Today was a day for taking care of François. We have now owned him for 6 years and put about 65,000 kilometers on him, and spent over 300 nights sleeping in him. He has been a good truck. There are a few small things that needed to be fixed and there was a Knaus dealer just across the border in Villach Austria. So our plan for today was to show up there and see if we could get some work done.
We did some shopping in a the two Slovenian groceries near our aire before leaving as Ton did some research and found that grocery prices were 30% lower in Slovenian than Austria. After stuffing the refrigerator full, she reckons we have enough food to get us to the Netherlands, though I know we will still visit some groceries before the trip is over just for fun. We also topped off the gas tank, and filled our propane. The diesel price was the lowest we have seen in quite a while €1.49 per liter.
The drive over to Villach was less than an hour on good freeways, and included an 8 kilometer (5 mile) tunnel. We arrived at the dealer about 10:30 and went in and asked if they could help with any of our problems. A couple would involve ordering parts and would take a few days to solve, but they agreed to look at a couple of the other issues. All of these issues are very minor, and almost fall into maintenance rather than repair. They asked us to come back at 1 pm after lunch and they would take care of us.
The RV dealer was located in an area with some stores, so we spent about an hour window shopping in several stores. But after being so happy with the price of fuel in Slovenia, the first Austrian gas station had diesel at €1.47, two cents cheaper than we paid in Slovenia. We then had a romantic lunch in the parking lot of the RV dealer before reporting in for our 1 pm appointment. They spent about 90 minutes taking care of a couple of the issues and allowed me to observe what they were doing so I could take care of it myself in the future.
We had picked out a giant campground on a lake near Villach. It took about 20 minutes to get there from the dealer. The check in process was enhanced by a charming front desk person. She said they were pretty quiet so she assigned us a waterfront spot. As you can see from the pictures we are right on the lakes edge. Sunset is coming earlier and earlier, and today it was around 6pm. By the time we got settled in, it was nearly sunset. We went for a walk just before the sun went down, but Ton got some really nice photos. This place is one of the best campgrounds we have stayed in and tomorrow we will have the pictures to prove it.