What kind of RV? & medical

What kind of RV?

We are very sold on our travel style and our RV fits our travel style so the easy answer is — It works, why would we change from a Class A RV (bus) to a different kind of RV? There are other considerations but none of them really tilted the needle away from the easy answer.  

Tow or be towed

We don’t have a big truck but rather a Subaru Forester that we tow behind our RV. Our Subaru could never tow any RV big enough for us to live in full time. So that means that we are sold on having two engines. One engine for the RV and another engine in the car. It doesn’t tip the needle but some might add the fact that if our house has to go into the shop, we would still have a car to drive.  The same thing doesn’t work if your big truck goes into the shop.  If your big truck goes into the shop then you can’t move your house.

Downsize?

We could downsize from our current RV to a smaller Class C RV, which looks like a truck, with a house on the back, but our answer to that question is that we are ready for a move up — in terms of size and style and especially storage space.  Class C RVs, can’t meet the objectives, especially the storage space question.  

Drive Shaft issues

Class C RVs and any RV with an engine in the front, including our RV have drive shafts. This means that the storage compartments stop before the driveshaft and RVs with engines in the back can use all this space for storage. We didn’t know about the driveshaft issue until the first day we departed on our full-time RV adventure. We parked next to a very nice lady that showed us her storage compartments and we immediately realized she had about twice the room in the storage compartments than we had.  Until then, we thought our storage was big.

Power

I describe the abilities of our gasoline engine as adequate. Any diesel with the engine in the back would move that needle from adequate to ample.

Bigger or Smaller

Bigger does not always mean better. We are looking for a compromise between interior space and exterior length.  The interior space in our new RV needs to accommodate both a residential refrigerator and a washer-dryer.  This means that it will be longer although there are a couple of new RVs that have paired the size down to one that is equal in length to our current RV.  These, however, are nearly new.

Newer versus Older

Since RVs fall in value faster than a rock in a vacuum, we are looking for the oldest RV that will meet our standards, and this eliminates newer RVs from consideration. So, we are looking at RVs built 2006 to 2008 which means that we will be trading our 2013 for a five to a seven-year older model. This does mean that we cannot rent space at some RV parks that only want newer RVs. We have stayed in about 100 locations since we started full-time travel and haven’t yet found a place with that rule.

To DEF or not to DEF, that is a question

All diesel newer than this require diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) to improve emissions. This issue faces all diesel RVs built after 2010. This was not a factor prior to 2010 and lowers the operating cost for older diesel versus newer diesel engines. Emissions are a big deal on diesel trucks putting thousands of miles per year, but for the way we travel, perhaps 1/10 of the distance, DEF would not change much in terms of emissions.

Moderately old or much older.

We also chose our target years to get the most utility and the largest interior space and the fewest number of remodeling items. Remodeling a house you are living in is bad enough, remodeling an RV, while traveling would be very hard.   

Conclusions

We are targeting a moderately older, nicer RV with improvements in every department, not just an RV with a bigger refrigerator.  

You can read a little about our current gasoline-powered RV a Tiffin Allegro 34TGA at this link.

Medical

Today was my endoscopy procedure and everything went great. The reason for the endoscopy was to inspect the long term repair of my esophagus and the repairs are all holding and there was nothing to look at except normal tissue. Of course, they still took tissue samples and will still do lab work, but unless the lab finds something is amiss, then we are back to normal life.