An Unexpected Move
Let me introduce our motor home, VGER. VGER is named for the villainous character in the first of the Star Trek movies. VGER has been in our family going on 15 years this summer. It (VGER was an it) was purchased at a Monaco Come Home Rally in Raine, LA. We traded in a 10 year old Monaco we had purchased as a used coach in the spring of 2001. We sold our home and moved into that used coach full time on July 7, 2001. VGER was purchased new, 1235.4 miles on the odometer when we took possession on November 14, 2003. Today it has 177,326.1 miles on the odometer.
From November 2003 until October 2010, we lived in VGER full time. Starting in the fall of 2010, we move into a mobile home each fall and move back into VGER each spring. When in VGER, we travel. A long stay is on the order of 3 to 4 weeks. Those stays are when we are visiting our children and grandchildren. Once a year we move into our children's neighborhoods and become neighbors for a period of time. In between time we follow our noses. We've visited 49 states and 12 provinces in Canada.
We have begun slowly remodeling VGER. Carpeting, lights, some furniture, plumbing and more. Some of the remodeling has been out of necessity some just to keep the coach looking modern. Our work continued this summer, right up to the time we found our next motor home. While at Gillette, first at the Monaco International pre-rally and finally at the FMCA Convention, we purchased a 2015 Monaco Dynasty. The Windsor is up for sale, look for the ad in the Family RV'ing Magazine (FMCA) January issue.
We transferred the license from the Windsor to the Dynasty, VGER lives on. Since the purchase we have put 4500 miles on the Dynasty and are enjoying many of it's features. There is a trade-off when moving from a 40' coach to a 45' coach. The two are not directly comparable as they are of a different age.
Right away we realized that the relative frugality of the Windsor was dramatically different from the Dynasty. Fuel mileage dropped from 8.3 with the Windsor to 6.5 with the Dynasty. That was no surprise, I figured it might even be lower. The Dynasty has an Aqua-Hot for hot water and heat. Both run off the fuel tank as does the generator. With the Windsor only the generator shared the fuel tank. With all these uses for the diesel fuel, I have lost the ability to get a true mileage performance figure.
Due to the demand for electric, we have an induction cooktop, the Dynasty really needs to be plugged in regularly. The generator will run things but using the generator extensively is an expensive proposition. The water and waste tanks are roughly the same size as the Windsor but the water usage in the Dynasty is going to be greater. The toilets use significantly more water with each flush. The shower has a rain shower head which is a big water user. That means we will have to be hooked up every two or three days. With the Windsor we were able to go close to a week without hook-ups and longer if we really needed to stretch it.
When we pulled up to our home at Sandpipers Resort in Edinburg, Texas we faced another challenge. Our parking space is adjacent to our mobile home. The driveway barely accommodated the length of the Windsor with our toad parked behind. I knew that and planned to park the toad cross-way in the driveway, that worked fine. We also had to maneuver a longer coach onto the driveway. The park road is fairly narrow and there is no way to run off on the opposite side. We always had to make three or four passes to jockey the Windsor into the driveway. I didn't even know if we could get the Dynasty into the driveway. As it turned out, we made it, a few more passes than the Windsor. With all the slides open we have about 6 inches between the Dynasty and the roof of the mobile home. Whew! That is close.
Surprisingly, the space in the storage bays is less in the Dynasty than the Windsor. Some of our gear made the trip home in the toad rather than in the storage bays. We'll go through some winnowing of our gear before departing next spring. All in all we are quite happy with our new VGER and as we get to know it better I'm certain we'll continue to look back to the Windsor with many happy memories while enjoying the luxury of the Dynasty.
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