Kit and Carol on the Road

With the 5th wheel, it was always about the view.  We would spend a lot of time looking for the spot in any campground with the best view out the back where all our windows are.  Ida does not have so many windows and the best view we can hope for is some vegetation rather than the RV next to us.  Choosing a spot is all about level.  (I am talking here about public parks where we can choose our own spot).   Unlike the big class A's we have no self levelers--so if we are not perfectly level it means figuring out where to put the blocks.  We have been in some spots where we could not get level but luckily in all cases we were able to move.  Enough about leveling.  Dealing with leveling blocks is my outdoor chore.  Kit just has to hook up water and electric--no unhooking vehicles now.  

The most positive thing about our change of RV lifestyle is just the driving.  Kit is happy.  The seats are definitely more comfortable for one thing.  We can park in nearly any parking lot (we take at least 2 spaces) and turn on a dime.  We didn't add up the number of u-turns on this trip.  Kit does all the driving but I got to give it a go on one or two hour stretches in Mississippi, Arizona, and California.  It's like driving a big van (so we are told).  I know I can drive but I prefer not to--esp. in high traffic situations.  I will write about our great gas mileage in the statistics section.   

The negative things as we expected are just living in a much smaller space.  The bed in the corner is a double bed with a bite out--we had no problems sleeping here but it is a pain that Kit has to crawl over me to get in and out of bed.   The shower is not as tiny as I first thought but getting the water temperature and volume right is a challenge.  There is less than a square foot of space (not counting standing on the toilet) for getting dressed in the teeny weeny bathroom.  But we survived just fine and some campgrounds have good showers.  We have always hated motorhomes with dinettes--still do--but that is what we have for seating area when not on the road.  It is very uncomfortable and we aren't yet sure how to deal with that.  But there is a lot of storage underneath and it does make into a bed which was handy when Kit's back went bad.  Also our passenger seat swivels to make a chair for reading in the evening--and I have discovered that curling up in the corner on the bed is a great spot for evening reading.  Plus of course the table is handy for eating, and for computer and journaling work.  I thought the TV which comes down out of the air over the table was a dumb idea but it actually works just fine for us.  Not that we watched TV more than a half dozen times on the whole trip.  Every time we would turn in for the news--it would be the "same old"..  The problem with the TV is going to be figuring out how to hookup the digital converter since there is no access to the back on the TV in this slide down thing.  

We were worried about washing dishes with only one sink but that turned out to be no problem--it is a large and quite deep sink.  Cooking was really not a problem but I had to remember to do things in shifts--like make the salad before I opened out the stove.  We tried a few simple things in our convection oven but it is still a mystery to me.  The refrigerator is much smaller than in our Alpenlite so that can be frustrating at shopping times. Esp. having only one drawer for vegetables/ fruit.   But the freezer is huge--we never came close to filling it

Our water tank seems small too--if we are frugal we can make 3 nights dry camping.  Strange thing is that the capacity of the black and gray water holding tanks are about 3 times that of the water tank.

Kit has a list of changes he wants to make.  First off : putting in golf cart batteries and replacing our many many lights with LEDs.  We've experimented with a few so far.  We prefer to run the generator as little as possible when off the grid and the lights use a lot of battery power or so Kit keeps telling me. (if I dare to have more than one light on at a time.)