How the dream began…
When my wife, Connie, asked me what I wanted to do when I retired, I said that I would like to take two or three months and see the Western states. Staying in hotels would be expensive. So, we considered alternative ways to save and enjoy the trip. Then, we toured a motorhome of a friend passing through town. We liked the self-contained nature of the RV.
The year before my retirement, we were able to shop for an RV, thanks to an inheritance. Thanks, Mom!
We settled on a Keystone Cougar 29-foot, Fifth-Wheel RV and a Ford F250 Super Duty pickup, with a 6.7-liter diesel engine, to pull it. More on that process, later.
They do not teach you how to drive or pull an RV. You learn by experience, YouTube, and asking others. There are a lot of useful videos on YouTube. They helped us work through a lot of our unknowns!
A True Commitment
Since my wife and I, both, were on Social Security, and since I worked in accounting all my career, I calculated a budget that showed if we did not have other obligations, like a house, we could RV full time. So, we did. The house, in Gladstone, MO, was sold two weeks before I retired. Before we closed on the house, we had a garage sale and took any excess that we did not want to keep in storage off to The Red Shield Store. We scaled down, sort of, to two storage units. We forgot how much we had in closets, the basement, and the garage. Downsizing was hard. So many decisions about what is useful or a treasure!
Then, after packing what we thought we needed, we hit the road two weeks after I finished working and three days after a family reunion in Arkansas. We left on June 14, 2017. We had a change of plan, though. Since we had just married ten months before, we decided to make our first run as “full timers” in an RV to Niagara Falls—for our honeymoon!
Our First Day of Travel
We did not go far on our first day out. Less than two hundred miles to Cottonwood RV Park in Columbia, MO. We were late leaving due to a few last-minute things to do, like getting my prescriptions and filling the propane tanks. We tried to put too much in the RV, at first. Some items had to go back to storage. It was hot and humid. So, moving fast was not easy. We finally got hooked up and ready to leave about 5 p.m.
We stopped at a rest stop near Concordia, MO. Our attempt to get a Dr. Pepper from a machine failed. Since we had used a debit card, we were concerned about the charge. We kept an eye on our account for a few days after. We were finally able to get some drinks at Betty’s Truck Stop, near Marshall, MO, where I fueled the truck.
We arrived at the Cottonwood RV Park about 8 p.m. We checked in and bought a few items for our dinner (peanut butter and honey sandwiches—Yummy!), in the camp store. They were expensive but convenient. We were too tired to care!
We unloaded a few things from the truck to the RV. We got the utilities hooked up and, then, had to figure out why the AC was not working. We had forgot. The control panel requires either the AC or the furnace be on NOT both. Since the RV was last used in the winter, we had to turn off the furnace and turn on the AC. Ahhh! That is much better!
We took showers in the camp facilities and bedded down in our recliners for the night. We packed more than we could conveniently store. So, there were a few things that traveled on our bed! That would wait until tomorrow…
The next day was a better day. We had to do some maintenance and some shopping for things that did not get packed or we could not locate in what we packed! The bed got made and we found time to go swimming!
Necessary Maintenance
Since this was our first trip with the RV for the year, we still had to de-winterize the water system. And, though I had looked at YouTube for the process, I was puzzled by the fact that when I hooked the hose up to fill the fresh water tank the water spilled out on the ground. So, I call Camping World, who had done the winterizing to find out what was wrong. I found out that everyone using an RV should know they put the plug in the access door of the hot water tank, duh! I know now!
To explain, the fresh water is pushed through the system to push the antifreeze into the black water and grey water tanks, to be drained into the sewer hookup. Then, some bleach is put into the fresh water tank to kill bacteria and the flushing process is repeated until the smell is faint. Keep running water until the taste is acceptable.
After a year of NOT using the shower or the potty, we finally relaxed and started using our facilities, as intended! Most RV parks have common restrooms and showers, so that event could be put off a long time. That is the final step to break in a new RV. It is somewhat ceremonial!
A Few Parting Thoughts
In case you were wondering how we would get our mail, we arranged for my brother to accept our mail and forward any necessary envelopes to us when we stopped long enough to receive it. We paid our bills online. Our social security checks were direct deposited. So, there was not a lot of mail that we felt compelled to receive.
I will discuss the layout of our RV in future posts. Over time, we enjoyed our travel and sight-seeing excursions. RV parks vary a great deal and I will try to give some description of those variances. The real excitement comes with every mile traveled in areas we had never been before that offered new things to see. We tried to make note of things we did not have time to stop and see along the way. More stops to make another day…