The long weekend is over so our first stop today was a Ford dealership. We drove a few hundred km’s to a dealer on the outskirts of Adelaide. It was a very small dealership with a dedicated service manager. No problems again today while driving, but we are in the cool climate now. We spent quite some time with the service manager explaining our issues and also the same issue occurring just 12 months ago. We were very reluctant to leave the car for diagnosis, knowing that last year we were several weeks without a vehicle while this problem was rectified. Thankfully, there has been a computer update to correct our fault code and we were out of there within an Hour. Fingers crossed it doesn’t happen when we hit warm weather again!
From the Ford dealer we drove to a campsite not far from The Barossa Valley, Greenock Oval. Greenock is only 5km from Nuriootpa and camping on the oval is $5 donation.
My, oh my! Setting up the van today was our most stressful set up ever in our entire travel days! The ground was not level, but that has never been a problem in the past.
Our first choice of location was scrapped when level could not be achieved. We tried a second, still, we could not get level. The third time we positioned the van vertical to the field rather than horizontal. We used all our wood chocks and resorted to adding firewood under the legs to get high enough! That was too scary, so we tried a 4th time!
This time was worse! We finally found level by positioning the van on a raised dirt mound and using all available chocks. When unhooking the van from the car the van rolled off the raised chocks! Thankfully chains were still attached to the vehicle but were extremely stretched. We needed to hook back to the car to reposition onto the raised wood platform. We dropped the front legs to give extra support and take the load off the jack. While doing so, the van kept slipping off the timber and the front leg was bending sideways. We finally got the van safely back onto the car and was about to try and find our 5th new position when we realised the front leg had bent far enough that it was damaged and would not fold back. A good 30 minutes fixing that little mishap before we could reposition again!
This time, I did not care if we were not level. It had been several hours since arriving at camp and I could feel my blood pressure at its limit!
We are sleeping a little sideways tonight, but I don’t care.
Today has been a day full of memories, but not those happy, smiley ones. A day full of memories made from experiences, both good and bad.
We will sleep well tonight!
Barossa Valley
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