QUALITY

Though we have never been big fans of living large, we have always felt that if one didn’t study their purchases for it’s longevity and keeping it’s serviceability, we would be shorting our selves in the long run by not spending enough money initially.

Or in Ouachita mountaineer’s terms, ya’ gets what ya’ pays fer’.

Such an example came home to us today while getting ready to go to the lake. Let’s back up and get the whole picture.

In December of 09’, we were working for Amazon dot com in their Coffeyville Kansas facility, and camped at Elk City Lake State Park. A beautiful setting with wide, wonderful campsites. We just loved it !

December had been particularly wet and cold with intermittent freezes. As we prepared to leave just before CHRISTmas, we tore down our sun room and rolled it up neatly into our storage tubes. As a Norther was blowing in, we left out just ahead of the storm and headed south. Here is a look at the sun room and the storage tubes on the Jeep:

Beautiful campsite ! And it’s being paid for as part of our employment at Amazon.com.

Now, fast forward several months and thousands of miles down the road.  After Wintering up on Padre Island in South Texas, we are at home in Arkansas getting ready to go to Jugfest2010 at Lake Greeson. As we open the storage tubes a horrible stench fills the air, totally astonishing us !

It was exactly like the worst smelling black water dump station episode that you can imagine ! We have always felt that we had no control over the actions of those that had used a campsite ahead of us, so we always use a ground cover system at the entrance to our Oliver. This time it paid off big time.

There is no doubt that someone had a bad sewer spill at that site. Though aired out and dried well before storage, the ground cloth had became slightly moist from condensation while in the tubes. This made the at one time saturated with ground water, ground cover smell just exactly like the ground it had been on.

Thank goodness for the quality of the materials that Sewing Susan uses in her sun rooms ! After a quick wash in a trash can and hanging out on the clothes line, they are as good as new. The different looking items in the trash can, are some throw rugs that were stored in the tubes with the sun room.

The bottom line for us is, buy the best quality that we can afford.