Well....

We are still at National Indoor RV Center... 

We got up early on Thursday in case they wanted to take Gracie when they opened at 8am. Carl got an email that was sent at 10:10 that they would take the rig in a half hour... we didn't see it until 10:30am and quickly closed up the slide that was open, brought up the jacks, and aired up the rig -- and waited.

Miss Kitty was probably waiting more patiently than the human occupants... she was in the sunshine...

... balancing precariously on the edge of the curved dashboard.

We got a phone call a little after noon that they would pick up the coach after lunch, and lunch break was noon to 1pm. So we had lunch, and moved the Jeep... and waited...

The porters came a bit after 1:30pm... Carl rode with them over to the service bay to talk to the technician and explain the problems. 

They started by working on the screening for the awning - they saw how tight the slot was and the technician used a screwdriver to pry it open (we could have done that!) -- and got the top of the screening cloth installed for us:

Initial part put in...

... most of the way in...

... all of the way installed.

That part of the shade cloth will stay installed on the awning; we then have another longer part that zips onto that piece to go down nearly to the ground. There aren't a lot of times that we need it, but it is nice to have when we do. 

Then the technician looked at the slide and Carl put it out just a little ways and brought the slide back in to duplicate the noise. The technician diagnosed it as a broken gearbox, figuring that a tooth is broken on a gear, and that the gearbox will need to be replaced. He said, however, that we could continue to use it. Carl asked him again, "It is okay to put the slide out and back in?" and he confirmed it was okay. Skip said that he would order the part and let us know when it came in so we could come back to get it installed -- our plan was to return in February.

They were finished a little after 2pm, and we debated whether to head out to Saddle Mountain to start our time boondocking in the desert. But, since we have not been there before and we knew we would want to check out a parking location in the Jeep before taking Gracie, we decided to spend another night at NIRVC.

Once we got parked back in the parking area, we debated whether to put the slide out or not. I recommended that if they said it would be okay, we should try it, because if it is NOT okay, it would be better to know that now than when we're parked somewhere in the desert... so... we put it out. 

Well... it was *not* okay. When the slide got to its full "out" position, it made another horrible noise, and then, it didn't move.

So, Carl went back inside, saw Skip, told him we were now parked in the parking area until the part can be replaced, and, so, we wait.

As we often discuss, none of this has taken God by surprise, and He must have a reason to have us located, at least for now, in Surprise, Arizona!