0003 - I got gadgets and doodads a-plenty

Weight is important in a fifth wheel... but so are having the conveniences of home, and sometimes the two seem diametrically opposed. I've found a lot of really cool gadgets, but only time will tell if we actually needed them or not. At this point I'm a newbie, so I'm sure in later posts I'll start to contradict much of what I've said early on. That won't make me a hypocrite will it?

One thing I'm completely enamored of are all the collapsible kitchen tools because they're lightweight and can be flattened out for storage. So far I've only purchased a collapsible dish drainer, which I think will be very handy because it sets up over the sink - no nasty dish mat to contend with and doesn't make the counter look cluttered (I hate clutter). But I'm also eyeing the collapsible salad spinner... it's just too pricey to tempt me into buying it at this point. I've gotten so used to paying half price for everything that, unless I can find something on sale, I pretty much put it on a wishlist and let it sit. I do love my salad spinner though. I go through salad eating phases, and not having watery lettuce may be worth it in the end.

Mike has a full-sized Keurig. He loves him some Keurig. I came across a single-serve version which has a smaller footprint and weighs less. We're looking into things like that as well... smaller versions of items we use on a daily basis. Upcoming Black Friday sales will probably supply us with a few inexpensive duplicates in miniature so I won't feel bad about having one for the RV and one for home use.

I'm thinking it's better to use electricity when possible, rather than draining the propane tanks, so I'm going to bring a crockpot and toaster oven along for cooking. Most of the time it will just be Mike and I, so our meals will be small anyway, and my toaster oven is also a convection oven and rotisserie. Also trying bring along the multi-taskers... food processor, stand mixer and attachments, instead of blender, hand mixer, pasta roller, etc.

That said, there may be times when we are boondocked and I will use the oven since electricity won't be available (until Mike installs solar panels and/or we get a generator). During those times we would also need to conserve water, so I found a good deal at PaperGoods.com and bought some paper plates and tinfoil cooking pans (they even have tinfoil muffin pans!).

I'm trying to think ahead as much as possible, but not having done this before it's hard to think of everything. Any suggestions from the peanut gallery? Things to avoid... sanity savers...?

0002 - Games Do Not Become Us

Once we found the fifth wheel model we wanted, I Google'd it and kept clicking links until my eyes started to cross and the search term lost its meaning - not in the way a word repeated over and over again begins to sound foreign, but because Google eventually runs out of relevant results (or is that just me? have you ever tried it? pick a word and repeat it 20-30 times and let me know).

Every time I found a dealership that sold a 36RE with the features we wanted, I requested a quote. In my experience, RV dealerships are a lot like used car dealerships, they love to play games... and I don't. Only three of the dealerships quoted me a price... out of twenty. The rest said they couldn't send the price in an email because it was too low, or they asked me to call them, or they requested my phone number so they could call me. Those dealerships never heard back from me.

Some things I learned...

• Many dealerships post a price that doesn't include freight, prep and document fees, so make sure you ask what that price does include because those fees can add another $2k to the cost of your RV. When I say freight, I mean the cost to ship it from the manufacturer to the dealership, much like the destination fee that an automobile dealership would charge. Shipping to you will be extra (if applicable), and don't forget the sales tax.

• Prices vary wildly. Our fifth wheel had an average MSRP of around $75k. About half the dealerships online reduced the price to $67k, and the other half hovered between $55-57k. We got ours for considerably less - and we didn't have to haggle. It pays to do your research. Generally, you can find an RV for around 28% below MSRP if you are willing to shop around, at least at this point in the year; I've heard that July is also a good time to buy as that's the end of the model year for RV manufacturers. Make sure you compare the features too, if the dealer has installed additional options then the RV is going to cost more - but it's only worth more to you if you care about those options.

• Be willing to walk away. You've heard it before, and trust me - it's true. I was probably $2,500 away from making a deal with a local dealership for a Keystone Montana, but the salesman wanted to play games. He would walk away to talk to his manager and come back with a deal so good he couldn't believe he could offer it to me at that price... but it wasn't what we wanted to pay. He asked what we would buy it for today - they like to throw that phrase at you - 'what would you buy it for today?' and 'here's what we'll do for you', so we made an offer and he came back about $7k too high. I walked away because he insulted my intelligence. Went home and searched for that model only to find that the very same dealership was offering that very same RV for only $2.5k above our offer. At that point I was about $4.5k worth of pissed off. The salesman called me two days after we bought the Cedar Creek to see if I was still interested. The answer was a resounding no.

• Step inside an actual RV. We saw several we thought we liked online, but the one I thought was the front runner turned out to be a dud. Going to a dealership and looking around really helped us focus our search. It's incredibly difficult to specify all of the features you want in a search string, and there are tons of manufacturers out there... you can spend as much or as little as you want. Visiting a dealership is the only way to really get a feel for size and features... after that, the internet is your best friend, if nothing else you can play one dealer against another to see who wants your business more (as long as you're reasonable).

• Don't forget about the R-values. If you are going to be somewhere really hot or really cold, you need the proper amount of insulation.

• Think about how you're going to use the RV. We will be living in ours so we needed a floorplan that would give us a private space when my stepson, or anyone else, comes to visit; I wanted a bathroom that was a room unto itself, not one that was inside the master bedroom or one that didn't have a door between the two. We decided we liked the entertainment center to be in the front or the back of the RV, not on the side, so that when we're in the living area, our focus is away from the kitchen and dining rooms and it feels more like a separate room. We liked the open feel of a freestanding table and chairs versus the solid banquette-style dining area. Those became our absolutes. And then we discovered self-leveling jacks and that became an absolute. And L-shaped kitchens... and fireplaces... so we soon became very, very picky and were lucky to find an RV at all!

• Don't tell the bank that you're going to live in your RV. It makes them nervous. Apparently a lot of people are buying RV's then not paying for them, and the banks can't find them to repossess. One bad apple spoils the whole party.

In the end, we bought our fifth wheel from Gillette's Interstate RV in Lansing, MI. Of all the dealerships, they had the best price, and they also stood out from the crowd. Kim sent prices and pictures of available RV's, and she patiently answered all twenty of my questions (promptly, I might add). There was no hard sell, no games. Even with the cost of shipping our CC to Houston, we still saved well over $10k off the average sales price. The financing was also easy. I was concerned about our ability to get a loan since we have bought quite a few things recently with the truck and the land and now an RV. I explained that we had the ability to pay, but our debt to credit ratio probably wouldn't seem appealing to a bank right now. Cindy knew of a lender that doesn't look at debt to credit, they look at credit score and payment history, so getting a loan was easy. Gillette has taken care of everything without having to be reminded (rare in my experience), they overnighted the loan documents, they set up the shipping according to my schedule. I couldn't be happier, so if you're looking for a recommendation or a place to start, there you go.

0001 - Contemplating Change

Understatement of the year: Mike and I have been juggling a lot lately.

As most of you know, he has been in Afghanistan since April, so we haven't been able to spend much time together outside of phone calls, emails, and tons of instant messaging. He doesn't seem to know how to find a job that isn't dangerous or far away (or often both), so when he told me he had already been approached about a job installing wind towers all over the United States once this final deployment was finished... I can't say I was thrilled. Being apart sucks. He is my best friend and I miss the crap out of him.

As he often does, he had a plan to address that concern before I even got the chance to voice it. Let me add, that sometimes his plans don't sound so appealing right off the bat, and often we have to work together to mold them into something palatable for both of us, but this one was pretty solid from the get-go and we only had to tweak it a little here and there. Mostly I had to overcome... me... and step further outside of my comfort zone (he's become a master at coaxing me outside my boundaries, he's like the Kristy Whisperer).

Our original plan was to find 150 acres in Tennessee, a place to build our house, and also build a sanctuary for wolves and wolf hybrids (Nashoba Refuge). We were hoping we could find land, get jobs, and sell our house all at about the same time - no one has ever accused us of having lowered expectations. (you sang it, didn't you? hooray for Mad TV!)

His new suggestion was that we find a smaller plot of land, buy a fifth wheel, and call that home instead of renting something until we could identify the land we want and get our house built. When he is gone for short periods of time, or is working close to home, we will be on our property. If he's gone for more than a night or two, we hook up 'the house' and off we go. I get to come along, and I don't have to worry about the cats because they come along too. Voila - that solved the issue of being apart.

Of course, being mobile like that means that, unless I can broker a deal with my current employer, or find a very special set of circumstances with another... for the first time since I turned sixteen... I won't have a job. It's both exciting and nightmarish to contemplate. At the same time, it gives us a more certain date of departure... instead of 'whenever we can make x, y and z happen', now it's 'sometime in April'. Not having to worry about finding a job has lifted a massive weight from my shoulders.

At this point we're in the process of 'getting there'. In the last month we purchased an F-350 (diesel), a fifth wheel (Cedar Creek 36RE), and an 8-acre spread about an hour east of Nashville. It feels like we're running a marathon between budgeting for it all, making offers and counteroffers, making sure the money gets where it needs to be, title changes, getting hitches installed, and arranging for shipping and storage. Our offer on the land was just accepted yesterday, so when all of our contingencies are satisfied that creates a whole new set of tasks: installing septic, running power lines and water, building a pad for the RV, and a secure storage building for all our stuff, two acres are already cleared so at least we don't have to worry about that. As far away as April seems now... it will be here in no time, because we have too much to do.

The fun part is that it's ALL new to us. I've lived in houses with slab foundations, or in apartments, all my life... places that are completely stationary (even during hurricanes), where everything nasty can be flushed down the drain with a single lever pull. Neither of us has so much as spent the night in an RV, let alone towed one behind us and operated all the doodads and gizmos. Adjusting to life in a fifth wheel is going to be (to quote my friend Debra) int-er-est-ing, to say the least. We bought one that is as homey as we could find, where the living areas are fairly defined - the kitchen is beside the living room, not in it, and the bathroom is a unit unto itself, instead of a booth, we have freestanding dining room table and chairs. At 39-feet long, with three monster slides, it's still not very big when compared to a house... not when we'll be living in it 24/7... me, Mike, Gracie and Daphne (our two cats). You can already begin to imagine the future posts, can't you? "Hey -what's this lever do? and other fun questions"... "Lesson #1 - Do NOT look directly into the hose"... "Fifth wheel got a little tipsy last night"... "Hey baby, can you back that thang up?"

I imagine we'll see lots of interesting things out on the road, I'll have to adapt to an RV kitchen, we'll have lots of new experiences learning about RV life as we go... the perils of parking... the best campsites... neighbors at the RV parks... new WalMarts with new butt cracks (some things can't be unseen)... me learning to ride a scooter... and all that is going to be fodder for the blog whether it irritates me or makes me laugh or even cry. This is where our friends and family can come to keep up with us on the road (but emails and phone calls are welcome too).

Oh, and Sliding Down the Highway Sideways in a Canoe... you're probably wondering where the hell that came from. My friends and I had all kinds of catchphrases and silly sayings during our college years - which I cataloged lest they were forever lost someday... This one almost was lost, and it drove me crazy, because I could remember just enough of it to keep me up at night trying to figure out the rest. So here it is in all its glory:

You're going down the highway sideways in a canoe - how many pancakes does it take to cover a dog's house? True or false? True or false? That is absolutely incorrect! The answer is D: It has nothing to do with why there are screen doors on submarines or why motorcycles have t-tops!

And now you know...