Sleepless in Colorado

On Saturday Ron and I fell victim to mechanical failure. A 40 ft Class A motorhome made by Newmar with 25,000 miles on it was dead. After sitting on the highway in Colorado for 4 hours accompanied by 6 working dogs, we got towed. We had no idea what was in store for us following that. We spent the first night on the side of the railroad tracks at an old grain mill. The town we are in basically shuts down on Sundays, so now we wait. Monday arrives and we hit the service center only to find out the mechanic we arranged to see doesnt work that day. Now we wait. After a few hours of sitting in a parking lot they agree to see us. They dont have the proper tools for the diagnosis, so now we wait. They dont have a big enough shop to repair the engine, so now we start calling around. Hundreds of calls and hundreds of no’s. We cant stay at the grain mill so we move on. We move in to a state park. At least there we could plug in and start once again making phone calls. We are now moving into Tues,so far theres no hope.  We finally find a guy who is willing to diagnose, we pack up and head across town. He does a very thorough work up, we start feeling hopeful.. but no his shop is not big enough. We know we need a new engine now by this point, but we have no one. The mechanic calls another shop and he says he can help! Off we go to another shop. We arrive at the other shop, of course the man we need is off to lunch. Like why would anything be easy? Meanwhile we wait... shop #1 calls the warranty company.. things  really start to go south now. Because we changed shops, the warranty company needs a new analysis on the engine. Sigh... ok ... but we can’t camp at this shop.. the new mechanic finally returns and tells us to come back the next day. Off to find another place to camp. We arrive to find this to be a filthy expensive RV Park. It will have to work, it’s close to the new mechanic. Being stranded is one thing, being stranded with 6 dogs is another.  The dogs patiently sit in crates 5-6 hours at each mechanic shop and are ready to offload. We set up an ex pen and fill it up! The maintenance man comes by to tell me no dog corrals.. I’m already to the tipping point and this just does it. After the altercation he agreed to let us stay. We decided we needed a rental car, so we started on that. We call 7-8 rental companies, who claim they are freshly sold out. Really? Ron gets on Expedia and finds one right away and saves us money! Who knew?!! Wed can’t come quick enough.. I mean we have a mechanic, we have an extended warranty, we have a car.... what could go wrong? Ha ha ha.. well-we arrive back at the shop for engine analysis. We wait.. we decide to go walk Frank and watch the train go by! An old man makes a valiant effort, he crosses a large parking lot to come chase us out of the alley says we can’t look at the train that’s a $10,000.00 fine because the road we are on belongs to the railroad.. what? There are cars on this road... whatever go away. The diagnosis really doesn’t happen, the mechanic knows the issue, so he calls the warranty company. USA Travel Care..the warranty company should change their name to USA Travel Doesn’t Care. They tell the mechanic they need to inspect the engine themselves.. they didn’t know this on Tuesday? The inspector could be out in 2 days. 2 days? We don’t have 2 days, time is of the importance, we have a ranch caretaker who has had to extend her stay, and things are starting to go south at home. I decide to make a call. The woman on the line could care less about our dire necessity to get moving forward with repairs. She gets annoyed with me and transfers me to Dennis the supervisor. Dennis says well because you refuse to camp at the shop we won’t schedule anything.. refuse? It’s totally not feasible, there’s no where to park. I mean really are we the first in America to have complete engine failure with dogs on board?  Doubt it. Dennis after belittling me, and insulting my intelligence, agrees to call the inspector and ask for an emergency inspection; you know one that happens in a timely manner. Dennis calls back.. sorry the inspector is booked for 2 weeks. Totally at a loss for words, I just say thanks, and hang up. Back to the state park, where we started  last Sunday. We get a spot (luckily) but of course you have to reapply for a new spot the next day, you can’t stay in your spot, because someone else wants it. Of course they do. So you sit and you wait in the ranger station to see if there’s another spot available.. ahh we’ve become fairly good sitting and waiting. Ron returns, we break down camp for the 6th time in 6 days to move over a few spots. Here we sit. 
The purpose of my begging is to get the money to have the rig towed home. The cost to do this is not covered and the towing we do have coverage for will get us 100 miles. It’s 800 miles Home and it’s $5000 to get there. Ron and I have never asked for money in our lives together, but sadly and humbly it has come down to this. We are exhausted mentally and have exhausted all our options. Thank you for reading.

All money will be refunded if not used. Once we get it home we can go forward with waiting on the inspector and get repaired!

We hope