ClayL

We lived in NH for 18 years and just about anywhere in either state will be beautiful. If you stop at a visitor center you can get foliage maps that will be a great guide. However be aware that most campgrounds close on or between Oct 1st and the 15th and the color often peaks about that time, so do some research and perhaps make reservations. That's a very popular time of year to be there. If you can find an open campground in NH or MA there are tons of things to do. Day trips to Boston and the surounding area are good. The Freedom trail, the Constitution, Bunker hill and Sturbridge Village come to mind. Also the Boston Science Museum and the Boston Aquarium. Clam chowder at Legal Seafood and seafood at a lot of places in NH along RT 1. Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth NH is another neat thing to see.

You have the Ford chassis. My friend Bud has the same chassis and I have helped him change his oil and do a lube job. There is a cross member right under the drain plug and I had to put the drain pan on the cross member to catch the oil. Be careful when you move the pan off the member to empty it or you will get a lot of dirty oil on yourself. Guess how I know? If I had that chassis I would get a Fumoto drain valve with the tube option. That would make it much easier to drain the oil. I use a plastic bag on the filter when I remove it to keep the oil from running down my arm. I have never been able to keep the filter perfectly level when taking it off. I use a pistol grip grease gun and find that a flexible hose on it is a necessity. A picture of the lube points for the chassis is below:

I carry a small Sears 2.5 hp tankless compressor = 120 volt. It will fill up to 150 psi as I recall. It's reasonably fast for topping off tires. Mine are set at 90 psi. I have also used it to operate an air stapler and an air brad nailer. It's six years old and still works fine. I don't know where they come up with the 2.5 hp though. That motor is nowhere near the size or power draw of a true 2.5 hp motor. Must be marketing ballyhoo.

In addition to the info Tom posted you might find the domicile info HERE useful.

Four years ago when we moved from NH to SD, we stopped at an RV park in Sioux Falls that was recommended by Alternative Resources (the mail forwarding service we chose). Any of our mail that goes to them (such as state voting info) they send over to Alternative Resources. The address of the RV park is the address we used to register to vote. A drivers license sub-unit is about 50 yards from the Alternative Resources office and an insurance broker is next door. We handled everything in a few hours one morning and were SD residents that afternoon. For a fee Alternative Resources took care of our vehicle and motor home title work, registration and tax. We had not paid a sales tax in NH, so we paid a 1.8% one time tax on the present value of the motor home and car. I don't know where the 1.8% figure came from because the SD web site says it is 3% (unless you paid that much or more in another state). We handle the plate renewals ourselves on-line. Our car and motor home plates this year cost a total of $186. We still have our bank account in NH and our stuff stored there. Both of those things will change in the near future. For some info on setting up a domicile you might want to take a look HERE. The move to SD was a real winner for us. In NH the motor home plates cost us $1400 the year we moved. It would have gone down a little each year but not all that much. Our vehicle insurance also went down quite a bit. There are no vehicle inspection stickers required in SD and that's a plus. I got a jury summons and called the court clerk. She said to write "I am a full time RVer" on the summons and return it and she would take me and my wife off the list. We do have to go back every five years to renew or drivers licenses ($8 as I recall). The Alternative Resources web site HERE has some good info on taxes and other advantages of being a SD resident.

Like you we distributed stuff to the kids, sold some and gave some to places that could make good use of it. We dumped a lot more than you did though. Still I guess we kept too much stuff. We had a 10 by 30 and a 10 by 5 storage unit. A couple of years later we went back and got rid of a bunch of stuff and dropped the 5 by 10 unit. We can move a couple of items and get access to the middle of the remaining unit now. I had kept my business (six) suits and white shirts (14 or so). That was a mistake - moths got all but one suit and there was no way I was ever going to wear a suit or a white shirt again unless it was for a funeral or a wedding. That was some of the stuff we got rid of when we went back. I have one suit and one shirt with me now. The storage facility owner was a neighbor and he let us have a yard sale in the facility. We sold quite a lot of stuff there and on Craig's list - probably averaged ten cents on the dollar. After paying storage fees for six and a half years we now plan to get a couple of those big storage containers and move everything to DW's sister's commercial peach orchard in CO. I have an idea we will get rid of a lot more stuff then.

I guess I should qualify that and add - as much as a cat answers to a name - which is only when it suits her. She knows both names refer to her but she doesn't feel that it's necessary to acknowledge it with anything other than an ear twitch unless we are telling her about something that is interesting to her. This is the first cat we have had (she believes she has us though) and all I can say is cats are weird.

Her name suits her quite well. She actually has a first name also - Nicki - but she answers to both.

Regarding the aircard (cell modem) - times have changed as far as Verizon goes. They have Broadband Rev A in West Yellowstone, Quartzite, and here in Lake Cascade ID. In the last few years I have been impressed and pleased with the speed that Verizon has implemented the broadband network. To be sure there are still a lot of places with the slower 1X but they are fewer by far than they used to be and we usually have broadband wherever we go.

We are sort of “accidental†full timers. We didn't intend to full time, just wanted to take a three to six month trip around the country visiting friends and family and then find some warmer, cheaper place to buy or build a house. We threw away stuff, gave stuff to places that could make use of it and distributed as much as possible to our kids. We put all of the rest of our stuff in storage so we wouldn't have to go back to NH if the house sold quickly and it was still cold and yucky there. The house did sell quickly (in a month) and we found after about a year that we were having so much fun traveling and having no ties to a stick house that we decided to keep on full timing. We traded the 96 motor home in on a new 2004 with a lot more CCC, storage space and two slides. That was 6 years ago and so far we both love the life style. We intend to continue full timing until we get too old or too sick or too bored to do it any longer.

If you have a MSW inverter and you are trying to read the inverter voltage with a digital voltmeter some inverters can cause some strange readings. The waveform will change with changes in load and the reading can vary quite a bit. You really need to use a true RMS meter to get an accurate reading because of the distorted waveform.

A friend of mine had a grill that attached to a bracket on the edge of his motor home. He got rid of it because it smoked and greased up the side of his rig. We used an inexpensive Sunbeam grill (the small red one that so many RVers used) for six years but it just gave up the ghost and it's no longer produced. We bought a small Charbroil grill but it cooks very unevenly and won't stay lit unless it's on full heat. It's going to the dump. We just ordered the Weber Baby Q (Weber 386002 Q-100 Portable Gas Grill) from Amazon.com for $149 with free shipping. I found it online as cheap as $139 but the shipping was over $20. I added an "Extend a Stay" Tee to my on board propane tank so I can use it instead of the small bottles. It also allows me to use a portable external tank instead of the on board tank for the motor home. That way I don't have to move the motor home to fill up. Several places we stay don't have services that come to the RV park to fill the on board tanks.

Actually you don't have to go through the set-up process again. If you have the sensor off for more than a minute or so it will just reset to the pressure that is in the tire. That info is in the FAQ section of the manual.