Spring

1 April 2005

Welcome to Paul & Susan’s RVenture log site.

Since we’ve not actually left yet, this will be updated as we finalize our preparations to get on the road, but not on a regular basis.  Eventually it will become the beginning of our (b)log site.  

To recap: We owned a 26’ 5th wheel (“fiver”) travel trailer in which we spent vacations, weekend getaways and trips here’n’yonder during Ginger’s breaks during the school year.  When we decided to go full-timing, we thought we’d want a larger trailer.  Found a nice used unit the end of summer, ’04.  Turned out we never got it out of the back yard: events didn’t allow for us getting away.

We were headed out to visit a couple of RV dealers in the east valley (Phoenix metro) on the 29th of December, but there were a couple of things I wanted to check out regarding the Northwood Arctic Fox, so we stopped at Antlers RV  in Phoenix.  From whom, by the way, we’d bought the last two trailers.

Turned out that Dave had a lot of stock on his lot, one of which was the 29.5v Ginger had lusted over when we first saw one on the dealer’s lot in Silver City, NM.   We’d both regretted not buying that trailer, but the timing wasn’t really the best, and I’d been less than enthusiastic about buying new.  In hindsight, I don’t think waiting was the optimum choice.  

So we sat in this unit, Dave made us a great price (which may have had to do with the date being the last business day of the year…), and we decided that we just couldn’t not buy it.

We pulled it home in February, and have been puttering around getting “stuff” moved from the house into the trailer, and last night we spent our first night “living” in what will become our new home for the foreseeable future.

While it would seem that we’re just acting like kids on a backyard camping adventure (which, yeah, we are), it is actually sensible to make the first outing in the back yard.  Visit any web forum where Rvers hang out, there are loads of stories of folks buying a new or new-to-them RV, setting out on a long vacation or other trip, and having massive failures of multiple systems.  If something is going to break, I’d much rather have it happen here, where I’m near my dealer and nothing is critical, rather than 600 miles from home or the nearest Northwood dealer, when it’s our house that’s become suddenly unserviceable.

[Later]

Weekend went fine, all systems performed as they designed to do.  A bit of a/c, a bit of heat, water heater heats water, water pump pumps water, nothing fell apart.  We’ll repeat a couple of times, “living” in our backyard house for the next month or so.
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