Adventures on the Road: Buying our RV

My husband and I decided to sell everything we owned and buy an RV, a dream we both shared. After researching what to buy we decided on an Alfa Ideal 35ft 3 slider with the living room in the rear. Now we just had to find one we could afford!

As fate would have it, we found exactly what we were looking for in an ad on the internet. The only obstacle being that we lived in the mountains on the California/Nevada border, Truckee, Ca., and the RV was in Texas.

Still, everything seemed to be falling into place. In the months previous I had been flying frequently between Reno and Los Angeles to visit my Mother, and had accrued enough miles for a free round trip to Texas.

A plan evolved which included me flying out to look at the RV and check it out. If it was good, we would buy it.

Well, that probably wasn’t the best idea in the world, sending me to check it out. I knew what we were looking for, and this filled the bill completely. In fact when I got there and saw her, she had even more features than we had hoped for.

She had a double fridge, which was a real bonus, a bathtub (although small) and a washer and dryer! Since this was going to be our full time home, these pluses sold me right away.

However, I did not look beyond the surface, she appeared to be in great shape, well cared for. So I told Frank, yes, let’s buy it!

Our friend Greg had an RV, and he offered to drive Frank in his truck out to Texas to pick up me and our new home. He would then fly back to Reno on my free round-trip ticket, and Frank and I would drive back together to California pulling our new rig.

Yikes! What a way to jump in and learn about life on the road! Frank had pulled a small trailer behind a truck before, but never anything as large as a 35ft RV!

The first thing you learn when you begin traveling in an RV is the importance of not only setting it up to sleep in, but getting it ready for the road again in the morning is even more critical.

SO many things to remember! Everything has to be latched down, cupboards bungeed, everything moved for the sliders to close, windows shut, blinds up, TV antenna down, water heater off, vents closed, I had a list of 20 things to check.

We took 4 days to get back to California, Frank needed to get back to work. That meant opening and closing a total of 8 times. By the time we got home we were both exhausted and wondering whether we had made the right decision about this life style change we were about to embark on.

Our trip was very pleasant and eventful. Yes, eventful. The second day we had a blow out on the RV. Right then and there I knew I could relax with Frank behind the wheel because he handled it beautifully.

We did stop at the Grand Canyon for about 5 minutes. Pretty hard to do too much sight seeing hauling the rig around with us, and we were not spending the night in the area so we would not be unhooking the RV.

We also spent one night in Death Valley. We pulled in late at night, and were up early the next morning and on the road again. (After going over my list and checking it twice.)

We had a few other mishaps on that first journey of ours. The desk drawer behind the slide had come open during the ride, and when I tried to open the slide it tore off the front of the drawer. From then on I would always crawl over everything to peek at the area around the sliders to be sure it was clear for opening. Good thing too, because every now and then I would find something that had moved during the ride and needed to be removed before I could open the slides.

Once we got back home, we started the process of eliminating all of our excess belongings that would not fit into our new home. I must say, RV’s do have a lot of room in them for storage, but when you are living in them full time, you really do have to let go of all your possessions you have acquired over the years.

For me that was fairly easy. I have never been a pack rack or much of a collector. Frank, on the other hand, had years and years of life he had collected, and it was a lot harder for him to give up, which meant he had a lot more to go through than I did.

As far as organizing, Frank was the expert. That was his forte, his obsession, his life. Living with Frank was very orderly, organized. Even our junk drawer was organized. I never could figure out if it was from his military background, or from living and working in a single wide trailer for 11 years. When you are in that confined of a space, you better be organized!

So he was in charge of “organizing” our belongings in the RV, and I must say he did an excellent job of utilizing the space to the max with forethought of practicality and convenience.

The last hitch to us hitting the road was getting him to leave his job. He wanted to travel, but was hesitant to give up our income (we would be traveling on a shoestring with very little savings). He also felt too much loyalty; he knew his leaving would put a hardship on the company he was working for.

He was an Architect, but had never obtained his license, so he worked as lead draftsman for a small Architectural firm. When he was hired he lied about his age, so his boss, who had also become our friend, was baffled as to why I was so pushy to get Frank on the road. He thought Frank was only 55, when in reality he was 65.

We ended up working out an arrangement where Frank could continue to work part time while on the road, mostly because he was so needed still by the firm. I would have preferred he quit altogether, but at least we were finally free to begin our travels.

The morning we began our adventure was an exhilarating day! 5 months after buying our RV, we were ready to set out to explore in our RV. We climbed into our truck with Jake, our Golden Lab.

All three of us were excited and happy to finally be on the road! We ended up buying our friends truck that we had pulled the RV home from Texas with. The back seat was Jake’s spot, and he loved to look out the window at the passing scenery.

We were headed for Oregon, where we would be stopping for a short time to take care of some business. My son lived there, and we had registered the vehicles at his house, as that was going to be our home base.

Unfortunately, we didn’t quite make it. On the first day of our trip, our transmission blew. A minor (major!) setback. One of many to come!!

We saw so many beautiful sunsets, and gorgeous landscapes, and yes, we were even able to find an abundance of wildlife! While on our trip I discovered a passion for photography that was spurred on by what we were experiencing.

In spite of all the problems and pitfalls, we had an incredible 3 years on the road, we traveled across North West America with our RV, driving through Idaho, Montana, a day trip into Wyoming, along the coast of Washington and Oregon. We even made a couple of day trips into Canada (without our rig).