We got the news yesterday that our son Jeff and wife Carol have taken the plunge, buying a 2011 Monaco Vesta motorhome.
Jeff and Carol intend to full-time RV once they finish up working the current calendar year. They sold their home in Murrieta, California several months ago and have been boondocking ever since in a 25-year-old RV that they purchased for around $17,000. That rig was admittedly a temporary housing solution, and they told us that they already have a buyer for it.
I had given them a lot of advice about RV life and the wisdom that I’d picked up from not only doing it for 8 years but also from full-time RV folks that we know. Living in a motorhome 24/7/365 is a lot different than going RV camping for several days or a week. I think that they listened, and they also learned a bit over the past few months. I think they paid about $100,000 for their new motorhome.
(Ironically, we paid almost the same price for our Monaco Windsor in 2015 when it was 10 years old and had 59,000 miles on the engine. Jeff and Carol’s rig is 10 years old and has 59,000 miles on it.)
Their new RV looks great, has all of the basic amenities, has oodles of storage, and is powered buy a turbo diesel, which will allow them to tow a car with ease. The rig is 32’ long and has one large living room slide on the driver side. The nose is aerodynamically shaped resulting in an alleged 10.5 miles per gallon of diesel fuel. Promises, promises… I hope that turns out to be true.
It will be that “tiny house” that Carol has always wanted. I’m guessing that our 40’ rig with four slides has around 450 s.f. of living space, so their 32’ rig with one slide probably has 300 s.f. It also has two A.C. units, a generator, a Queen bed, a convertible sofa, two TV’s, and nice appliances. It should be plenty big enough for the two of them (and their dog) to comfortably enjoy their adventures on the road in America.
We are currently staying in Brookings, Oregon in the At River’s Edge RV Resort. We haven’t stayed here before and have been pleasantly surprised by the nice folks in the office and the general layout of the property. The Chetco River flows by the park and, beginning on Wednesday, we will be in Site 131, which is right up against the riverbank. For one month, we will get to chill out with our dogs looking out over the river into the forested woods, the ocean fog coming in, and enjoying the cool, clean air of the mountains. Deer wander around the RV park in the early morning hours. It’s a nice place.
There are full-time as well as short-term RVers staying here. We are paying a premium rate for one of their nicest, river-view spaces. The spaces where the full-timers stay don’t have the views but they only cost something like $760/month plus electric. That’s just the kind of place that Jeff and Carol will be looking for, I think.
Of course, one they hit the road they can boondock for free and perhaps stay at a decent RV park once a week to dump, refill the water tank, take a nice, long shower, wash clothes, and so forth. The rig that they’ve purchased should be perfectly adequate for camping just about anywhere they might want to go, even the small State, Federal, and local parks that we can’t get into because of the size of our rig.
We are looking forward to seeing Jeff and Carol and their new purchase when we stay in Oceanside, California for a month beginning September 5th.
In the meanwhile, we have a little bit of worry to deal with here, as the McKinley Fire, which is burning in the Siskiyou National Forest near the Calif/Oregon border is heading this way. I can’t imagine that we will be in any danger here, but we could end up breathing smoke if that fire enters Oregon and burns north toward Grants Pass.
We’ve been coming up to Oregon for many years now and almost every year we’ve had to travel through areas that were experiencing forest fires. Last year, when we returned home to Nevada, we had to drive maybe 400 mile through heavy, white smoke courtesy of the fires in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Charlie and I both had breathing troubles afterward that turned into bronchitis.
That sucked.
Another thing that sucks is Charlie’s left foot, which is still swollen and painful. It’s been two weeks since she sprained it and she has been stuck in the rig, reading books and icing the foot. She’s getting stir crazy but has kept a pretty good attitude about her plight.
Hopefully, this will be the week when she can limber up that foot. On this coming weekend, down at the Brookings Harbor, there will be an Art Fair/Street Fair, followed by the Pirates’ Fair on the following weekend. We went last year and had fun.
Speaking of fun, we’ve met (as have the dogs) two gorgeous 2-year-old French Bulldogs here in the RV park. They get along great with our dogs and their owner “Lucette” is a nice gal, too. We may be hooking up with her once we get to our new site on Wednesday. Lucette is a full-timer who lives in a 5th wheel trailer.
She’s also got a third Frenchie on order that may be arriving here during our stay. Those three dogs are probably worth more than her used 5th wheel trailer!
What kind of an idiot keeps three dogs in an RV?
Update: Jeff and Carol told us a few weeks later that they’ve decided not to buy the newer RV and will, instead, finish out the remainder of the year in the current rig. They are hoping to maybe find a nicer RV and a lower price when the economy dips.