Choosing an RV

Our First RV, The Trailer – We now have a motorhome but I’ll get to that later. We were first bit by the RV bug when we decided to buy a trailer for vacations. I (Lanette) can’t remember why that came to be, but I was so happy. I have loved camping since I was a kid, camping on many weekends in Arkansas (in tents, by the way), and I never thought it was something Jerry would ever want to do. He has never been the camping kind of guy. He always used to say, his idea of roughing it was Motel 6. And even though the trailer was way better than Motel 6, I was still surprised that he wanted to buy it. However, I did not spend much time questioning it, except that, because I love it so much, I did have an occasion after we bought it, to ask him if he was enjoying it to make sure it wasn’t just for me.

At that time we did not have anywhere in our heads the idea of ever doing it full time. We paid $7000 for a used trailer, financed a pickup truck to pull it and began taking it out for weekend trips. The idea was that it would have many benefits: it would be cheaper than renting hotel rooms, we didn’t have to pack stuff into and out of a hotel room, we could save money on eating out because we would have our kitchen with us, we could take much more with us because we have a traveling house to put it in, and bonus…we love the outdoors!

Well, we ended up loving it! Sitting outside under the stars, relaxing, away from hassles of home. We were always sad to go back home to work. I can remember always being very bummed on the drive home. Of course, this was always the case even before the trailer. I always dreaded coming home and getting back to work after vacations away. But with the trailer it was even better! We had all the benefits of home (food, extra clothing, everything) right there with us. And instead of sitting in a hotel room, we were either enjoying the outdoors, or sitting in our home away from home!

I wondered at first if I would hate the packing and clean up of the trailer, especially the set up of the trailer (hooking it up to the truck, backing it into the sites, leveling it with blocks, etc.), but the payoff was way worth it.

The Motorhome – Then it happened! We were sitting outside enjoying the outdoors one day at a campsite in Chula Vista, CA. We were raving about how awesome that felt, relaxing there on our lawn chairs outside the trailer, and Jerry asked the question, “Why wouldn’t we want to do this every day of our life?” Well, the answer was that there was no reason for us that we would not want to do that. In that same conversation we talked about what type of RV would we want if we were going to do that (trailer, fifth wheel, motorhome). Many things go into that decision and everyone is different. There are pros and cons to each type of RV. But for us, we decided a motorhome would fit what we want.

The benefits of having a motorhome that were important to us and outweighed the negative were: You could tow a car which is much easier driving site-seeing than a pickup truck. While you are driving around, the passenger can fix food, or go take a nap, etc. It’s much easier maneuvering in and out of campsites. Much easier setting up, not having to set up on blocks to level (our motorhome has hydraulic jacks for leveling. Easy Peasy). And now that we have perfected the best hook up for the car, it’s much easier hooking up the car than hooking the trailer to the truck.

We have had our motorhome, a Winnebago Vista 31 ft., for a few years now and have done many renovations to it to make it just what we want (furniture, driving enhancements, solar, etc.) and don’t have any desire to change and get something different. Many people change RVs often as their needs and wants change, and I suppose that it is possible that we may do that some day, but I don’t expect it.