A Shiny New Blog, this one about our RV adventures.
Ta-Da!!
First up, how we got to where we are today! A long, short story!
The beginnings of our RV adventures start for me way back in the late 1970s when my life was airplanes and motorcycles. I bought a "Time-Out" brand two-sleeper folding tent trailer for motorcycle and small car use from the local Suzuki motorcycle dealer as it went out of business. The company actually still makes the larger four-sleeper version, much different than the four-sleeper I ultimately owned.
But this two-sleeper version was all they made back then. I had paid $600.00 for my first Time-Out; it was brand new. A lot of money in 1978 and I had to make payments! I just looked and see the new versions start over $3,500.00!!!
Before that, my motorcycle trips were staying at motels or with my friends, with ground tents. I started with an inexpensive "pup-tent" and moved up to a "Eureka" brand tent with aluminum frame poles and a separate rain-fly outside cover. That tent was over $100.00. Good quality, while available for less today, was pretty expensive back then.
As a kid, my family never did any camping, so when I began taking long rides with my motorcycling friends, which was my travel style, I quickly found I didn't like sleeping on the ground! This is, of course, years before the plethora of choices in gear to make life more comfortable while tent camping was available. But I never went back to on-the-ground tents except for one trip.
The Time-Out was off the ground sleeping and was excellent sleeping! A 3-foot by 5-foot box that opened up with the top and one side becoming the floor with about 7 plus feet by 5 feet of the tent with a 6 1/2 foot tall center height. Room to sleep, stand up, you could set up the trailer on the parking pad at a campground and still have the rest of the spot for relaxing and such. Up off the ground on an always flat base with no bugs or rocks!
Right: at a weekend motorcycle event at the Ventura, California Fairgrounds in 1979. Me with my Time-Out and a friend and his more pop-up style of the motorcycle tent trailer. His was more convenient; mine had more room, except he had space under the sleeping area for his stuff. In the Time-Out, you had to make room for your stuff plus you! Same as now, a world of choices with compromises with nothing truly perfect!
Many years of motorcycling adventures, almost all taking the tent trailer. When we started to travel as a family, we had the two-sleeper that Stacy and I used, and the kids that came with us shared a small dome tent on the ground.
I was able to buy a 4-sleeper Time-Out from a friend when he and his family moved up to RV travel. We would then all use the four sleeper Time-Out trailer, and the old two sleeper trailer was just used as a cargo trailer to carry all of our stuff.
Left: From the same trip and my Gold Wing 1500 in North Dakota, towing the older two-sleeper now a cargo trailer.
Right: At a huge campground in Minnesota, the 4-sleeper trailer is all set up. The kids slept on the extension, and Stacy and I slept on the floor space of the larger section. This era of Time-Out trailers was still pretty much the same construction between the two sleeper and the four sleeper. The four sleeper just had a slighter larger box when all folded up for travel and the fold-out wing sections for the sleeping area. That trailer was a 3 1/2 foot by 5-foot box that opened to a 5 foot by 14 1/2 feet still with a 6 1/2 foot tall interior height! I recall when we stayed at that campground, we didn't get much sleep between the humidity and then after dark, the Raccoons that kept trying to open up anything they could in search of something to eat. They'd wake us up, and I'd unzip the door and chase them off. For a while!
Moving into the real RV realm.
The 1995 trip was the last family motorcycle trip. It was about 3-weeks and over 8,000 miles going from Southern California to Prince George, British Columbia, Canada, in an attempt to go to Alaska. When we got to Prince George, we talked with a group of fellow motorcyclists on their way south from their attempt to get to Alaska. The group had suffered several serious issues up to a cracked frame on an older Gold Wing from the rough roads, still legendary for the trip to Alaska even today with much of the Alcan highway now paved.
After talking with those riders, we decided that it probably wouldn't be a good trip with two Gold Wings towing trailers and two of our three kids on this adventure, even though we felt we were adventurous. So, we decided to angle Southeast through Canada as we headed back into 'the states' in the Dakotas. We went as far east as along the western edge of Wisconsin. Then went west all the way to the Pacific coast of Northern California, down the coast, and back home in the desert of southern California.
After that trip and in the spring of 1996, Stacy's father talked us into trying a real RV!
So, with his help and 'expertise,' by being a "full-timer," for a few years, we got a 1976, "Roll-A-Long" class "C" motorhome as our first RV from a nearby RV dealer. It was 24-feet long with narrow bunks for the, then, still small kids and an over the cab main bed with an across the rear bathroom. The RV section was mated to a Ford one-ton van with a 460 Cubic Inch gas engine. A whopping 5 to 7 miles per gallon!! I knew very little about RVs back then. But life is a learning thing!
Over the almost 4-years we owned that first RV, we traveled to Canada, Kansas, North Idaho, and Wyoming for the 150th anniversary of the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show in Cody. Also, quite a few local, regional trips back then as we lived in Southern California.
The cab air-conditioner never worked like I wish it had, and the RV, even with its big motor, had no power up any grade! Leaving the high desert of California usually meant going through Baker, California, and through Las Vegas. There is an area called the "Baker Grade," a long uphill from Baker towards the Nevada border and Las Vegas. I recall many a trip in the slower, slow truck lane doing about 20-mph and worrying the thing would overheat as the temp needle often got really close to the hotline on the gauge going up the grade, especially in any warm weather. I recall on the trip to Canada, I started losing brakes as the pedal would just go to the floor, and nothing would happen to slow us down. I thought it was a leak in the lines somewhere, although I keep looking and never could find one, and started to bleed the brakes in the evenings at the campsite for the night. That fix wouldn't last a full day, but I learned to give A-LOT of space between me and anyone else and to pump the brake pedal. We nursed it along the rest of the trip, even with a few scary close calls, and when we got home, I took it to a shop and found out the brake "master cylinder" was failing, and even though we weren't losing any fluid we weren't stopping either!
Other fun and often exciting learning things in those early days?
It had an onboard Onan 4K Generator, which was very helpful on several occasions. While the cab air-conditioner never worked well, with the generator, we could use the roof A/C unit of the RV while going down the road, except it didn't work very well either! Hot days were HOT.
I have no idea what the BTU rating was, but I doubt it was very much, not anywhere near the 15,000 BTUs of even one of our 5th wheel A/C units. That A/C unit worked well enough, while stopped, and until we were in Oklahoma going to Kansas during a heatwave. One night while in a hot campground, the A/C started squealing very loudly on a sweltering night. We figured out it had to be the bearing was failing for the fan. And while in Kansas at Stacy's brother's house, when we got there, we got up on the roof and took the A/C unit apart to try and fix it. We had to try as we were dying because it was so hot then, in the low 100s! The fix actually worked well, no squealing, the rest of the trip that year, 1997. It just didn't cool very well.
On another trip, one just Stacy and I went on, in October 1997 to Bryce Canyon, Utah, we found out the heater didn't work very well either! We were fine the first night at Stateline, Nevada, our go-to weekend trip stop at the Buffalo Bill Casino, RV park. Now it is long gone!
The next night we made it to our campground, where we had reservations for the night. Overnight it got into the low 30s, and while we turned on the heater, it barely produced any heat out of the unit. We bundled up but hadn't thought we'd need all the cold weather gear as we would have brought if we were on our motorcycles, and we froze! Due to freezing, we explored the Bryce Canyon area later in the day after we warmed up, then headed back towards Las Vegas and warmth.
We used that motorhome until I had to renew the registration again and do what I hated most about living in Southern California, get a smog test! They were always stressful!
And then you FAIL like the Roll-A-Long did! I didn't give up, and we spent a lot of money trying to get it to pass. Then we found out that a BB pellet had been stuffed in a vacuum tube in the carburetor, and with that discovered, we were told it was going to at least a couple of thousand dollars to get it fixed and fixed right this time. It had to have been messed with by the dealer we'd bought it from so it could 'pass smog' so they could sell it. We never would have thought they'd have been crooks to make something pass instead of fixing it to sell it.
Oh well, a few months later and through some friends, we were able to sell it to some people that wanted to park it on their property as a guest house since it wasn't going to be legal to drive it ever again unless the engine was rebuilt. They just wanted the body, so they let us take out and keep the Onan generator and gave us a thousand dollars.
Moving on from a motorhome.
I'll be very honest in saying right here, I, myself, like trailers over motorhomes!
We did experience having to break camp and pack everything up to just go to the store with the Roll-A-Long. As with my motorcycle traveling days, I like just leaving the trailer at the camp and coming and going from there.
In early 1998 we bought a 24-foot long Terry travel trailer from a dealer in the San Bernardino area. I have yet to find any of the very few photos taken of that RV. But it had a queen bed up front, no slide-out, and an across the rear of the RV a dry bathroom. It was "supposed" to sleep, 6 people. NO WAY.
Two people in the queen bed, then maybe, 2 kids on the converted dinette and at least one on the jack-knife sofa. The "bedroom" was separated by the sofa crossway as a divider and a privacy curtain that closed off the bedroom behind the sofa.
We made the classic 'newbie' mistake when we bought that trailer. At that time, we didn't have a pickup truck, just an Astrovan and a Toyota Camry.
When RV shopping, the salesman can say a lot of things, you MUST have a good knowledge of what you are doing! We, at that point, did not!
The salesman said that our Astrovan could "easily" tow our just bought trailer! He even showed us in the manual where it said the Astrovan could tow "up to" 5,500 pounds, with the Terry trailer being real close to that weight, EMPTY!
So, OK, we buy and have them install a hitch on the Chevy Astrovan, and we went back another day to pick up our new trailer. We get the trailer, and just driving out from the dealer, you can tell the Van is really having some issues with the weight of the 24-foot long trailer on the back. Not just pulling but also stopping, even with electric brakes.
We lived in the High Desert of Southern California then, and to get home, you had to drive Interstate 15 up the Cajon Pass from San Bernardino to the Hesperia area or take the Highway 138 turnoff partway up the pass from the I-15 West towards Palmdale to get towards our home that way as there was a turn off from 138 when in the Phelan area. The Van is really struggling up the pass; I mean, REALLY struggling! We were in the slow lane and STILL slowing down slow big-rigs! The Astrovan, even with a V-6, just didn't have enough power to pull our new "lightweight" trailer. I recall about 10-MPH at the steepest part of the pass, the engine screaming, and the temperature gauge climbing! Then it is over the top and downhill into the desert area. Scary part two was really needing the brakes to slow us down, and they didn't work well at all.
Long story short, we very quickly bought a truck. A 1998 3/4 ton Dodge Ram Diesel quad cab long bed truck. We used the Terry trailer easily now. Stacy's father used the Dodge and the trailer for several months on a trip back out to Kansas, and we ultimately used it on a few short trips, Stateline Nevada, and a couple more trips like that. The Terry worked OK for two, not well for all of our family of five the few trips we all went on with the trailer. Just not enough room! With no slide out, if Stacy was cooking at the stove, along the driver's sidewall, there wasn't enough room to walk by, and if sitting in the dinette, you were stuck there. Even with the 3-kids being still small, it was cramped sleeping at best.
We try a 5th wheel for a few years.
So, in 1999, we traded the Terry in on a 1999 Tahoe 30 foot 5th wheel with a "super slide" on the driver's side of the trailer. The Dodge could pull that RV without problems, and it had so much more room. Stacy was hesitant about slide-outs as in this era, they were becoming the 'next big thing.' But when we were shopping at the RV dealer in Hesperia, California, and Stacy got to experience how much room even one long slide-out can give for living space, she was sold, and we bought it. Our Terry trade-in paid for most of the new trailer's cost.
We move back to a travel trailer, getting a nice-looking one.
We had and used the Tahoe until 2009. However, our last trip in the RV was the final drive from California to our present home in Idaho in March 2006. We traveled on many trips, all over our then home state area of California, a couple of trips to Canada, Idaho, and various others. One thing I still liked about the Tahoe was the floor plan allowed complete access to the kitchen and fridge even with the slide-out closed. And, being the 5th wheel, there was also easy access to the bedroom and bathroom. Very important!! These were, of course, long before the days of the Internet, or even cell phones! We usually went everywhere with the fresh water tank full; I wouldn't even consider that nowadays. The build quality was OK. It was a "sticks and tin" build as while there were fiberglass-sided RVs, the fiberglass was laid and not pressed as almost all RVs are now made, and those all fiberglass-sided RVs were a lot more money.
In 2009, on a drive back from a nearby town, we stopped at the closest RV dealer to where we lived that existed then. We looked at their inventory and came across a travel trailer we liked at a pretty good price too. It was a "Wilderness" brand built by the Mobile Home manufacturer, Fleetwood. 28 feet long, and it was a nicely equipped rear living floorplan with a large rear picture window and a dinette/couch slide-out. We bought it and owned it until 2014. It was nice. The only real complaint was in this trailer; if traveling and you wanted to use the bathroom, you had to open the slideout over a foot to be able to open the bathroom door, and when in the bathroom, it was so cramped neither Stacy nor myself could use the bathroom with the door closed all the way for the lack of legroom with the door closed. We have NEVER gotten an RV since, without making sure the bathroom was not only easy to get to when traveling but always had enough room to close the door when there!
Below: at a rest stop on the longest trip we ever made in the Wilderness, we took it from Idaho to California to spend a week with our daughter when they lived in the San Jose area. In this photo, we had just come down the mountains from Oregon into California on the I-5. It was very, very hot! Well into the 100s as we got lower from the high passes.
Above: On our trip back home after visiting with our daughter in California, and here we are at an RV park in Winnemucca, Nevada. It was very hot that entire trip and was there too. The RV's one air conditioner was on the entire time we stayed there, day and night! The trailer is there while our Chevy was being repaired as it had left us stranded at the RV park. Our first, and so far only, breakdown while on any trip. One part on the engine's "Fuel Distribution Module" had developed a crack and allowed the fuel system to lose pressure, and it quickly got to the point the truck couldn't hold any pressure and wouldn't start. We used our emergency tow service plan to get the truck towed to the repair shop; no Chevy dealers in that town then. And two more days waiting on parts and almost $1,000.00 later, and we were back on our way home.
Also, while on that California trip, we found out about a major factory defect in the Wilderness. I discovered it early on when we were filling up fuel at a gas station in the Tri-cities area of Washington state near the start of the trip. I filled the truck and looked up at the RV, and noticed a pink tuft of material on the roof. We finished fueling, and I climbed up on the RV's roof to see what was up there. When I was able to examine the area, I found that there was a gap between the roof edge and the nose cap of the front end of the trailer. The rubber roofing just ended, and about an inch and a half gap across the roof where the rubber just kind of fell into the gap. The tuft of pink was the roofing insulation being sucked out through the gap with the wind suction caused by the nose cap. I never found out how much insolation we'd lost. We spent the next few hours trying to figure out a fix. This was when I first found out about the "Eternabond" tape product. We bought quite a bit of it, but even Eternabond couldn't hold the roof, and the nose cap, together with the wind pressure, created traveling down the freeway. I kept fixing the problem several times throughout the trip.
When we got home from the trip, I tried to file a claim with the extended warranty company. Only to find out that they wouldn't help! Turned out that shortly after we'd bought our trailer in 2009, Fleetwood ceased making travel trailers and only made manufactured homes and motorhomes by then, and Fleetwood would not honor the warranty from the subsidiary that was no longer in business! The dealer we'd bought it from went out of business in 2010, and since they were not there to deal with the issues, the extended warranty was absolutely useless! The warranty mouseprint said ALL repair claims had to go through the dealer it was purchased from, which was impossible!
About a year later, we decided to get the RV properly repaired and found a nearby repair facility in Sandpoint that was willing to repair the RV after an examination of the problem. It took about three months and cost almost $1,200.00 to get the "bow" (the piece that had been left out during construction that was the part of connecting the nose cap and roof together) to get the bow found and replaced and the roof and nose cap repaired and connected.
We tried a longer travel trailer for a while.
So, moving on with RV ownership, in 2014, we traded in the Wilderness to purchase a Forest River Wildcat Maxx, 33-foot long travel trailer. Stacy and I went back and forth about what we wanted in our next RV. By not adequately talking, we got the Wildcat as a compromise we each thought the other wanted. The Wildcat had the floorplan of the 5th wheel in a travel trailer form. However, 33-feet is a long travel trailer and it still didn't have the storage of a 5th wheel!
The Wildcat Maxx in Montana on our summer trip of 2017 with our daughter and grandkids along.
OK, almost done with this long first part!!!!
With the Wildcat, I always felt and told several people as much. That as RV's go, the Wildcat must have built on a Wednesday with no one sick or hungover and by a group of happy Amish as the ONLY problem we had with the trailer on the first year of ownership was a loose water connection to the toilet. I had to loosen it and reinstall it, and that was it!
Still the 2017 trip, we were Boon Docking before we knew it was a cool thing to do! Here we spent the night at a city park near Havre, Montana. No hookups, tons of mosquitos, and a thunder and lightning storm came through right after dark. Quite the memories!
We were on the "Dinosaur Trail," a trip well worth taking if you have kids, grandkids, or just love dinosaurs yourself! Hopefully, many of the places to visit will have survived Covid and still be open! You tour a route of museums around many small towns in Montana and you get a passbook that must be stamped at each place you visit. The museums were top-notch, and we all enjoyed seeing the regional museums as well as all the dinosaur history.
Complete the passbook, and you'll get a certificate and a T-shirt to commemorate your achievements! Well worth it! It took us two summer trips to complete the entire route, 2016 and 2017.
We go back to a 5th wheel!
At the end of the 2017 trip, and as we were taking our daughter and granddaughters to the Spokane International Airport for their flight back to their home, we stopped by the regional Camping World in Liberty Lake, Washington.
All I can say is, even with all the horror stories that are out and about regarding shady deals and sketchy salespeople, from our unplanned visit that afternoon, and Stacy and I went back by after the airport drop off, we actually found a 5th wheel we liked, made a great deal and this purchase became the one-time best purchasing experience we'd ever had buying the RV.
We had a great salesperson, who was already saying she was changing jobs and we thought that was why she didn't mind bucking the system in making sure we had a great experience. We took a lot of time picking out the model we hoped would work best for us. We got a great trade-in price for the Wildcat Maxx, we got preapproved financing at a local credit union, and at a lower interest rate than Camping World could get for us, and had a no-hassle buying experience. The one time we did everything right, and it paid off!
Stacy blew me away when she said we should go for it and get the 5th wheel. I tell everyone that Stacy is our C.F.O. (Chief Financial Officer) and she really is, so if she figures it will work, it will work! So, what we purchased was a late 2017 model of a Jayco Eagle HT 5th wheel, model 29.5BHDS (Bunk House Dual Slides) with a great outdoor kitchen, outside small electric fridge, and overall good layout.
Photos taken from several of the "jumps" we watched that Saturday evening. I was pleased to get some good photos using my Tamron 100 to 600 Zoom lens with my Nikon D750.
As a private pilot, even though I'm not current and was priced out of aviation several years ago, I still love most things flying and really enjoyed this camp.
I'm hoping we can maybe do another night there, about 3-hours from home, in mid-September or October after it cools down again.
The week after this trip is when the heat was ON!!!! All across the region and has stayed on much of the summer, so far.
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