These series describes our decision to purchase a new diesel coach and embark on a full time RV adventure for a minimum of one year. These articles, which will continue to be "in progress" during the course of our journeys, will document each phase of our RVing experience. We start with a series which describes the process of purchasing a new motorhome, and preparing for full time RV travel. Future articles will chronicle our "on the road" experiences in traveling the highways and byways of the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
Our voyage purposely has no rigid agenda. However, we do invite our readers to share this once-in-a-lifetime experience with us. We'll be posting a "general" itinerary of our travels for a "moving" 2-3 months into the future; and inviting your comments on places to visit, sites to see, and new RV parks which we might add to our list of "Favorites" (see below). Our starting assumption is that we'll ordinarily spend a week or two at each location we select, and use our tow car to tour the surrounding areas.
We look forward to having you with us...
1. Buying A Diesel Pusher: A mini-series which documents our search for the motorhome that we concluded would best suit our needs for full time RV travels. We take a close look at the "processes" of making a selection, and of negotiating a fair price.
2. Getting Ready for the Grand Tour: Even though we're keeping a home, our experience requires almost all of the same preparations as for those who sell their home and prepare for life on the road. We've read a lot about this process, but experiencing it provides another dimension which we hope to pass along.
3. Taking Delivery: Finally the day arrives, and we schedule delivery of our new motorhome at the factory. Closing the transaction offers up a few pointers. And doing a thorough check out of the new rig proves to be an almost overwhelming experiece. Here's what we learned...
4. Getting to Launch Time: Despite all we've read from our readers, preparing for a year on the road is a very complex experience, and needs to be tailored to each person's individual requirements. We hadn't anticipated nostalgia as one of the emotions we'd experience, but we suspect most RVers will find that too.
5. Surviving the Punchlist: Every new unit will have some items which need adjustment, attention, or fixing. Ours proved no exception. However, we were keenly interested to see how our list of items would be handled by the factory's service technicians. As we learned, it would be a mixed bag.
6. The RV Driving School: Okay, we've got the unit, and it drives like a dream. But do we really know all we should know about driving this 15 ton behemoth? We've driven other RVs several hundred thousand accident free miles, but we've concluded that to pursue our adventure properly, we'd likely benefit from some professional training. With hindsight, we're very glad we did!
7. To Caravan or Not to Caravan? We've long been aware that the commercial RV caravan is a favored mode of travel for many RVers. We've always tended to be a bit more "independent" in our travels, and have relied on ourselves for travels to such places as Alaska and Baja. However we've now "bitten the proverbial bullet", and as of this writing we will be in Mexico on our first-ever RV caravan. We'll write about our impressions fully on our return: But for now, we'd like to articulate the questions we have before starting out. We'll answer our own questions in just a couple of weeks, and replace this short article with a rundown on our experience. Come along with us!
8. The Caravan Experience: We published our "going in" attitudes. Now it's time to compare what we actually learned from taking a 16 day caravan tour to Mexico.
9. Some Reports on RV Service: Every RVer knows that being on the road full time with an RV means on occasional need for a service appointment, whether to address a chassis or house item, or simply to add an aftermarket product. We thought we'd keep a running list of our service experiences, and pass along the favorable outcomes we'd have. There will be some that won't make this list!
10. Report Card: After 10,000 miles on the odometer (we think it read over 10,000 miles...) we provide not a "product review", but our "Report Card" on the 2000 Country Coach Intrigue.
11.Reflections: After 8 months, we "close the loop" on all the new areas of the country we'll visit, and cross back into the Intermountain West. While the images and memories of all the "new to us" places we've visited are fresh, and our impressions of "full timing" are fresh, we think it helpful to record our reflections on the past eight months of RV travels.
12. The Club Rally -- And More: It took nine months before we could arrange our schedule to attend one of the Country Coach Rallies -- this one the annual "Class Renuion", the premier annual event for the owners' club. We also had an opportunity to explore some of the aftermarket products which are available for our unit.
13: A Three Year Report Card: Although we'd planned to end this series with the last items, we revisit the issue of our experience with our "new" unit after three years of ownership, and some 57,000 miles on the road. Many of our readers have expressed interest in what a unit is really like after 2-3 years, and we hope this addendum can provide some helpful feedback.