We began simply with the idea that we had the perfect opportunity to take some vacation time between moving our home from Colorado to Maryland. First we thought we would take a few weeks, and then we said maybe we should go for a month or two, and finally it resulted in let's see if we could do it for a year. It's become increasingly difficult to travel by plane with Adam's oxygen needs, so driving cross-country and taking our home with us in the form of an RV seemed like our ideal situation.
The RV Search…
We started out thinking we could pull one of those trailers with our Toyota Hilander, but quickly found out that because of the 3500 LB tow capacity on that car that the only thing we could pull would be a lightweight pod. It had no storage and a bathroom/toilet/shower/closet all-in-one combination that was less than ideal given the equipment and necessities (food and clothes) we would need for one year. Next we looked at the "Class C" motorhome. This is the drivable RV on a truck chassis. The front cab feels like you are sitting in and driving a pick-up truck. The bed is sometimes above the cab, so we would have to climb up to go to sleep, and the front seats were tight like in a car. Again, we felt that this was not going to be very comfortable for long drives. Adam's a tall guy!
So, we ended up considering a "Class A" motorhome which is built on a bus chassis. Yes, I am now a bus driver! No, I did not have to get a special license to drive this thing since it's not a commercial vehicle, but we did take a test vacation renting a 32' Class A vehicle to go to Yellowstone National Park this past May. When you rent one of these vehicles you are not allowed to tow a car, so I drove that thing everywhere! Needless to say, if I was recommending this idea to any of you, I would not recommend going to Yellowstone for your first driving adventure. The roads are two lanes with no shoulder, so if I veered even the slightest off to the right I was in the ditch. Luckily I had some experience already driving a "big-rig" of sorts when my friend Meredith a few years ago when we drove a moving truck back from Atlanta to Denver.
Once, I felt like I was comfortable driving this style RV we began our search for one of our own. It took us about three weeks of constant searching, but we are now the proud owners of a 2003 Newmar Kountry Star 38 1/2' motorhome. The extra footage greater from the rental gives us a hanging closet, washer dryer, and a few feet of room behind the passenger's seat for Adam to recline. I always said I needed to be a country singer in order to live in one of these busses! It is complete with a living room/dining room, separate bathroom area and corner shower, and a bedroom fitting a queen-sized bed. It has three slide-outs so the space inside gets more comfortable once we open the slides. The living room grows to about 200 sq ft. We have leather captain's chairs up front, a sofa bed and recliner. It sleeps about four-five people given that the sofa and dining booth convert to beds. Granted, we don't have the fancy finishes a real country star would have, but it's very comfortable for us.
Sigh...so now that that vehicle was purchased, we needed a tow-car. The RV community refers to this as a "toad" or "dinghy." Most full-timers tow a car rolling on all four wheels so they don't have to deal with a car dolly. We discovered that we could not tow our Hilander because it's an AWD hybrid and would ruin the transmission. So, that meant we were off to research cars. In recent months it has been determined that an electric wheelchair will be beneficial to Adam given his energy deficiency and other medical needs, so knowing that we may have a 2-300 LB item arriving in the upcoming months we chose to purchase a mini-van. The wheelchair need led us to look at mobility adapted vehicles. Did you know that they make mini-vans with lowered floors and raised ceilings and installed ramps to accommodate people in wheelchairs? We figured a way around purchasing one of the highly converted, very pricey vans and purchased a used Toyota Sienna minivan. Of course, this was not without hassle either.
The “Toad”
I was convinced that we would end up with an American-made van simply because of the price, but once that first dealer put us in a Honda I was in heaven. I became obsessed that we had to get the Honda Oddessy. I even found the perfect used car on Craig’s List that had been posted only for a few days (so was still available) and was driven by a woman who loved it like it was her own child. She put down store-bought carpets and runners to protect the carpets for goodness sake! Just as we were about to purchase that car we stopped at the Honda dealer to be sure we would be able to tow it on four-wheels. They strongly recommended against towing it on four wheels. Even though we had researched and found this aftermarket company who said the Honda should be towable as-is, we couldn’t bring ourselves to buy it.
Luckily, there was a Toyota dealer across the street. The Sienna was as comfortable as the Honda and priced comparably. I was determined to buy a car that day, the salesperson said he had one that had just come in, it was top-of-the-line, but had not been cleaned yet. It would be certified by the dealer, but we had to purchase it right away to push them through the process. The car was a mess. It had a dumped out bag of Cheetos in one of the compartments and three dollars in another. Obviously it was a mom-mobile with two car seat indentations on the back seats. The sales guy promised it would be like new once we picked it up, so we took a leap of faith. He called us a few days later and said it was a bad vehicle and the dealership has decided not to sell it to us since they were not going to invest the money in certifying it. We were back to square one. So, it has now been one week of constant car shopping, and we thought we had the perfect one, not once, but twice! We were back to the drawing board. To summarize this long story, we ended up back at that dealer, who we felt was obligated to find us the perfect car at this point, and we ended up with something much better than what we were originally going to buy. (Sigh of relief).
You might think that we are now ready to go, but not quite. We still had to get the car and the RV connected. Keep in mind that every time I moved the RV to a new location my mom (since Adam can no longer drive) had to come meet me and take me back to my car so I could move it as well. (Thanks, Mom!) The tow connection was actually relatively easy but when we price-compared all the components we ended up going with two different installation companies to keep costs down. Nothing is ever easy, but you know what they say, “Nothing worth doing is ever easy” or something like that.
This is the point at which I hurt my back and was flattened for the next week unable to roll over let alone walk. It was actually good timing because we had a place to park the RV since it was in the shop. We didn’t know whether I had a bulging disc, or just pulled back muscles. One week of R&R and I was back on my feet, but Adam is now taking on most of the heavy lifting. We are still hoping it was just sore muscles.
Somewhere in the middle of all this we packed up and sold our house, moved out, stored our stuff in three locations, moved into the RV and took care of Adam and my health, and got Sequoia trained and certified to be Adam’s service dog. Needless to say, the last month has been overwhelming! I couldn’t have done it without my former employer’s flexibility, my parents’ constant willingness to help, and Adam’s perseverance to help me complete all these tasks even when he was feeling unwell. I have the best husband in the world. Now we are ready to begin our adventure.
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