Well the long awaited day has finally arrived. No longer do we have to squeeze everything into our little Jeep when traveling between jobsite to jobsite. No longer having to buy an air mattress here, a TV there, dishes at another rental only to have to leave them behind because there's no room in the Jeep to take it with us. This morning I took a look at, test drove, and agreed to purchase a 2000 American Eagle 40EDF diesel motorhome from Sullivan RV in Decatur, Indiana.
Over the last year or so, I spent many hours on the internet looking at RV's for sale across the country. I narrowed it down to the American Coach brand of diesel pushers. Compared to the majority of my co-workers with big trucks and 5th wheels, I like the motorhome better. Plus I want to keep the Jeep instead of a huge truck. And the biggest RV trailer the Jeep can pull is only 14 feet long! Not much room for full-timing.
If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of my original blogs archived posts from 7-18-2005, you'll see where I purchased my first gas motorhome brand new. It was nearly $90,000 at that time. When I got rid of it three years later it was only worth $35,000. A tremendous loss!
This time around I wanted to be smart about it. Yes it is 21 years old. The original sticker price back in the year 2000 was $279,000. I bought it for $42,000, letting previous owners take the depreciation this time. After looking at many RV's over the past year this one was about in the middle for the 1998-2004 years. I saw pristine coaches going for as high as $65k to trashed ones down in the $15k-$20k range. This one fit perfectly within the budget that had been saved for the last 6 months. And it's paid for in cash! No payments to worry about.
Now we have a full kitchen with gas stove, convection oven/microwave, and refrigerator with ice maker. One of the advantages I like with having a motorhome instead of a pull behind trailer, is the access to fridge while driving. Well while I'm driving Candy can get something from the fridge, pantry, or even cook something. We don't have to pull over somewhere. Especially in bad weather.
There are two sofa's with both folding out into beds. They also have lots of storage underneath.
Having our own bathroom, and like the kitchen, the convenience of being able to use it on travel days versus having to walk into a hot trailer.
No more air mattresses, hard mattresses, or worn out mattresses. We did take that 21 year old comforter and pillow cases and put them in the storage compartment under the bed. Then added a pillow top for the mattress and new linens and comforter.
No more dirty filthy laundromats. While a stackable would be a little better, still having the washer/dryer combo means Candy no longer has to clean the washers before using the washers.
And finally the two comfy captains chairs up front. Not that I want to anymore, but if I needed to drive 600-700 miles a day it would be a very comfortable seat to do so.
This was a consignment sale, so the dealer is now gonna do a deep cleaning, check everything out, and make a few repairs. That's gonna be done through this week. The one thing I would have done differently is gotten an RV inspector to go through it as well.
But in the meantime, Candy, her grand-daughter, and I are going on a geocaching road trip to Connecticut and back in the GeoJeep. We'll be back next week to take delivery and begin another chapter in our adventures.
To follow along on our travels and keep up with my latest blogs, you may do so here of course by clicking the "Follow" button to the right. And there's also my main website at AwayWeGo.US for the complete index of my traveling adventures going back to 2005. But also by using one or more of your favorite of these social media platforms: Facebook, MeWe, Gab, Reddit, Twitter, GETTR, Instagram, and TruthSocial. These all link directly to my profiles. Again, please feel free to comment and / or share.
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