Aloha . . . it means both goodbye and hello. The time has come to say goodbye to our Holiday Rambler. It has served us well. Well, that is, except for my aching back from sleeping on the jack knife sofa. Yes, I could have put the kids on the couch. Everybody asks why I would let two kids have the bedroom while my husband and I sleep on the couch. I chose to give them the bedroom for two reasons: one, it's easier to contain the mess if they have their own space; and two, my oldest daughter's scoliosis causes her enough back pain already.
We also tend to stay in one place for months at a time, so for us a
fifth wheel or travel trailer makes more sense than a class A at this
time in our lives. Originally, we expected to stay on the roads most of
the time, but life did not work out the way we planned.
So, although we have loved our motorhome, we decided to sell it. My back needs a bed. My requirement for the new RV: it has to have bunks for the kids as well as a "real" bed (not a sofa bed, not a jack knife couch, not a dinette converted bed . . . yes I know the "real" beds in RVs are generally not really real beds but they're close enough) for Michael and me.
We placed an ad on Craigslist and five days later the motorhome officially belongs to a lucky new owner. Lucky, well yes, it's a great RV! It's just better designed for two people than for four people and a large cat.
I've heard people say that you buy an RV, learn what you really need, and then buy another one. After all the research and all the careful planning we did, I though that our family would get it right the first time. We didn't. I'm not so sure right now that we got it right the second time either, but once again we bought what we could afford.
And tomorrow the time will come for our family to say hello to our lovely new-to-us Freedom Spirit 27' bunkhouse travel trailer. It does meet both items on my list of requirements--a bed for Michael and me and bunks for the girls--as well as our other extremely important needs: all the major systems work, there have been no leaks or structural damage, and it is affordable. However, at just 27', it does not meet my two very important reasonable wants: adequate storage and a little breathing space.
No doubt it will be tough to organize our belongings into such a small space. The motorhome had about 400 square feet of space plus tons of bays for all our stuff. The travel trailer has only about 216 square feet of space and two spaces underneath to cram in what we can without exceeding the weight limits for cargo. We also have the back of a long bed Dodge Ram to store things we are not using at the moment, but at this time we have not yet managed to buy a topper to contain those items securely.
Fortunately, we are up for the challenge of tiny house (RV) living. We prefer to do most of our living outside anyway.
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