New To Us Motorhome, Picking it up Friday

Some of you might enjoy the process of picking out a motorhome, buying a car, buying a house….some of us don’t much like going into the grocery store just to buy food.  As for me, the faster it is, the better it is.  But when you are putting out some $$$$$ for something like a motorhome, one can’t just do it real fast.

Our process started a few weeks ago when we decided it was time to move from a Diesel Pusher to a Class C motorhome.  We started looking online, and looking at reviews, and trying to find the good brands.  Of course, then there is the “wrench” tossed at you that some of the Class C motorhomes are called “Class B+” by some dealers.  So a search of Class C may not turn up the Class B+ units, and vise versa.

Then there is the thing about slides….we are not big fans about slides…but without slides most Class B+/C units just are not large enough….and very hard to find a non-slide unit.  Well, we found one which has only one slide, and when it is “in”, it does not take away any use of any part of the motorhome other than making things a little closer inside.  And for someone who has MS, which has affected the use of the left side of their body, having things close is sometimes much nicer.  Instead of having to take a few steps to hit me over the head with her cane, she will be able to reach me from just about anywhere in the kitchen unless I am up in the driver’s seat, or in the bathroom or bedroom.

So the pictures you have seen are pictures from the website which helped to promote it.  We bought it at Camping World, but by the time we got home this evening, they had already taken our unit off their website.  But another website had it still there, but the pictures are not very good quality.  But these are better than nothing.

What we bought is a 2008 Jayco Melbourne 31B.  Amazingly it had less than 8,000 miles on it.  The tires were original, had plenty of tread, but also cracks in the sidewalls….so they are putting six new tires on it before we pick it up on Friday.  A light cover was missing, and the threshold of the entry door needs some small repair….all of which will be taken care of before we pick it up.  I plan to replace the batteries for the house next week, and perhaps for the engine too.  We also are getting a warranty which will cover engine, transmission, chassis, and much of the “house” items too.  Have a four year quote from Good Sams, and waiting on a quote from Wholesale Warranties.  Oh, more decisions….I thought this retired life was suppose to be so simple…..

We know we won’t be able to carry everything we use to carry….but besides the cabinets you see in the pictures, there is also storage under the bed, under the seats of the dinning benches, and a large cargo area in the rear which goes from one side to the other.  In the above picture, you can see the clothes cabinet to the left, which sits on a raised carpet area.  That raised area is the rear storage and it goes from the left, under the top portion of the bed, to the right side where that small stand is located….with entry doors on both outside portions of the motorhome.  I think we will find that we will be able to take more than we first thought as we started this down-sizing process.

So we pick it up Friday, we will do a shake down run the following week, and hope to be off on our trip out west by the 10th of June.  We plan to drive through Salt Lake to see my daughter and to drop off some “stuff” she asked us to drop off, and then on to California where we “hope” to be settled in by mid to late June.

One good thing is that we have already pulled much of the motorhome stuff into our condo.  Now that we know what we have, we will move the food and some of the clothing back into the “big” motorhome, where they will be transferred into the “new to us” motorhome on Friday.  Then Saturday and Sunday we will start moving more stuff from the condo into the new motorhome… and head out Sunday to Crystal River and then over to Orlando area next Thursday.

With that, here is the end of this posting…..and the beginning of many more new posts in the near future.