captainmorgan
Member
Hello everyone from Beaverton, Oregon. We just got back home after a 2 month trip around the country with 3 kids, a dog (Charley our lab), and a guinea pig (the General). Amazing adventure!! We had tossed around the idea of renting an RV and taking a trip to see some national parks for years, but every time we started actually looking into it, we'd get bogged down in the "rental cost, plus mileage, plus fuel, so we can only go how far?" dilemma until eventually we'd just forget about it for another year. Finally, this spring we realized that our window to do any kind of longer RV trip with the kids was closing fast. Either this summer or next, or the kids will be into high school and not want to do it anymore. Every way we sliced the rental problem, we ended up having to compromise on something to try to make it work. Either keep it to two or three weeks, or keep the mileage way down, or get something too small. What's the fun in that? Plus, we needed space for the kids and dog or everyone would go stir crazy the first week. What we *really* wanted, to do it right was a diesel pusher with bunk beds so we wouldn't have to turn dinettes into beds every night. Long story short, I spent a couple weeks on the internet trying to figure out a way to make a used diesel work for us. Then we realized we were getting bogged down in compromises again, with trying to figure out how to swap out chairs for a magic bed sofa. Will it fit through the door? Do you take out the windshield? Errgg. Our last resort was to buy a new one, take it on our trip, and then detail it and sell it when we got back. Gotta be cheaper than renting one and we'd get what we wanted. We decided on a 2010 Sportscoach 385DS (is it ok to mention brands on this forum?) in Texas and I flew out and drove it home. Two weeks later we loaded it up and started out around the country.
We went through 26 states in 2 months and everyone LOVED IT!!!! We stayed mostly at RV parks, but also some state and national parks. We drove over 9,000 miles and we didn't want to go home. (We thought about turning left when we got to I-5 and taking another lap around). Anyways, we thought we'd be sick of RVing after this long trip, and ready to sell our coach. But now we can't wait to get back out in it. Since I'm negative on vacation balance, it'll have to be weekend trips to the coast and such for a while.
To our surprise, we didn't have any major problems with our coach on the trip. The only issue we had to take care of was the water pump went out in Arizona. The next day in Albuquerque we stopped at Camping World and 2 hours later they had it replaced and we were on our way. Other than that, just little warranty stuff we're getting taken care of now.
If we're keeping this coach I'm going to have some questions for you experts on this forum. And if you're reading this and considering a long RV trip, I say "Go for it!" You'll love it.
Bruce Morgan
We went through 26 states in 2 months and everyone LOVED IT!!!! We stayed mostly at RV parks, but also some state and national parks. We drove over 9,000 miles and we didn't want to go home. (We thought about turning left when we got to I-5 and taking another lap around). Anyways, we thought we'd be sick of RVing after this long trip, and ready to sell our coach. But now we can't wait to get back out in it. Since I'm negative on vacation balance, it'll have to be weekend trips to the coast and such for a while.
To our surprise, we didn't have any major problems with our coach on the trip. The only issue we had to take care of was the water pump went out in Arizona. The next day in Albuquerque we stopped at Camping World and 2 hours later they had it replaced and we were on our way. Other than that, just little warranty stuff we're getting taken care of now.
If we're keeping this coach I'm going to have some questions for you experts on this forum. And if you're reading this and considering a long RV trip, I say "Go for it!" You'll love it.
Bruce Morgan
