Tag: shirleyyoujest

Narrowing the Choices

On By JohnIn travelLeave a comment

We’ve been rather undecided about either a fifth wheel or a travel trailer for several months.

Long-term full-timers tend to swear by a FW. “You’ll want one later!”

Maybe. Maybe not. For now, we’re going the TT route. Our primary reasoning is that we wish to maintain some mobile, weather-resistant cargo space in the truck without removing a hitch. Secondarily, it’s a coach-size issue: I’d rather not push UPGRAYEDD to its manufacturer’s towing limits.

Our short list is now narrowed to four (but really just two) travel trailers:

  1. Open Range, Mesa Ridge 310BHS or Roamer 310BHS
  2. Forest River, Salem Hemisphere 300BH or Heritage Glen 300BH

Besides, we’re looking for the next RV, not the only RV. If we were looking at the only one that we’d ever own then it would imply that money were no object — in which case my preference would be for one that doesn’t have wheels, but instead a 60 to 65-foot long, ocean-going hull.

Tiny House-ish

On By JohnIn tiny houseLeave a comment

I’m sure everyone’s seen variations on the tiny-house movement. We, too, love the Tumbleweed series (oh, the 24′ Elm or Cypress Horizon, yes, please) and, in fact, are planning on building one each for the youngest kids’ 16th birthdays.

Here’s one that popped up in the RSS feed, or maybe Facebook (don’t recall the source just yet) where the builder added a simple set of cabinets in the sleeping loft:

See all the photos here.

A couple of features that I’ve seen over the past few years tweaked my interest-o-meter — things I might add to such a house on wheels:

  • dual sleeping lofts, with dormers over each. One queen-sized, the other possibly full-sized.
  • the cabinet/partition wall in the loft for the queen space.
  • the apartment refrigerators are neat, but I’d probably go with a nice dual-mode RV fridge to leverage propane.
  • instead of a simple vent-hood over a cooktop, a combination microwave/convection oven with vent hood
  • the storage stairs to a loft
  • undecided on an RV-type furnace or an alternative intended for marine use. The RV furnaces tend to be rather noisy.
  • a split-AC unit
  • a compact washer/dryer unit

Oh, there’s more, but those are some of the details that interest me.

One big decision that I’ll need to make at some point is whether I should plan on making them Park models, requiring hookups at all times? Or instead make them RV models capable of fully self-contained use with fresh, grey, and black tanks; batteries; RV appliances and fixtures?

Keystone Sprinter

On By JohnIn travelLeave a comment

We saw a Sprinter at an RV show last year (or the year before?) and were really impressed with the feature-set. Stumbled on a “dealer training video” on YouTube:

While Daisy isn’t entirely sold on the Sprinter, I’m leaning very much toward this for the simple reasons that it’s four-season equipped and has double-pane windows as an option.

Then there’s Keystone’s faux-newscast type of walkthrough of the Sprinter:

Yup, UPGRAYEDD will pull it without too much effort.

Crafty RV Makeup Caddy

On By JohnIn tiny house, travelLeave a comment

Before we took our last long vacation, Daisy wanted a way to keep all of her makeup in one place in the trailer without having to fish around in makeup bags or take up counter space:

On the back of each container, a magnet, hot-glued in place. One floating magnet for the tweezers, then two magnet hooks to hold the pencils and applicators in the green basket.

The whole thing held to the wall with four small 3M picture-hanging Command Strips (here).

With all the road vibration in our little trailer, the only problem we had during our two week trip is that the cap for one of the eyeshadow products popped off.