RV LIFE part 1 - How hard is it?

My wife @jeejee and I decided a year ago to sell our house and purchase a 5th wheel RV and live full time.

Well after one year of living in it we have learned a lot. The average user of an RV will never experience the same things we have encountered. RV's are built for short term use right? Are they really.....

Let's take a look.

We lived in a town in Texas and looked until we found one we liked. Through the power of the internet @jeejee found a similar RV with most of the same features for $13000 less in Ohio. Couch's RV Nation had what we needed so we thought.

We worked with a salesman and he found us a 2017 with everything we wanted for $47,000. We were excited! Our new adventure was about to start.

So we leave to pick our new camper. We drove from Beaumont Texas to rogersville Alabama to stay overnight with my brother. We get up the next day on Monday and drive to Ohio.

We arrive at Couch's and they greet us and take us to get the paperwork done then they guide us to our new home. We see it in their huge building where they educate us on how to use everything.

As we are going through the camper I begin to notice some things missing that we had asked for. The bunk bed in the second room was missing and had a fold out couch. I questioned the guy showing us and said that we would have to talk to our salesman. We get outside and look and we are missing the 6 point leveling system that was on paper. Ok I start to get concerned now.....

So, I ask for the sales manager and he comes. I explain what I am seeing and he says let me go pull the paperwork.

We sit for a while then he returns to say you are correct and it's all my fault. I copied and pasted the wrong camper. This 2016 you looked at is the camper for the price your paying and the other camper is a 2017 and is more money. I was furious and we then went to the owner.

Mr couch, he is sort of an arrogant man with a short fuse. He said we could take the one in the showroom and a thousand dollars cash or spend more on the new one. It was our choice....

Really ...... we just drove 1150 miles for this crap? To be treated like this? We should have just turned around and said goodbye but we had to consider all that we prepared for . We had already sold our house and new it was going to be bad to not have something to live in. We would have to sign a lease for an apartment.

Well....... we went back and took a second look at the camper they showed us. It was a brand new camper ( so we thought ). After much consideration we decided to go with it. It has a full one year warranty and should be ok.

Well not really, first some things we learned right away.

there is no space for stuff. You know stuff!

@jeejee likes makeup

so thankful for a full sized fridge

where do I put my computer?

See I have been in computers since the first one was built so I had to have my big tower with dual 30" monitors...... so I thought. There were no built in spots for computers. We tried the bedroom first but just didn't work and dual monitors was out of the question. So I had to use the 32" TV. This worked out ok because I could leave it up. The only problem was the tower. It was taking up space. I had to find another solution.

The living room tv was available just needed a place to put the tower. There was just enough space between the entertainment center and the back of the seat for the dinning table. It fit perfect. I was set except ..... well if any of you guys are computer people you know there are cords to deal with. Lots of them! Well @jeejee wasn't having any of it. She said nooooo cords. So I had to find a solution to hide them all.

Enough to think on tonight? Well it gets way better. Part 2 will continue the computer install and why I didn't chose a laptop then also show you the fails and the triumphs in RV living.

Stay tuned ..... plenty to share.

Until then - let it grow!

Beardo.

P