On our way...
Like so many others, our kids are growing up and moving on with their lives. Happy to see them grow and become independent, but sad to see that part of life ending. At this point, my wife and I kind of looked at each other and asked, “what’s next”? Great question. I grew up RVing and always enjoyed it and thought it would be cool to do in retirement, but my wife was a hard sell. Strangely enough, it took hurricane Matthew hitting us in Florida to help my cause.
As the hurricane bore down on us, we (along with thousands of my fellow Floridians) had to decide to stay put or evacuate. Having pets, it is difficult to find places to go besides an emergency shelter or hotel hundreds of miles away. At that point, I told Lisa that if we had an RV, we could just pack up and go – kids, dogs, bird and rabbit. We decided to hunker down…
The hurricane passed – lots of damage – no power or water for a week. Another opportunity to mention if we had an RV, we could at least have a cool place to sleep and take a shower. We started the RV search the month after the cleanup 😊.
What to buy? New or Used? Class A or C or 5th wheel? After many discussions, going to RV shows, wearing out my fingers on Google and looking at about everything for sale in 200 miles radius we decided on a used Class A diesel. Growing up, my family had a Class A and it was a great way to travel so I think I certainly leaned that way.
During our first months of being “newbie” RVers, I discovered a few things. First, RVing was VASTLY different to what I remember as a kid. In those days, we had an old 25-foot Banner RV on a Chrysler chassis that rode like a tractor. The new RV rides like a town car and probably has as much square footage as the house I grew up in (not really...). With all the advantages I assumed there were going to be some disadvantages. I was right. This new RV is a complex rig. I quickly came to the determination that if you don’t like fixing things or understanding how they work your rig will spend a lot of time at a repair facility.
The first six months was us literally learning the systems, operation and monitoring of this new house on wheels. Fortunately, we had the bonus of being able to park the rig at our home and plug it in to 50 amps – helps the learning process and gave me a ‘man cave’ to hide in from time to time and read the stack of manuals I had. We would take the new member of the family out for short trips, hoping our two dogs would acclimate quickly. One did… one did not… Oh well, time for the first vacation in the RV and test our plan. Off to Key West…
2 Comments
Recommended Comments
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now