Welcome to our RV Adventures! We are Joe and Laurie, and we live, with our Labradoodle, Lucy, in our 35ft Bounder Class A, Motorhome. Our total living space, on the inside of our home, is a whopping 330 sqft. How do we know? Well, we actually measured it out. I know that it might sound tiny, but we enjoy it. We have everything we need, and it is ample spacious for us.
Owning an RV, let alone living in one, had never been a lifelong dream for us. However, here we are.
We have always loved the outdoors – camping, fishing, canoeing, and hiking, and we have enjoyed traveling and exploring new places. In our youth, we took many a trip to see and explore new things in our very first traveling house – La Tent! Rainy or wet, hot, and humid, the weather did not deter our adventures. However, the rocky, hard ground stole many nights of sleep, which left us dreaming of a new traveling house – Le Pop-up Camper! Our first visit to Camper’s Paradise in 1996 was to see and possibly purchase one of these marvelous inventions. Visions of driving down the road with a pair of queen beds, a propane stove, and a sink with running water filled our heads until…. Until the salesman looked us straight in the eye (after surveying our bright shiny red Chrysler Sebring) and said, “Whatcha planning on towing it with?” *Pop!* In an instant, our dream of driving away towing those queen beds vanished. Our Sebring was not big enough to tow such a marvelous house on wheels. So, five minutes later, we found ourselves across the road from Camper’s Paradise at a Ford dealership. We traded our Sebring for an older white Ford panel van. Someday we hoped our van would have the company of a pop-up camper. As fate would have it, that white panel van never had the privilege of towing a Pop-up Camper. We couldn’t afford both. Don’t get me wrong; she was a decent van, and she served us well.
We continued to tent-camp. Time passed, and in the interim, we owned a variety of different vehicles. None of those vehicles had the honor of towing a camper either. However, we kept the dream alive. Then, one chilly September 2013 weekend, while tent camping near a big city, we decided on a whim to look at an RV dealership. We did not plan on buying anything; we just wanted to dream! We went with the idea of looking at pop-ups, along with many pull-behind trailers. The thought of purchasing a Pull-behind trailer was a lofty dream because we did not own a truck, and our SUV was not powerful enough to tow a pull-behind camper. We did, however, purchase a small Pop-up camper! It was the camper of our dreams….
Right here should be the end of our adventure and the end of my story. However, the “PARADISE” of owning a Pop-up camper was not what we thought it was going to be. First of all, camping in the wintertime in a Pop-up camper is not very much fun. Let me rephrase that statement – Camping in the winter in a Pop-up camper was great fun for about twelve hours until we ran out of propane for the heater and stove. Then the party was over! It was dang cold!
Furthermore, it was a small space! Even for just two people, it was a very tiny space. If one of us stood up, the other one of us had to sit down. So, we began to dislike our little “cramper”! Each time we went camping, we visited RV Dealerships, dreaming of a day when we could afford to buy a truck and a Pull-behind trailer.
Finally, one day in 2015, while browsing at an RV dealership, we happened to see an attractive, old Class C Motorhome. The salesman asked us if we wanted them to run some numbers. In case you do not know what that means, in salesman vocab, it means, “Can I talk you into buying this thing!” Out of curiosity, we said yes. The salesman showed us that the motorhome was only 100 dollars more a month than our Pop-up camper, and we did not have to buy a truck for towing purposes if we purchased it. So, with the quick stroke of a pen on the purchase agreement, we became the proud owners of a 2003 Thor Four Winds motorhome.
Our Class C suited our needs. We took two cross-country trips in her, as well as numerous weekend trips. She was great, but she was old. Honestly, she was great as a weekend recreational vehicle. But, at the age of 50+, we had started to think about what we wanted for our retirement years. Ultimately, we wanted to travel. In our minds, an 18-year-old motorhome worked well for short trips, but we wondered if she could withstand a cross-country lifestyle. Also, the old girl was starting to leak. After much thought, we did not think the Class C could be reliable as a full-time home, and thus our search began again.
Our old Class C motorhome helped us to understand what we wanted in a newer RV. We wanted a residential refrigerator, wardrobe closet instead of shirt closets, more under-belly storage, a comfortable couch and dinette, a drop-down bed over the cab, and cab seats that turn to become part of the living room.
Even so, we spent over a year looking at and weighing the pros and cons of different floor plans, designs, and types of RVs. We looked at pull-behind trailers, 5th wheels, and Motorhomes. Even though we loved the space a fifth wheel had to offer, we liked the convenience of Motorhome life better. We looked at several models. Finally, in 2019, we bought our Bounder.
After a couple years of weekend trips and vacations, we found that we spent more and more time in our motorhome. In 2020 we retired, and this year we have started taking longer trips in our motorhome. We totally love our home on wheels.
330 SQFT 