Comes the moment of truth. Can we really do it? Will we really like it? What if we don't like it? Will we be able to do all the little things needed to live in a motor home?
On April 1, 2011, we loaded "Finally" with just about everything except the kitchen sink, managed to attach our car to the motor home, and ventured forth with the knowledge that God would take care of us, regardless of how inept we were. Our destination was Savanna, Georgia, about 300 miles from Winston-Salem and we planned to be gone for about 6 days.
Our good friends, Don and Anne Mumy, had invited us to share this trip with them. Don and Anne are experienced RV'ers and we hoped that with their help we would survive this trip and come away with the confidence to press on with our RV experience. We salute their courage for volunteering to "chaperone" our first trip.
Actually, they did their job well and the trip was more or less uneventful. There were a few noteworthy moments when our inexperience stood out. When we were preparing to leave, Don was helping me empty the tanks. He said that I should always empty the blackwater tank first, then the graywater, which would in effect rinse the drain hose after emptying the nasty stuff. We did this and noted that there was a place to hook up a hose and flush the tank. This sounded like a great idea so I hooked up the hose, turned the water on, opened the blackwater drain and waited for things to happen. All was quiet, nothing was happening until Lynn and Anne started yelling that water (not too clean) was coming out the front door.
Even I realized that the first thing to do was shut off the water. After some discussion, Don and I decided that we could continue with the graywater tank open, that somehow the blackwater tank would also get flushed out. This seemed to work because water was flowing through the drain and things appeared to be ok. This left only a small mess to clean up in the motor home. As it was, the water that overflowed was not the nasty stuff so there was no real damage and no lingering odor to remind us of the event.
What Lynn and I eventually realized was that our blackwater and graywater tanks are mislabeled. With this incident burned indelibly into my memory, I now empty the graywater tank first, then the blacktank and have not had a similar problem.
While this was going on, I made another rooky mistake. I was in and out of "Finally" and on one of my trips in I thought that I might as well close the slides while I was there. When I pushed the button to close the living room slide, there was an immediate screeching sound that obviously should not have been happening. I did stop right away and went out to see what the problem might be. What I had done (or not done) was fail to close the storage door over the sewage tanks and electrical hookup, located immediately under the slide. As a result the storage door caught the molding on the slide and pushed it out. Don came to my rescue and helped me secure the molding so that it wouldn't come loose on the trip home.
Despite these two events it was a wonderful trip. We saw a lot of Savanna, had lunch at Paula Deen's restaurant and just generally had a great time. Don and Anne were good company and we thank them so much for helping us start our great adventure.
With that first trip behind us, we were now confident enough to plan our second trip, a solo adventure, without a safety net, so to speak. We decided to go to a state park campground in South Carolina, near Charleston. This campground had no sewage hookup so I would have to be sure to empty the tanks before they overflowed, even if it meant unhookinng everything else and going to the dump station.
This trip went really well. We enjoyed a trip into Charleston and a beautiful campsite on the banks of the Edisto River. The noteworthy event of this trip was a severe storm front that pushed through the area and had possible tornados predicted. We knew enough to know that we didn't want to be in our motor home if any tornados were in the area. Before the storm front arrived, we checked out the local WalMart to see if it might be substantial enough to withstand a tornado. However, we kept watching the weather channel and it was soon apparent that the storm would be passing somewhat north of where we were. We praised God for sparing us this test.
Having been south on our first two trips we decided on the mountains for our next trip. We decided on a short trip to West Jefferson, NC, less that 100 miles west of Winston-Salem. My son, David and his friend Kelly wanted to join us and thought that this would be a good time to test our skills. They would camp in their tent and join us for meals. We would also tour the area together. This turned out to be a fun trip. However, it turned pretty cool that night and we didn't seem to have any heat. Tried everything and could get the heater to work so I went out and bought out a little space heater which did the job and is now available if we need it.
We visited the cheese factory in West Jefferson and Kelly fell in love with that. She bought several items and kept them in our refrigerator until time to leave. I was hopeful that she would forget them but that didn't happen. On Sunday, David and Kelly honored Lynn for Mother's Day with lunch before they returned to Charlotte.
Later, I learned that there was nothing wrong with our heater. The problem was that I had turned the gas off, instead of on. Since we hadn't tried to cook anything on the stove it wasn;t readily apparent that the gas wasn't on. Another lesson learned.
Our final trip was to Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, where I was a lay delegate to the Western North Carolina Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. Lake Junaluska has a nice campground that others in our church have used so we decided to give it a try. While there we decided to invite Bret Cogan, our pastor, and Fred Scherle, a friend who was also a delegate, to our new motor home for dinner. We would cook on our grill and add potato salad and cole slaw and eat out on a picnic table and have a wonderful time of fellowship.
When the appointed time came storms were brewing and cooking out was doubtful, and forget about eating out. Fred had another committment come up but joined us for a period of fellowship. After I took Fred back to his hotel, the weather turned even worse and the wind was blowing so bad that I couldn't even light the grill. On to Plan B. Luckily we had a pan that we could use to cook the chicken in the oven (had never used the oven and had to figure out how to light it.). Things turned out well and we had a nice dinner and fellowship with Bret. The whole trip went well and I can't report any other dumb mistakes.
By now, over the course of three months we have had 4 trips, made mistakes and learned from them. We have tested the waters and didn't drown. We developed confidence that this is something that we still wanted to do and that we could do. We are ready for launch.
Our next post will tell you about the preparations for the trip and finally events from our first few weeks. I made some adjustments to our itinerary, to show the actual towns where we have made reservations. I am still working on addding pictures on another page.
So long for now.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Finally, Our Dream Realized
Well, readers. What do you think? "R V Crazy?" (Thanks, Marriah.)
Having made up our own minds that we are not, indeed, crazy, we set about to making this dream come true.
First step, find out what RV's are all about. Lots of material available on the internet, but basically we learned that we had about 5 choices when it came to selecting a motor home, Class A (too big, like a bus), Class B (converted van, too small), Class C (just right size, meets our needs), 5th wheel trailer (never liked the idea of having a 30-35 foot tail on attached to the bed of a truck) and travel trailer (same objections as 5th wheel, except that it is attached to the end of the truck).
Next we checked out the safety rating of the various types of Class C homes (our preferred choice). This material is available by manufacturer and model. Having picked out what we considered the safest models for our purpose we set out trying to see actual models. We visited one dealer and saw what looked nice but the ones he showed us weren't up to par for our safety standards.
Fortunately there was a RV show scheduled in Greensboro about this time. We were dazzled by all the shiny new coaches but were still concerned about safety and like cars, there is a huge depreciation on new models when you drive them off the showroom floor. So, we decided we wanted a used, Winnebago Access, which was about 30 feet long and had a pretty decent floor plan (just like looking for a house or apartment.)
One of the wonders of the modern day world (in our old minds) is the internet. Don't know how or why it works but it does. We managed to learn how to conduct a search for the perfect vehicle. We found we could search by manufacturer, model, year, price range, location, private seller or dealer and many other features that didn't seem too imprtant to us at the time.
The problem now was timing. We planned for all of this to take place so that we could leave on our "Epic Journey" about the time we both retired in August, 2011. So we just kept searching and seeing what was available and by looking at this on a regular basis we could identify how long some of these motor homes had been on the market. It gave us a pretty good idea of what we did and didn't want.
Finally, it came time for us to consider actually purchasing a vehicle. After we got a preliminary approval for financing from our credit union, we began searching in earnest. We believe that God knew what we were doing and he put the perfect vehicle on the market at that time. We found a used Winnebago Itasca Sundancer (very similar to the Access but with more features) in our price range, located in Rock Hill, South Carolina, only about 100 miles from home.
So, on a bright, sunny but cool, day in January, we made a road trip to Rock Hill so see this perfect vehicle. We were thrilled with what we saw and immediately made arrangements to have the vehicle inspected so that we could be assured that there were no hidden flaws. This perfect vehicle passed inspection with flying colors so we made a deal with the owner to take it off his hands.
Now came the hard part. We went back to the credit union and had to jump through numerous hoops over a couple of weeks and finally got a loan approved. Next, we had to get the seller's loan paid off and the title signed over to us. Long story short, this took another couple of weeks and ended with another trip to Rock Hill on a Friday afternoon to get the seller to sign off. FINALLY, with all the paper work in place we were able to stop at the DMV in Charlotte and get our dream registered in our name.
Things still weren't going to be that simple. We still had to find a place to store it and have some repairs made. Again, we got past these minor hurdles and we were ready for our first trip.
When driving around locally, getting used to driving a truck and showing it off some, we got our first jolt of reality. Filled the gas tank (55 gallons) and the pump stopped at $75 and still was nowhere near full. Apparently the credit card companies or stations want to limit their exposure so they limit the amoun to be charged on a single purchase. (As gas prices have continued to rise, that limit has gone up and is now about $100 at most stations.) We had prepared ourselves for this so neither of us suffered a heart attack or even a panic attack.
Now we are legally registered, road worthy, and extremely eager to make our first trip. It was a long struggke but certainly worth all the effort. With these thing in mind, we christened our new (used) motor home with the name Finally.
Tune in for our next post which will tell you about our shakedown cruise and first solo and some of the lessons we learned, sort of the hard say. We also hope to be adding pictures of some our stops and the people we are visiting.
Also note, a page with our itinerary has been added.
Let us hear from you all.
Having made up our own minds that we are not, indeed, crazy, we set about to making this dream come true.
First step, find out what RV's are all about. Lots of material available on the internet, but basically we learned that we had about 5 choices when it came to selecting a motor home, Class A (too big, like a bus), Class B (converted van, too small), Class C (just right size, meets our needs), 5th wheel trailer (never liked the idea of having a 30-35 foot tail on attached to the bed of a truck) and travel trailer (same objections as 5th wheel, except that it is attached to the end of the truck).
Next we checked out the safety rating of the various types of Class C homes (our preferred choice). This material is available by manufacturer and model. Having picked out what we considered the safest models for our purpose we set out trying to see actual models. We visited one dealer and saw what looked nice but the ones he showed us weren't up to par for our safety standards.
Fortunately there was a RV show scheduled in Greensboro about this time. We were dazzled by all the shiny new coaches but were still concerned about safety and like cars, there is a huge depreciation on new models when you drive them off the showroom floor. So, we decided we wanted a used, Winnebago Access, which was about 30 feet long and had a pretty decent floor plan (just like looking for a house or apartment.)
One of the wonders of the modern day world (in our old minds) is the internet. Don't know how or why it works but it does. We managed to learn how to conduct a search for the perfect vehicle. We found we could search by manufacturer, model, year, price range, location, private seller or dealer and many other features that didn't seem too imprtant to us at the time.
The problem now was timing. We planned for all of this to take place so that we could leave on our "Epic Journey" about the time we both retired in August, 2011. So we just kept searching and seeing what was available and by looking at this on a regular basis we could identify how long some of these motor homes had been on the market. It gave us a pretty good idea of what we did and didn't want.
Finally, it came time for us to consider actually purchasing a vehicle. After we got a preliminary approval for financing from our credit union, we began searching in earnest. We believe that God knew what we were doing and he put the perfect vehicle on the market at that time. We found a used Winnebago Itasca Sundancer (very similar to the Access but with more features) in our price range, located in Rock Hill, South Carolina, only about 100 miles from home.
So, on a bright, sunny but cool, day in January, we made a road trip to Rock Hill so see this perfect vehicle. We were thrilled with what we saw and immediately made arrangements to have the vehicle inspected so that we could be assured that there were no hidden flaws. This perfect vehicle passed inspection with flying colors so we made a deal with the owner to take it off his hands.
Now came the hard part. We went back to the credit union and had to jump through numerous hoops over a couple of weeks and finally got a loan approved. Next, we had to get the seller's loan paid off and the title signed over to us. Long story short, this took another couple of weeks and ended with another trip to Rock Hill on a Friday afternoon to get the seller to sign off. FINALLY, with all the paper work in place we were able to stop at the DMV in Charlotte and get our dream registered in our name.
Things still weren't going to be that simple. We still had to find a place to store it and have some repairs made. Again, we got past these minor hurdles and we were ready for our first trip.
When driving around locally, getting used to driving a truck and showing it off some, we got our first jolt of reality. Filled the gas tank (55 gallons) and the pump stopped at $75 and still was nowhere near full. Apparently the credit card companies or stations want to limit their exposure so they limit the amoun to be charged on a single purchase. (As gas prices have continued to rise, that limit has gone up and is now about $100 at most stations.) We had prepared ourselves for this so neither of us suffered a heart attack or even a panic attack.
Now we are legally registered, road worthy, and extremely eager to make our first trip. It was a long struggke but certainly worth all the effort. With these thing in mind, we christened our new (used) motor home with the name Finally.
Tune in for our next post which will tell you about our shakedown cruise and first solo and some of the lessons we learned, sort of the hard say. We also hope to be adding pictures of some our stops and the people we are visiting.
Also note, a page with our itinerary has been added.
Let us hear from you all.
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