You Gotta Start Somewhere

“We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” – Unknown

 

When I first retired back in 2018, I bought a 28 foot bumper-pull camper to pull behind my Chevy Silverado. (Footnote: Do NOT try to pull a camper with a vehicle only marginally suited to pull it. I learned that lesson with a new transmission. Another story. Another time.) My plan was to tour the country, moving from book signing to book signing, basking in the glow of independence and literary riches. I put what few items I had left in storage and began my book tour in Nebraska. That's where it mostly ended. 

To make a very long story as short as a writer can make it, book sales were soft, I stumbled upon a house I loved and bought it, met the woman of my dreams (now, my wife, in fact), added a dog and then two cats, bought a business and grew "roots." And like any rooted person, I discussed with my wife that we really didn't need the camper any longer and should sell it. So, we did. 

Several months passed before we began to discuss how nice it would be to do some traveling. My wife had recently retired and we now had the time. "Sure would be nice to have the camper back," I teased. And just like that, the Honey Badger (my loving nickname for my wife, Gina) was on the hunt for something for us to travel in. Over a year of searching resulted in what we now have...a 36.5', 25 year old, diesel pusher motor home. But that's not where the search started and I'm about to walk you through our process. This is the "review" part.

A couple years before, we had sold our Silverado and bought a Ford F250 in anticipation of either carrying or pulling our next camper. Here's where I'm going to elaborate on choosing a tow vehicle. This is the "tip" part. If you intend on pulling anything other than a very small, lightweight camper with a 1/2 ton pickup, don't do it. To be fair, we just met a couple who pull their massive 5th wheel with a 1/2 ton Ford and they told us it did fine. Good for them. Don't do it. 3/4 ton at minimum and a 1 ton is better. If you're concerned about fuel economy, buy a Prius and invest in a nice tent. Pulling a heavy camper with a light truck is unsafe and ultimately way more expensive than gas or diesel. And don't listen to the camper sales rep about how your truck is rated with plenty to spare. It isn't. Don't do it. Remember, I told you so.

But I digress. We did buy an older model, 3/4 truck with a big block motor. It got 8-10 mpg on a good day, unloaded, downhill, with a tail wind. But it'd pull anything you hooked to it with no issues. It was a beast (yes, I'm using past tense a lot). That's what we got it for.

Our first thought was that, since it was just the two of us, a nice overhead camper to rest atop our big pickup would be perfect. No muss. No fuss. But we found there to be some problems with that, and here they are, in no particular order. 

1. Overhead campers are stupid expensive. 

2. Even though there is just the two of us, it's a small space to occupy together over a long period, and we love each other... a lot! Now, add a dog and cat.

3. They're heavy. Sure, we had the truck for a decent-sized camper, but you start adding things like slide-outs and full holding tanks and before long, a 3/4 ton truck just isn't safely enough vehicle.

4. Once you're set up, you're stuck unless you tow and/or bring another vehicle.

Next on our list was the consideration of pulling a trailer of some sort, be it bumper-pull or 5th wheel.  There are advantages and disadvantages to both, and for us, pulling one or another was kind of a "wash" which leaned slightly in favor of a 5th Wheel based on the following:

1. Bumper pulls are more cumbersome to hookup and unhook. 

2. While either choice was going to require buying a hitch, a 5th wheel is simply, well, simpler.

3. We liked the idea of the large overhead bedroom found in most 5th Wheels.

4. 5th Wheels are much easier to maneuver than a bumper pull both going forward and backing up.

5. You can tow another trailer behind a 5th Wheel.

We ended up with neither and here's why:

1. Tires on camping trailers are a problem. They blow out a lot. And we plan to be on the road a lot! Sure, I've talked to plenty of people who have never had an issue (in fact, I didn't with my camper either), but I hear this complaint more than any other. Trailers are heavy, pavement gets hot, and camper tires are crap. 

2. This was ultimately our deciding factor. We didn't really want to stuff our truck cab with pets, and you can't bring them along in a trailer that is basically a solar panel on wheels.

After hours of discussion, over the course of well over a year, it became evident a motor home would likely suit our needs best. We'd bought a 3/4 ton truck for nothing. As simple as reaching that conclusion may seem in terms of moving forward, it turns out there are a LOT of different types of motor homes. I mean, a LOT!!! We first had to narrow our search by budget. That narrowed things down.....a LOT! 

Sure, we drooled at the giant rigs cruising down the freeway pulling a new Land Rover. And we priced them. It's remarkably easy to start the pricing at $250,000 thousand dollars for a new rig and you can just as easily move rapidly toward $750,000 to 1 Million...and that's before you add a tow vehicle. As you can imagine, as easy as that seems, it's even easier to spend $50,000 and up for a beautiful motor home with slide-outs and a solid motor. There was just one teensy problem with that. Our budget was more like $10,000 to $15,000. That equates to a 1954 Rambler, 20' long coach with a straight 6 and 250,000 miles. It seemed impossible.

But Gina, much to her credit, scoured Marketplace for weeks and we looked at several coaches. In fact, we almost bought a couple that would have been wrong for us. But you do what you have to do on a budget. In the midst of all that searching, a miracle happened. We sold our commercial real estate. It wasn't a windfall, but it did allow us to up our budget by about $5,000, which can mean a lot in the camping world.

After being told Bertha (our motor home) was either sold or had a buyer pending twice, and after almost buying a giant gas-guzzler in Omaha the previous day, Bertha suddenly became available. We left immediately to travel the 30 miles to check her out. Bertha is 25 years old, which would make a lot of people nervous, me included. But we made the deal that day and haven't looked back. Following is the list of why it was a good deal for us.

1. Being 25 years old put her in our budget bracket. We gladly paid $19,500.

2. Bertha is a "diesel pusher." The engine is in the rear. She has a 275 horse, Caterpillar engine with an Allison 6-speed transmission and has less than 45,000 miles on her. That's barely broken in for a diesel. Now, there are plenty of solid arguments for not buying a diesel, such as, they're expensive to repair, hard to start in the winter, etc, but Bertha cruises down the road 65 mph at around 1800 rpm's and has netted us anywhere from 6.5 to 11 mpg depending on hills, wind, etc. The cost to run her down the road is about 45 cents per mile on average. Cheaper than pulling a camper with our truck would have been.

3. She's 36.5 feet long with one slide, so there is plenty of room for us and the pets. And it's all air-conditioned.

4. She has a propane-fueled, on-board generator, which means we can camp almost anywhere in almost any climate. We're checking into solar, as well.

Long story, huh? So, it boils down to this: we sold the store and bought an RV. We needed a "toad" so we'd have transportation on travels. We sold the truck and bought an old jeep with enough money left over to buy a Blue Ox towing system. It's a gem of a set up, and here's the "recommendation" part. If you're going to RV and tow something, invest in Blue Ox. It ain't cheap, but worth every penny. We can hook up or unhook our jeep in under a minute. And it tows like a dream.

That's how we got started. You want to start on a shoestring budget? It can be done, but it'll take some patience and research. We've already done a couple maiden voyages and we'll be adding our take on everything from repairs to campsites. And, of course, there'll be stories! Be sure to following along!!

 

Namaste,

Matt and Gina