2018 – A Year of Changes (Part 1)

It doesn’t seem possible that more than a year has passed since my first post. 2018 has been a year of big changes, including…. (drum roll, please)…. finally purchasing our motorhome in April!
We had narrowed down our choices to either a small-ish Class A like this one, or a big-ish Class C. We were leaning toward the Class A, but wanted to look at the Class C just to eliminate it from consideration and feel like we had thoroughly looked at all our options. (We had already looked at travel trailers and fifth-wheels, and while the size and house-like interiors certainly had their plusses, we decided they weren’t the right fit for us.)
We ventured off the peninsula on a day that our poochie was at day camp, to Fife, WA, the home to many RV dealerships. We went “just to look.” Yeah. You can probably guess where this is going…. Anyway, the first dealership we went to had the Class A’s we were considering, so we toured one of those first. We liked almost everything about it, except the prospect of actually driving it. I sat in the driver’s seat and just could not imagine ever feeling comfortable handling it. But, I’m sure with some practice (and lessons – more on that later) it would have been fine.
Then, purely to eliminate it from consideration, we looked at a Class C – specifically, a Sunseeker 3010DS by Forest River. They happened to have one in stock that had all the features we wanted, right down to the u-shaped dinette, recliners instead of a sofa, and even the color of the pleather. And even though the living area was technically smaller than the similar-length Class A, as soon as we walked in we both were struck by the fact that it didn’t feel much smaller at all. Sitting behind the wheel, I was confident that I could drive it.
Our salesman must have been pinching himself, because he didn’t even have to try to talk us into it — we did that ourselves, and within an hour we were filling out a loan application. We drove home feeling a little excited, a little stunned, and also a little panicked because we had nowhere to store this thing!
We picked up Patty from camp and told her we had finally bought her an RV like we had been talking about for years, so we could all go on bigger and better adventures together. We even named it for her — the Patty Waggin’ 🙂
Then we (a little frantically) started looking for a place to store the thing, which turned out to be more of a challenge than we anticipated. We finally found a secure, but un-level and uncovered, spot about 30 minutes from home, and a week later we returned to pick up the Patty Waggin’. Let the adventure begin!
Stay tuned for Part 2…