the fluorescent fixtures in his Phaeton with the recessed lights like in the Bus. You can see some of the results on his blog.

We also had a chance to visit with two other members of the Lone Star Allegros Camping club. Bruce and Sherran Marlar stopped at Red Bay to get a repair to the generator on their Allegro Bus. They arrived on Tuesday and left on Wednesday. “LJ” and Vi Verderber showed up last Sunday to pick up their Zephyr that had been left here for repairs after a small accident.

On Wednesday, while the tech was backing me out of the repair bay, he forgot that he had lowered the bay door about 3’ and let me back into it. The door suffered severe damage and my Bus needed a new ladder and touchup painting to cover a 12 horizontal scratch on the back cap. All repairs were completed the next day!!

Last Sunday, our friends, Greg and Mandy Faure showed up for their Oct 7 appointment. Here’s Mandy in front of their Phaeton (taken by Patsy)……

The Faure’s ended up in the site directly across from us.

Also, during the week, we had Chris Berry, one of the craftsmen that do work on rigs on their own time, to make a modification to the desk that is built into the dash directly in front of the passenger seat. We wanted it to extend all the way to the seat. Here is a picture of the finished product…..

While Chris was at the Bus, I showed him the stained glass window that I made and installed in the Bus. He asked my why I didn’t us a rope light to illuminate it instead of the automotive lights that I did use. The answer was that I did not have a source of 12v rope lighting at home. I did see it in the Allegro store, so Patsy and I bought a 7’ length of rope light and the pigtail. Friday night, we took the stained glass box off the window and installed the rope light. It does look a lot better!!

This wraps up our week of service. I will close out with a couple of ‘fall’ pictures that Patsy took at the campground entrance…..