There she goes:

Yesterday we sold our travel trailer, which is what we have been living in since we sold our house at the end of May.  We spent a lot of time packing, and cleaning both the inside and outside so it would look great for the new owners.  In fact when they came to pick it up they said that they couldn’t believe that it was an 8 year old trailer because it looked brand new.  This made us feel good about our efforts.

In addition, Mary had gone out and bought new sheets, pillows, and bedspread for the bed and told the young couple that this was their housewarming present from us.  They were very appreciative and were very excited about their new travel trailer.

I spent a lot of time showing them how to do everything and then it was time to go.  When they pulled away with the trailer, a feeling of sadness came over us because we have had a lot of good times with that trailer and it was also our last large possession from our old life.  We are now truly homeless at this point since we have sold both our house and trailer, and our new trailer will not be ready for another week.

Luckily our daughter has taken us in for a few days and then we will rent a U-Haul trailer and pack up all the items that we have put in storage for the new trailer.  From here in Austin we will go back to Alabama to our friend’s house and stay there for a few more days until we get the call that our new trailer is ready. 

Then we will be travelling to Knoxville, TN to pick up the trailer.  We can’t wait! 

We were told that it should leave the factory this week and then the dealer will take a few days to check it out to make sure everything is in working order.  It should be ready sometime during the week of the 23^rd.

This has been an emotional roller coaster ride but WE ARE READY TO GO!!!

Selecting a Hitch:

We dropped off our truck today to have a 5^th wheel hitch and truck air suspension system installed.  We looked into a lot of different 5^th wheel hitches and the main differences seem to be the towing capacity rating, the type of latching system, the type of mounting system, and some even have an air bag suspension built into the hitch!  The latter costs about 3 times what a normal 5^th wheel hitch costs however.

Since our 2012 F350 dually comes with Reese under-bed rails pre-installed, our challenge was to find a hitch that could pull a 20,000 lb. trailer plus about a 2,000 lb. trike trailer and could mount to the pre-installed under-bed mounting rails.

There are a lot of good hitches out there but not very many rated above 22,000 lbs. along with being able to mount to the under-bed rails.

Since our trailer has a TrailAir pin box and we are installing a Firestone Air Suspension system on the truck, we decided that we would not need a hitch with air suspension as well.  In addition most hitches either did not have an adapter for the under-bed rails or would need to employ an adapter between their standard mounting system and the under-bed mounting system, which is an added complication that concerns me as it relates to reliability and ease of hitch removal when not in use.  Therefore we decided to go with the Reese 25K Elite Series hitch.  This hitch was designed for the under-bed rails and is rated for 25,000 lbs. of pulling capacity. 

There was also the question of lubrication between the trailer and the hitch.  Rather than having messy grease on the skid plate, I found that I could get a lube disc that would do the job without the mess.  This was inexpensive, clean, and effective.

Since our truck is rated for a 4625 lb. payload and this trailer might have about 4,000 lbs. of vertical weight plus the weight of my auxiliary fuel tank and hitch, I was concerned that it might sit very low or bottom out the springs. Therefore I am also having air suspension helper springs added to the truck today as well.

Alabama Visit:

Well, we had a nice time in Alabama with Joe & Brenda.  We enjoyed a 4^th of July fireworks display in a small town near their house and camped in their driveway for about another two weeks before returning to Texas on the 10^th. 

We also went up into the Vulcan statue in Birmingham and they took us on a tour of the city, including many of the key sites of the riots and the mining of iron ore.  I didn’t know that Birmingham had such a strong history of mining.  The Vulcan statue is the largest iron statue in the world. 

On another day we went to the American Village in Montevallo, AL.  This was both educational and entertaining.  We got to participate as a volunteer in General Washington’s army and also became a spy against the British.  We even got to meet General Washington!  It’s a shame that although we defeated the British during the revolutionary war, Obama wants us to become more like them today.  The American ideal stems from freedom from an oppressive government and yes that comes with responsibility and consequences for the choices we make.  Something our legal system, government, and many people often seem to forget.  If you want a Big Brother government, move to Europe.  Read the book entitled “1984” if you want to see the potential results of the direction that Obama is taking this country.

Enough political commentary. We are now back in Texas and taking all of our belongings out of our travel trailer and cleaning it up for the next owners.  We will be delivering it tomorrow and our new one should be ready in about 10 days so we will be temporarily homeless.  Luckily our daughter has offered to let us stay there for a while and then we will go back to Alabama to our friend’s house for a few days as well, before picking up our new trailer.  It is both scary and exciting as we transition into our new lives.

June Summary:

We had a very busy and enjoyable time this past month.  It started out with a trip to South Dakota to establish our residency and get our SD drivers licenses.  We have a mail service in South Dakota called America’s Mailbox that gives us a permanent address. All we do is tell them where we are periodically, and they send our mail to us.  In addition, there is only a 3% sales tax on new auto and RV purchases.

Then we took our travel trailer to Destin, FL to meet with our daughter and her family, who were on vacation there.  In addition, our grandson was able to get leave from the Navy and fly in to be with all of us.  We hadn’t seen him for a couple of years so this was really great!

After that, we traveled to Alabama to visit our friends, Joe & Brenda, for a short visit before going on to Kentucky to go to the Good Sams Rally in Louisville.  We saw a model of the DRV 5^th wheel, complete with the same floor plan, on the floor of the rally.  It was great to be able to see it and go through it.  It made us that much more excited about getting our trailer.  We can’t wait!!!  It should be ready for delivery sometime during the week of July 23^rd.

The rally was really good.  We even saw our former neighbors, Foy and Helen Varner, which was amazing since there were thousands of people there. 

There were also a lot of dealers and vendors so you could see any kind of RV and get all kinds of stuff for it.  We bought a tire monitoring system for our new RV and also an RV GPS, which allows a vehicle profile to be entered including height, weight, length, and width.  The GPS considers all of these vehicle attributes in selecting a route.  This will be very important for us because we will be both tall and long with the truck, trailer, and trike trailer being towed.

Then we went back to Alabama to stay with our friends for another couple of weeks before going back to Texas, which is where we are right now.  We have to go back to TX to deliver our travel trailer to the new owners when we get the call for our new one.  

Learning Experiences:

Insurance

One of the first things we learned was that our insurance company, with whom we have been a customer for over 45 years, would not insure our trailer if we were living in it full time.  Not even our small trailer that they have insured for 8 years because we will be living in it full time until our new one arrives.

This means that you need to find an insurance company that specializes in insuring full timers.  The various RV clubs like Good Sam and Escapees generally have some offerings but we found one through the RV dealer, which offers insurance through Blue Sky.  They have a connection with Blue Cross/Blue Shield.   They had equal to or better coverage than other offerings and were significantly less expensive.

RV Parks

Now that we will be living full-time in the trailer, it is important to know that RV parks that use the word “Resort” are generally more expensive than ones that don’t and there is no standard by which the word “Resort” can be used.  This means that the amenities could be no better than a lower cost RV Park down the road.  You must read the amenities of any RV park and determine if they will be good for you and worth the money.

RV Sites

Since we will now have a 39’ Fifth Wheel plus dually truck and a trike trailer, we will need to pay more attention to the size of the RV sites.  They are not standard but most pull-thru’s are about 60’.  “Big Rig” sites are generally 65-75’ and back-ins are about 50-55’.

We can get by with a 60’ site if we have a common area to park the truck since we will use our trike motorcycle for most local travel.

STARTING OUT

My name is Tom and this blog is for our friends who want to follow our new journey into full-time RVing.

My wife, Mary, and I spent about 6 months on the road last year with our 24’ travel trailer and came home to a large tax bill being due on our house.  We asked ourselves; “Why are we doing this?”  We enjoy RVing very much and have always moved fairly often so why not sell the house and go RVing full time? 

If we were to do that however, what would we do with all of our stuff?  Stuff that we have accumulated over 46 years of marriage! 

So we asked ourselves; “What would our kids do if we were to die tomorrow?”, and the answer was simple. They would take what they wanted and sell everything else, so that is what we did.  We told the kids to take anything that they wanted from the house and we did save some things that we were willing to pay for in a 5X5 climate controlled storage space. We would then have an estate sale to sell everything else.  I sold as much as I could ahead of time but everything else went into the estate sale except for some things that we could use in our new 5^th wheel trailer that we would buy.

The best thing that we did was to leave town and go RVing for two weeks prior and during the estate sale.  It would have been torture to see what things were priced at and especially to see them go out the door. This way it was much less painful and when we returned, the house was empty and we received a nice check.

Before having the estate sale, we put our house on the market in the beginning of December 2011 and although we had about 40 showings, we didn’t receive one offer until April even though we lowered the price twice. The market was really down and we had some tough competition from new houses still being built in our development. We decided to take the negotiated offer even though we lost money just to get things going since time was ticking and we didn’t want any more delays. 

Our closing date was scheduled for May 31^st so we would wait until we were sure things were going well for the closing before we ordered the new trailer.

We have had a pop-up trailer, a motorhome, and now a travel trailer but never a 5^th wheel trailer.  Supposedly the 5^th wheel is easier to pull and back up than a travel trailer and is a more stable connection to the truck.  Mary and I prefer a trailer to a motorhome but there are pros and cons to both therefore it becomes one’s personal preference.  We have chosen a DRV Elite Suites for several reasons but the main reason is that it is very well built and has all the amenities of home.  It is built with “full timers” in mind.  

The closing went without a hitch on May 31st and we have ordered our new 2013 DRV Elite Suites.  We are anxiously awaiting its arrival but in the meantime, we are living full time in our little 24' Nash Travel Trailer and doing fine.  By the time the new one gets here however, it is going to feel like a mansion since it is almost 39' long with 4 slide-outs!