Open House – Update

Lola at her coming out party

We had our open house this past week where people from Dan’s work were invited to stop by and visit, check out Lola and what one of these RV things looks like.  A small but enthusiastic group of folks dropped by over a two hour period.  Most were amazed by the size, both outside and inside, of the coach.  The idea of slides/rooms was difficult to comprehend for some.

The open house was held on a clear but cold Tuesday, one week from the sale/closing on our house.  It was nice to take a break from clearing out the house to show off Lola but things continue to get more real for us as December slips away.

Many have asked for a timeline so here is an idea of big hurdles and dates to come:

  • December 18 – closing on our house (but we’ll remain in it until later in January)
  • January 10, 11, 12 – Estate Sale from 10 AM to 3 PM
  • January 14 – Donate all remaining “stuff”, remove anything else that is considered “junk”
  • January 16th – RV Life starts – depart for Carrabelle, Florida.

We’ll be posting blogs during our travels but we’ve had a lot of questions about where we will be going on our first trip so thought we would go ahead and give you a preview.  Below is a map of our first trip which will include:

  • 7 campgrounds
  • 52 nights
  • 1,231 miles
  • About 20 total hours of driving
  • Approximately 205 gallons of diesel fuel

How it all started

And so it starts.  As we near the end of 2018, we are planning for our full time life in our RV.  It’s a stressful time as we work to sell our home we built and have lived in for the last 12+ years as well as 99% of its contents.  Many people have reassured us that this is “liberating” and that it’s just “stuff” but it’s still a lot of what reminds us of our past 31 years together and family and friends from farther back than that.  We can look at things and remember when/where we obtained them – that odd looking floor lamp we got at the Arts Festival one year, that Botero picture that almost got Dad arrested, rocking chair with the 5 faces, and the list goes on.  But the planets have aligned to allow us to embark on this adventure while we are both relatively young and relatively healthy so here goes.

But before we go forward, maybe we should start by going backwards to how we got to this point.  Not sure when we started thinking about this.  We became interested in RV’s several years ago but the roots of interest may be found in Dan’s early history or even before he was born.  Early on, his parents, Jean and Sid, spent time out on Cape Cod back when anyone who wanted (and had a vehicle that was capable) could drive out onto the beaches of the Cape and camp.  Sid built his own campers, the first being a Jeep that he built a box camper on the chassis on his own.  They then “upgraded” to a van chassis with a small towed trailer mounted on the chassis.  This vehicle carried Dan out onto the Cape in his first year or two of life.  Camping soon ended as the family moved to south Florida and campers were replaced with sail boats.  Jump ahead about 50 years and we started considering the world of RV’s.  We’d go to RV Shows and wander thru the variety of vehicles – Class C, Class B, 5th wheels, and Class A’s.  We really had no idea what we were looking at other than they seemed to be pretty homes on wheels.  We were amazed at the size and varieties, so many configurations to consider!  It was all very innocent, very little cost and no commitment to window shop at all the new shiny RV’s since we had no plans to buy!  But over time, we started sorting thru what we’d be interested if (a very big IF) we ever wanted our own RV.  We realized that Class C’s and B’s were too small.  We like our conveniences and space and just couldn’t see going that small.  We loved the 5th wheelers but as we spoke with folks at shows we realized that the idea of starting out towing something that big down the highway just wasn’t where we wanted to start our RV experience.  So, that left us with Class A’s.  Decision made, right?  Not so quick.  Gas or Diesel?  How long a rig did we want (IF we ever did decide to buy)?  And still so many floor plans!!!

Sometime near the end of 2016 we decided we should really put up or shut up.  We’d been going to shows and reading a lot but we had NEVER spent ANY time in an RV.  As a far as we knew, we might have spent one night and decided we’d rather be trapped in a cave with hungry bears than be cooped up in a rectangular box on wheels.  We started looking at renting figuring that was a way to try before you buy.  A work colleague suggested a small family company north of Atlanta so we started checking out what they had and before we knew it, we had a reservation to rent a 37’ Gas Admiral Holiday Rambler.  We showed up on a crisp February morning with a very full SUV loaded with food, clothes and even bikes.  We got a crash course on how to operate the major systems, loaded up the RV and off we went.  Several hours down the highway on our way to Hilton Head Island, we were pretty stressed out.  Figuring out where the sides of the RV were, getting buffeted all over the road when a big rig would drive by, were keeping us very nervous.  And then…the odor hit us.  It smelled like the black tank was coming up thru the RV like some zombie rising from the dead.  We tried to address it by opening the window and vent and that helped a bit.  We even got on the phone with the company and they happily told us that wasn’t anything to worry about – probably just a dry tank letting out some odors now that it was getting stirred up for the first time this season!  Yuck!

We finally arrived at the campground, were happy to be assisted with parking (backing the darn thing in??!!) and collapsed.  The two major things we now look back with amusement on were related to learning more about the systems we had to work with.  The first dumping of the black and grey tanks was an event in and of itself.  While Dan put on gloves and stood ready to dash away if connections failed, Jill bravely supported him from behind a tree for protection.  Everything went well and later you will see that Jill has now embraced the dump completely J.  The other system issue was more puzzling.  As we settled down to sleep the first night, we would hear a buzzing sound every now and then.  We kept trying to localize it, feeling that it was coming from the dash or engine compartment up front.  We asked someone at the campground to take a listen but they couldn’t figure out either.  After another night of interrupted sleep, we called the renting company again.  After some diagnosing, we finally figured out it was the satellite dish rotating on and off trying to get a signal (which was futile since we had too much tree cover)!  Thus we were introduced to the idea that on every trip, you should expect to have something happen that will frustrate you, confuse you, or just plain make you shake your head.  The rest of the trip was uneventful and by the end we were sold on RV’ing!!  Not full time, but just the idea of renting or going out from time to time.  In the mean time we’d be satisfied going to more shows and looking, knowing that we had no plans to own anytime soon.

Fast forward to January 2018.  Another RV Show near home to visit!  And, we had decided to bypass the weekend rush and attend on the opening Friday!  By this time, we were pretty focused.  We’d walk right past the trailers and Class C’s and seek out the Class A’s.  And even then, we’d only be looking for those that were in the high 30’s or 40 foot lengths.  It usually meant a very quick visit since we bypassed 70% of the show.  This trip we were sort of disappointed, few Class A’s to be found.  But in the back there was one dealer who had bought a bunch of Class A’s.  And that’s where we found Lola (more on her name later).  There she sat, 42’ of gleaming metal and glass, Thor Tuscany diesel pusher.  We walked inside and were pleased to see a floor plan we had seen before with 1 ½ baths.  And it had a lot of other extras including dish washer, stacked washer/dryer, 4 TV’s, and more.  Then we saw the price and started scratching our heads.  This seemed way too low for this coach.  But then we realized this was not a NEW coach, it was used.  We were used to seeing only new units at the shows and those prices always kept us from even thinking about buying.  But now we were staring at a coach with just about all the things we wanted in a unit and a price we had never considered would be possible (because we had never thought of buying used).  We wandered around the show discussing financing, the pros and cons of buying used versus new and by the end of the night concluded that we should buy it!  And so, we did.

That weekend we had some major rethinking.  What had we just done!  We’d never driven anything this big before (well, to be honest, we’d only driven one RV our whole life!).  Where would we store it, what would we do with it, where would we go, how much would it cost to maintain (and how many miles per gallon did that beast consume?)?  Jill was really worried that second thoughts would set in and we’d be forced to rescind our offer.  But the next morning, Dan came down the stairs declaring he had a name in mind for the RV.  We would call her Lola from the song by the Kinks.  This had always been a favorite of ours just for the fun idea of it, a man dressed as a woman and another man realizing he was dancing with a man.  Like the character Lola in the song, our Lola “…danced like a woman but talked like a man”.  Lola was as pretty as could be but she was strong and powerful with a 450 hp diesel pushing her along.  And thus, Lola was born.  And we now owned an RV!