June 15, 2021
Hello, Hello, Hello!
It is so good to be sitting at my RV dining table writing another blog post! Seems like it has been a very long time since last doing this. We are at one of our favorite spots, Crystal Springs RV Resort in southern Minnesota. It’s a small RV park, on 40 acres with a beautiful lake and lots of walking paths. A perfect spot to relax and regroup after a very busy few weeks. Gerry is snoozing on the bed and Steve is off at the gym working out. Everyone is in their happy place!
So much to share, so let’s get started!
First things first – Guy and Katelyn are getting married (!!) in 6 days! It will be a small wedding in the Twin Cities area. We are so happy! I’ll give you a nice wedding update after, and I’m sure there will be a picture or two to share as well!
We bought a new RV! And a new Truck! We purchased the same brand, DRV Mobile Suites, but a different floor plan. Our new floor plan is called 41RKDB. The big difference is that it’s 2 feet longer (a big deal in RVs) and the kitchen is in the rear, instead of in the middle. We still have the full bath with 2 sinks (a must have in my opinion) and also a half bath. The living area is larger and it’s all done in a more modern style. We love it. Of course we’ve had a few issues with it and have spent the last few weeks dealing with that and we took it back to the dealership in Elkhart, IN a couple of weeks before we left Ohio and they completed our list of repairs. Mostly it’s a bunch of small things. The big thing was the paint and body work that needed to be done. Of course, there’s a story to that!
We picked up our shiny new RV the end of April in Elkhart, IN, at the dealer. We spent the night there, trying to use everything and identify our “punch list” of things needing to be tended to. We came up with a list of minor things. Then, we drove back to our storage unit in Ohio, to store it until we were ready to head out in early June. Well, Steve backed it into the storage unit like a pro, no problem! We stood there and looked at the 16 foot overhead garage door and said – “hmmm, is that going to clear? Looks like it might not clear – ” we double checked to be sure we were backed up all the way in the storage unit – yup, we were. We knew our previous RV was a tight fit, with little spare room. I had asked during the purchase/ordering process back in November, what the length of this new RV would be. It was a brand new floor plan, and I was told – “TBD, but should be same as your current model”. So….we close the overhead door and guess what? Our new RV is 22″ longer than our old one, we now know! And the overhead door scraped all the way down and then all the way back up again. So paint and bodywork got added to the “fix it” list!
Then there’s the new truck – and it’s a beautiful one I must say. But, we had not planned to purchase a new truck this year. The dealership we purchased the RV from called one day, making arrangements for our pick up date and closing of the purchase, and said they required documentation showing the towing capacity of our truck. No problem we say. We have a big truck – a RAM 3500 dually diesel with a super duty Cummins diesel engine. It took some figuring out, but we found out how to get your “official” towing capacity – you use your VIN at the RAM website. Ours was 18,400. WHAT? That cannot be right. We have been towing 24,000 pounds. It was right. We have been towing, with our very first truck and this second one, way under capacity of what we should have been. We Had No Idea. Towing capacity is not listed on the window sticker. It is not in your users manual. The only way to get it is with the VIN on the RAM website. Turns out there are a million things that effect your towing capacity – ratios, axles, tires, a bunch of stuff I’m not going to remember. So, for the first 2 trucks we had purchased, even though we sat with the sales guys and told them what we used it for and what towing capacity we needed, and were assured “this truck can tow anything”, and the RAM brochures list the MAX towing capacity that MAY be possible if everything was built just exactly to those specs, we now know we have been driving around for the last 4 years in 2 different trucks, way under sized.
I guess there’s 2 ways to look at it: maybe towing capacity is not that important, we pulled our RV through the mountains, for lots of miles, and didn’t have any problem or – OMG we are so lucky we didn’t blow out our transmission and haven’t been stranded on the side of some lonely mountain road or worse, blew the engine, lost control and killed ourselves and everyone around us. We were in the latter camp!
The dealership we bought the new RV from required documentation of sufficient towing capacity or else they would not sell you the RV. Can not drive off their lot with out proof of towing capacity. Makes sense to us. Makes us wonder why that conversation never happened when we purchased our first RV at a different dealership. We were thankful to learn this lesson this way, and not any of the the other possible, terrible ways it could be learned. And, we bought a new truck! And, we found out it is not easy to find one with the higher towing capacity. They don’t make that many of them. And, many of the truck sales people we talked to didn’t know how to find the actual towing capacity of the trucks they were selling. And, it was much more expensive. We thought our other 2 trucks were expensive. We didn’t know we were buying the “cheap” low towing capacity version. Now we do.
When I think about all the things we’ve learned these past 4 years about trucks, RVs, wheels, electrical systems, water systems, etc (if you have ready very many of these blog posts you know some of these stories!) it really is pretty amazing. And we keep on learning!
Since we had to have the repairs done to the RV before we left Ohio for our season of travel, we took the RV back to the dealership in Elkhart, IN 2 weeks before we were leaving Ohio. Then, we had movers come and put all our apartment stuff into storage, and we rented a U Haul to put all the RV stuff into and we drove our truck and the U Haul to Elkhart to get the RV when the repairs were done. So then, we had to move all our stuff from the U Haul into the new RV while at the dealership. And it was 93 and 1000% humidity that day. And then we hit the road! Except we hit rush hour traffic around Chicago – that was not fun. But alas, we made it to our spot at Crystal Springs RV Resort as planned.
So that’s my update for now, and the launch to a new season of RV travel and adventures. I’m happy we get to make it up as we go along! Steve is moving more and more into retirement and has made some big decisions related to work recently. And, he will be turning 70 in a few weeks (oh my!). I’m sure I’ll have lots to share about that as well.
Transitions, new beginnings, new chapters, new adventures. Life is Good.