Trent is your driver for this post.
On Saturday, we signed all of the necessary documentation and officially took ownership of Clark the RV! Here we are at the dealership; miraculously, even the smallest McDowell agreed to be photographed for the occasion:
Then we drove Clark home and managed to get him down our narrow, potholed road. He is currently sitting in our rainy driveway just waiting to be let loose into the world (he seems to want to go somewhere sunny and warm).
But before he can go anywhere, we have more decisions to make.
Obviously, the first major decision we made was what kind of RV to get, and after several months of research we settled on the Class C style. Now we are faced with decisions regarding gear (e.g., water filters, hoses, voltage regulators, waxes and cleaners, etc.) It is both exciting and dizzying: there is gear we absolutely have to get, gear we could get that would help, and gear we might just want but don’t really need. Each option on the list brings questions. Do we get an entry level product that will get us out there but might need to be replaced sooner or do we get an intermediate or high-end product that will likely last longer and work better? We can’t afford to purchase a high-end product every time, but we are willing to do so when it seems right, especially when the higher end product is going to give us a much better shot at making full-time our long-term lifestyle.
Then there are decisions that have nothing to do with gear:
Domicile: What state are we moving to? We've already made this decision. We are moving to Texas. Texas will offer us a good base for winter and serve as a convenient launch location for travel east or west with the spring. We have several friends in Texas who can give us good advice about places to visit, things to do, and services.
How will we get our mail: We be using Escapees (https://www.escapees.com), an established mail forwarding service that can scan or forward our mail to us wherever we happen to be.
Route: We'll have to head to Texas right away to establish residency, get our drivers licenses, and obtain new plates for the car and RV. But where do we head after that? We'd like to head somewhere cooler than Texas. Exactly where will depend a bit on our jobs, but we are thinking of heading for the mountains of New Mexico and Colorado as we make our way north and up elevation as needed to stay cool.
Camping clubs: There are a number of camping clubs (Good Sam, Passport America, etc.) The basic idea is you join and get membership discounts at campgrounds and RV parks. Most of the discounts are only off the daily rates. We will mostly be spending at least a week at most places - so these clubs may not help us that much. There are a few clubs (e.g., Thousand Trails) that offer cheap stays or “free” stays, but those come with larger upfront costs. It’s hard to know what to do here. I assume the choices will be easier to make once we have stayed at a free RV places and learned what we like and don’t like in a campground.
RV upgrades: We are considering making a few upgrades to Clark. For instance, we'd like to get a hard-wired voltage protection (high and low) installed as well as a sewage tank flush system. We need both of these but could get by with systems that are cheaper and not installed on/in Clark.
For those who are RV veterans, what advice do you have regarding these decisions?
2 comments:
When you say it depends on where you get jobs...I thought you were going to spend the year driving around? What jobs do you have in mind? Will you stay somewhere long enough to work?
Oh..not where we get jobs, the variable that matters is our internet demands at any particular time as we are both internet based. Our work load and internet demands vary - sometimes by the day. If we are not that busy and have lower internet demands our path will be less constrained. If we are busy and need a constant full bar internet connection we might move less and stay closer to cell towers while we are busy.
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