A new RV

Our little Coachman Freelander has served us well for 8 months and 23,000 miles, but it’s becoming a maintenance headache. Between the slide that would occasionally stop working and was so off kilter that the frame surrounding the slide had developed two significant cracks to the broken sink faucets, we decided that we needed a new house. As timing would have it, we were in Tampa where my West Point classmate and former roommate, Marc ‘Big-un’ Taylor (he's the one on the left), sells RV’s at Lazy Days – the largest RV dealer in the US. We thought that a fifth wheel would be a neat alternative to the Class C that we had used for the trip. We were concerned that once the Teamgile Odyssey was over, the RV would sit for months with no use – not good for the engine. We figured that a fifth wheel would give us a good size “home” and we could use the truck after the trip. So, we began looking at Lazy Days. The nice thing about Lazy Days is that they leave all their units open so we spent a couple of days looking at a lot of units. Once we realized that we couldn’t fit the six of us into any kind of pick-up necessary to pull a fifth wheel, we started looking at travel trailers. The kids spent the better part of two solid days looking at all the options and presented us with 4-5 that would work. We narrowed the search down to three that could be pulled by our Suburban and would fit most of our “stuff.” We really agonized over the decision between some cool layouts, but decided on a 2010 Crossroads Zinger. The best thing about it is the four bunks in the back which gives the kids each a bed – something they haven’t had since August. Marc gave us a good deal on our broken-down Freelander so we picked up a new trailer. After we decided on the Zinger, we left for Disney and Key West (which hopefully you’ve read about in previous posts) so they had some time to get everything ready. I ended up flying out of Miami up to Green Bay where my brother, Lanny, picked me up and drove me up to Three Lakes where we had left our Suburban. As an editorial comment, I think Lanny and I spent the most quality time together since I left for West Point in 1982 – it was good. Let’s not wait another 28 years (the same as the drought between Packer SB victories…)Anyway, I drove the Sub back to Appleton where I spent the night before driving the 1400 miles back to Tampa. My dear wife and I arrived together at Lazy Days and prepared to take delivery of our new trailer the following day. We had some cabinets put into the kids’ room and needed to have a hitch on the back of the Zinger for the bikes. Unfortunately, these two things threw off the delivery so they didn’t complete the things that they were supposed to which kept us at Lazy Days for a couple extra days until they finished up. At the end of the day, we ended up with a newer trailer with more room inside. We are struggling to make everything fit that we used to keep in the extensive external storage of the RV, but it will be fine. It was a bittersweet good-bye to the RV that had been our home for the last 8 months, but we expect this will be more practical for the future. We plan to use it for the remaining four months of our trip and then we will have a “visitors quarters” once we find a new home. Sorry if you didn’t get a chance to see the Harvey RV, but now you will get a chance to see the Zinger if we crash your place.

~ Peace, Dad