A New Home!

We headed off to the Cruisin Cajun's big "Crawfish Rally" on April 7th. We headed out a few days early so we could explore the Gulf Coast (Florida, Alabama, Mississippi) and get to the Jerry Lee Lewis concert in Biloxi, Mississippi. On Day 2, after an exciting evening in the local Walmart parking lot, we were passing through Pensacola, Florida. John was fuming because the Eagle was still spewing oil all over the VW- after the third service appointment with Cummins engine folks. He casually said, "Isn't there a Newmar (RV) dealer in Pensacola? Why don't you call them and see what they have in stock?". So, we took a short detour to take a look at a motorhome called the "Essex" made by Newmar. It took about 10 seconds in this motorhome to know that we were not going to be leaving the lot anytime soon. We absolutely fell in love with the interior and liked the exterior (which was not an easy thing to do---we'd been looking and every time we found the perfect interior, we hated the exterior or found some other show stopper). A few hours later and we were negotiating our best deal. That night, we bought a large bottle of wine and sat on the floor getting fairly wasted- questioning our sanity at buying yet another motorhome.

Ahh, but- the Essex -- 45 feet long with 4 sliders, 4 plasma TV's (2 in the LR, one in the bedroom and one in the exterior storage compartment), 2 bathroom sinks, king size bed and even a dishwasher! The interior is very neutral with dark cherry woodwork. Truly a beautiful coach!

The "Minnie Winnie"

(We were amused to find a Minnie Winnie- identical to our first coach in their parking lot. So, we got to see our progression- from Minnie Winnie to the Eagle to our new home, the Essex!).

The "Eagle"

"Head to Head"

We spent the next day doing a brief (and inadequate walk-through) and moving all of our stuff to the new coach. By the end of the day, we were exhausted, but headed on the road for Biloxi. By the time we got there, we decided to blow off the Jerry lee Lewis concert and just opened a bottle of wine and spent the evening admiring our new home. That night, Mija went nuts chewing and scratching, so I took her into the living room so John could get some sleep. About 6:30 that morning (after a heavy rain), I woke to a drip, drip, drip. I opened my eyes to see a steady drip of water coming out from our halogen light in the ceiling. I put some tupperware under the drip and waited for John to wake up. He awoke to our new motorhome- with 2 showers! Needless to say, depression set in...... We headed back to the dealership in Pensacola to see what they could do. They claimed to have fixed the leak, but found that the air conditioners were not draining properly (something beyond their expertise to fix). Added to the leak, the A/C's and a few other minor problems that we'd discovered in our day on the road, it also had an inordinate amount of creaking. Well, we decided to schedule a factory visit immediately after the Cajun rally.

The Crawfish rally was wonderful. The "live crawfish race" was not to be missed. Imagine an entire group of adults circling around 6 live crawfish with numbers painted in nail polish on their backs- yelling for their crawfish to make it to the outer edge of the circle. Unfortunately, they opted not to do the chicken shit contest—where they have a live chicken walk over numbered squares. Everyone bets on one of the squares. The winning square is the one receiving the chicken dump.

And, then there's the crawfish!