Well, we left our "winter home" of Bella Terra last Monday, April 16th, and headed east towards Tampa, FL. After a quick overnight in Lake City, FL, we arrived at LazyDays RV (where we originally purchased our coach). We have scheduled some repair work to be done while the warranty is still in effect. We had considered going to Red Bay, AL where the coach was manufactured, but the wait for service was too uncertain and we need to get things repaired and get on to our summer camp host position. On the upside, LazyDays has a fantastic service area for Crown Club members (which we qualified for when we purchased our coach)!
Above is the Crown Club clubhouse. It is here where you can spend your time while your coach is being serviced. They have a pool, lounge areas with big screen TV's, and they offer breakfast, lunch, and "Happy Hour" with drinks and snacks. All the meals are prepared by the onsite chef, Archie, and his staff who make sure that your stay with LazyDays is as comfortable as it can be.
When you are waiting for a service bay to open up, or be assigned to you, you are put up in some lovely campsites. Nestled between the trees on level asphalt pads with full hook-ups, you wait for your services to be completed. Your technician comes out around 9:00 am (after you have had time to partake of the complementary aforementioned breakfast prepared by Archie) and takes your coach to its assigned location for the day. In the evening, your coach is returned to a site (but not necessarily the same one that you left that morning).
The Crown Club has its own set of technicians and repair bays separate from the other LazyDays service facilities. Here the work is performed on mechanical aspects of the coaches. There are other bays specifically for woodwork/cabinetry and paint/body shop. There are even several bays where a 45' coach can be completely repainted! Our coach is the second one from the right in the photo above. Sometimes, due to the nature of the repairs, your coach has to stay in these bays overnight. When that is the case, there is a full set of hook-ups in the bay for your convenience. Water, electric, and sewer are all available to you. Obviously, satellite TV is not effective, but you can get a good set of digital, over the air TV signals from the local Tampa broadcast stations. As I compose this blog entry, we are sitting in the above pictured bay and have been here the last couple of nights.
The LazyDays complex is huge! There is a Cracker Barrel restaurant, Flying-J fuel station, Holiday Inn Express hotel, and a campground with all the amenities and well over 100 sites all on the property! In addition, there is the largest selection of RVs, from small pop up trailers, to towable or fifth-wheel trailers, to gas powered coaches, to the big diesel "beasts" all displayed in tree covered lots. Above is a glimpse of some of the gas powered coaches that you can feel free to look at and walk through.
Some of the more compact units on display. Notice the huge live Oak tree "dripping" with Spanish Moss. It's a nifty place just to sit under and enjoy the day. (There is even a park bench strategically placed underneath it.) If you are in the market for an RV of any size or type, this is the place to come. Beats driving around town looking at a bunch of units crammed together in a parking lot!
There are pedestrian walkways all through the area and in the evening, after dinner, we usually take Misty on a long walk. She loves to "hunt" the squirrels and lizards, we enjoy a nice stroll.
So, I'm not sure how long we will be here. I hope to be on the road by this time next week but we'll see. In the meantime, I will kick back, enjoy, and probably gain 5 pounds. Oh well, I'll work that off when we get back to Kansas!!
