Yesterday, we took a huge step towards our dream of an extended trip around the country. Ever since we came up with this crazy idea, we've been eyeing every RV on the road, considering what we liked and disliked about each one.
To break it down, RVs come in different classes. The A class RVs are your big, bus types. These were never part of the conversation for us. Class Bs are the van style. We liked the smaller, car-like nature of those, but found them a little small for a trip that should last us about a year. What you see here i s a Class C. Class C's built on pickup truck frames and usually feature the above the cab look. These have been our favorite ever since we started ogling RVs on the road. Other options are either travel trailers, fifth wheels (like a trailer but the front end sits in the truck bed), or truck campers. All of which would have required us to purchase a truck as well.
Our RV:
Our new RV is a 1991 Itasca Spirit. It runs on a V6 Toyota engine. While it may lack a little in the power department, it should make up for in fuel efficiency. It's coming with over 200,000 miles on it already, but a new engine was put into it about 60,000 miles ago. The interior and exterior were recently redone as well.
For now, the RV is staying in the driveway at Andreas's mom's house in Bellevue. (Thanks Jutta!) We will eventually be looking for other places to store it. There a few upgrades that we want to make this summer, but mostly we are just looking forward to take it out on a few short trips to see how it goes.
The first thing that we are thinking about, is the fact that the previous owner took out the generator. This isn't a huge deal because the only thing that that is really used for is powering the AC. Which we might want, but it really depends on where we are. Everything else can either be used off of a 12 V battery that charges when the RV is plugged into campground power or when driving, or they run off of liquid propane. However we are really looking forward to trying to outfit the RV with some solar panels. We are actually watching videos on solar upgrades at this very moment. We've been looking into a lot of different options and thinking about what the best option is for us. Definitely expect a future post about how that goes.
Eventually we would also like to upgrade the sound system. The current system has a cassette player and a radio, but the speakers are terrible. The music gets really choppy when the volume gets turned up even to a reasonable volume. We don't need to have a fancy stereo system but Kathleen loves Audiobooks and it would be nice to be able to listen some books and a look of music over the year.
Everything else we have in mind at the moment is pretty minor. At the moment there is a twin sized sleeping space in the overhead loft, so that there is more headspace in the cab. I'm having a hard time explaining that in words. But there is room to have a bigger mattress in that space. We're thinking we might try to get two twin mattresses to put side by side so that we can stack them to still have the space while driving.
There are also a few maintenance things we need to take care of, like the fact that the right back blinker just went out. But they are all very minor. And we're looking forward to figuring out how to fix all these sorts of problems on the road. We spent a while yesterday going more into depth about all of the parts of the RV and learning our way around it. In addition to all the YouTube videos we've been watching. Thank goodness for YouTube.
I think that's about all we have to say for now. Friday was officially our negative first wedding anniversary, which puts yesterday at one year before we plan to take off and start our adventure! We are incredibly excited for it, and it's great to be able to do some tangible preparations!
Next Steps:
For now, the RV is staying in the driveway at Andreas's mom's house in Bellevue. (Thanks Jutta!) We will eventually be looking for other places to store it. There a few upgrades that we want to make this summer, but mostly we are just looking forward to take it out on a few short trips to see how it goes.
The first thing that we are thinking about, is the fact that the previous owner took out the generator. This isn't a huge deal because the only thing that that is really used for is powering the AC. Which we might want, but it really depends on where we are. Everything else can either be used off of a 12 V battery that charges when the RV is plugged into campground power or when driving, or they run off of liquid propane. However we are really looking forward to trying to outfit the RV with some solar panels. We are actually watching videos on solar upgrades at this very moment. We've been looking into a lot of different options and thinking about what the best option is for us. Definitely expect a future post about how that goes.
Eventually we would also like to upgrade the sound system. The current system has a cassette player and a radio, but the speakers are terrible. The music gets really choppy when the volume gets turned up even to a reasonable volume. We don't need to have a fancy stereo system but Kathleen loves Audiobooks and it would be nice to be able to listen some books and a look of music over the year.
Everything else we have in mind at the moment is pretty minor. At the moment there is a twin sized sleeping space in the overhead loft, so that there is more headspace in the cab. I'm having a hard time explaining that in words. But there is room to have a bigger mattress in that space. We're thinking we might try to get two twin mattresses to put side by side so that we can stack them to still have the space while driving.
There are also a few maintenance things we need to take care of, like the fact that the right back blinker just went out. But they are all very minor. And we're looking forward to figuring out how to fix all these sorts of problems on the road. We spent a while yesterday going more into depth about all of the parts of the RV and learning our way around it. In addition to all the YouTube videos we've been watching. Thank goodness for YouTube.
I think that's about all we have to say for now. Friday was officially our negative first wedding anniversary, which puts yesterday at one year before we plan to take off and start our adventure! We are incredibly excited for it, and it's great to be able to do some tangible preparations!
