After the final snow sometime in late March, we declared that spring was finally here. We had a few loose ends before we could embark on our next adventure, which would be back up to Boston to celebrate Easter with Ryan.
Sometime over the winter we had received a recall notice from Mercedes-Benz. Also, when we were installing the sofa cover, we discovered that there were no seat belts on the rear sofa. When we called the RV dealer to inquire, he confirmed that yes there were supposed to be three seat belts, and no they had not been installed, but they would get the part in two days and set up the service at our earliest convenience. We would have to contact Mercedes-Benz to service the recall.
We were excited to de-winterize the RV so we could take advantage of all of the facilities. We studied the manual, watched several YouTube videos, and researched several blogs. One very useful link was to Meryl and Me Hit the Road. It seemed fairly straightforward, so we decided to give it a try. We went to Walmart and got a funnel, bleach, and a 50’ potable hose (the 25’ hose that came with the RV would never reach the driveway). All seemed to be going well—we could smell bleach when we let the faucets run and flush out the antifreeze—until we got to the step where it said to take the water heater off bypass. When Karl finally located the valves, it appeared that they were already in the de-winterized position, which explained why water was already coming out of the hot faucets. At that point the instructions were to leave the tanks over night and if we could still smell bleach the next day we were good to go.
So Thursday before Easter we were at the Mercedes-Benz service center for about and hour while they fixed the recall item (actually there were two, but only one was a safety issue.) We tackled the de-winterizing Thursday afternoon. Then on Good Friday we made the hour-long drive to the RV dealer to get the seatbelts installed. While we were there we learned that it is not necessary to bypass the water heater when winterizing, so that explained that. They also dumped the grey and black tanks, which now contained a combination of antifreeze and diluted bleach. When we got home we refilled the fresh-water tank.
We spent Saturday stocking up the pantry for our trip Sunday, as well as pillows, comforters, and towels in case we decided to stop overnight. We also decided to remove one of the second row Captain’s Chairs to allow more floor space. The only problem was there were four large bolts sticking up about 2 inches. We ended up mounting a 12 x 12 storage crate to the bolts and used it to store leashes, dog treats and other supplies for the dogs.
