A few weeks ago we attended an RV Rally sponsored by Grand Design for Grand Design Owners. It was held in the Jellystone Park of North Texas in Burleson. The campground has undergone a major expansion this year and they’ve added event spaces, a hundred RV spots and probably 50 cabins for various sorts. It’s next to big waterpark (not open yet) and has several pools, a fishing lake, a petting zoo (that damn rooster!), maze, huge playground, and a paint ball arena, as well as some hiking trails. They were also mere weeks away from opening a huge new pool with in-pool bar. The park is right next to I-35 so road noise was a bit much at times. The new RV sites are well spaced out concrete pads with fire pits, picnic tables, some sites had sun screens. Nice park for kiddos and grandkids.
The park was very empty until Wednesday. By Thursday over 120 Grand Design RV’s took over the park! It was very weird to see so many Grand Designs in one campground!
Grand Design had techs working the rally doing recall work and work that had been scheduled way in advance. Thankfully we didn’t have any recalls and we didn’t have any emergency work. The techs spoke a couple of times at dinners and gave some good advice on dealing with our RV’s.
We had never attended an RV rally before so I was interested in attending. I took the Friday off so I could attend all of the workshops. The workshops did not disappoint as the a rep from Lippert did talks on slide maintenance and info on leveling systems (the two big things that Lippert does).
Many of the Grand Designs have two different slides in their RV’s: one is more lightweight and has two electric motors that oscillate to bring the slides in and out. Takeaways: One: Don’t lubricate these slides. Two: hold the button coming in or out for 5 seconds longer than you think you need so the motors sync up. The hydraulic slights are easy as they have hard stops. Though several people did have horror stories about not paying attention to the noise of their hydraulic system as they did significant damage to their RV. It’s a good way to spend a lot of money.
There was a session on suspension system upgrades and why you should do it. Again, horror stories were passed around about shackles (these connect the springs together and to the frame) breaking not if, but when, it’s most inconvenient. I was inspired enough to order an upgrade and they should be installed next week.
I attended a demonstration of axel bearing packing. Not very hard, to be honest. I simply choose not to get that dirty and plan in advance for maintenance on them by someone that can knock it out in a few hours versus the day it would probably take me. Not to mention the tools I’d need to buy and store.
Another session that I was very interested in was the soft starters for the air conditioners. A Micro-Aire rep talked about these units and what it can do for you. The goal is to be able to run both air conditioners on just 30 amp service. So I’ve ordered the units and I’ll pick them up in Kansas City. I’ve decided to tackle this on my own after watching several videos with our exact model of AC and the units I purchased. The first one will probably take a few hours but after that I’m hoping the other one is under 30 minutes. We don’t spend a lot of time with 30 amp service but our big music festival in September can be brutally hot so having both AC’s working is ideal. If nothing else it may keep us from blowing the outside breaker.
The sessions were fine. The people were fine. They’re mostly retired and mostly retired military. There were a lot of things that were very patriotic and somewhat religious and those events/things didn’t do much for us. The meals they provided were fine but nothing special to write about. One couple put up a tiki bar that was quite popular and it was donation-only that went to the Honor Flag.
The local Grand Design dealer brought out some models to show off. It’s probably the first time that we’ve been tempted to buy a new RV. The model that we liked was a DL model that had a big bedroom up front and also a bedroom in the back and above that bedroom was a loft bed. We liked it because we could turn the back bedroom into a den/office. But like everything else with an RV it’s a compromise on what else you are giving up for the two bedrooms. And then we’d have to remodel it so it’s not just a pick it up off the lot and drive off. But who knows? Maybe in a year or two we’ll be ready for a new model.
If you have the opportunity to go to a rally I recommend doing so. You might find out that you love them. You might find your tribe. As I said I had a good time - it just wasn’t for us. If we switch to a Class A diesel I’d probably want to go to one of their rally’s to figure out what I don’t know too (though we have had one in the past). See you on the road!