It has been a bit of a transition to go from our overly-large but gorgeous house in Brookfield, to our home on wheels. When we were initially shopping, we looked at a few Class A rigs and I thought even the $200,000 ones were okay, but not “home.” Then we stuck our noses inside the Jayco Pinnacle fifth wheel, and were wowed – high ceilings! A bath and a half! Central vacuum! A kitchen island! Half the cost of the Class As!

It felt like home. And it has been, for over three months (which feel like six – I think time on the road expands and contracts based on experiences, rather than the calendar).

Yet…there are things we simply can’t do with this rig that we’ve learned we want to. Attending the Xscapers Annual Bash in Lake Havasu opened our eyes in a lot of ways, despite the fact that we barely scratched the surface of the AB experience. It was nine days of dry camping (no external sewer, water or electricity) and we realized we want to do a lot more of that. Unfortunately, because of the construction of the 5er, we can’t haul our own freshwater (which we should be doing all the time anyway for a number of reasons) and we can’t add solar because we’re already close to our weight limit.

In addition, a lot of national parks and forests have size limits on RVs, usually around 35 feet. There’s no way we’d be able to experience those with our current rig.

She’s been a wonderful home (and definitely a learning experience), but there’s a good chance she’ll be someone else’s home soon. We’re in negotiations for a Tiffin Allegro RED 33AA, which ironically is exactly the model Matt had in mind when we first started kicking around this whole “live on the road” concept. It just wasn’t available in the Milwaukee market. Pro tip – if you want to buy an RV, go to Phoenix/Tucson, Florida, or California where there are hundreds of acres of them available. I’ve heard that if you’re ready to buy, some dealers will even fly you down and put you up in a hotel while you work out the purchase.

On a side note, we never thought we’d fall in love with a pickup truck, but that Silverado 3500 has been a beaut. Sadly, a 33-foot RV can’t haul a one-ton truck and certainly not in the mountains we’d like to see, so we’re going to have to trade it in for a manual tow vehicle. On the upside, we should have enough left from the trade to pay for those solar panels we’ve been mooning over (heh). And the propane fire pit we couldn’t risk the weight on. And a nice site rug. And the casita for Lakewood. And a bar for the casita.