FINALLY! A new (to us) RIG!

Well, once again I have been neglectful of posting on my blog, but as you might be able to read between the lines, we’ve been busy!

As some of you know, we’ve been looking for a new motor-home for almost 2 years and have made various offers, and even a one day purchase of one while we were in Florida, but alas, nothing panned out. We even flew to Albuquerque last month thinking we’d found the one we wanted, only to be sorely disappointed by the build quality and level of maintenance.

After getting back from that road trip (we disliked flying so much we decided to rent a car and drive back, wow! what views we saw as we traveled through Colorado. I’m pretty sure we’ll be back as it was gorgeous.)

A bit later, probably two weeks or so, we found “The One” on RVTRADER and proceeded to do what we had been doing. We talk to the owner, we do a video walk through, and then we do a bit more research…and the next thing you know, the rig is gone! This time, we KNEW in our guts, that this was a really good rig and it pushed almost all of our buttons. So after praying about it and letting it ‘simmer’ for an hour or so, we called, made a full price offer, and booked our tickets!

Afterwards, we were talking to the owner for some follow up and he said there was a guy that had called and said he was at the airport in Florida and would be up there to buy it, site unseen, during the same time we were deliberating. The owner called the prospective buyer to tell him it’s first come first server, and whoever gives him a cash deposit, gets the deal. But the guy never checked his voice mails. A couple of hours later, the owner gets a knock on his door, and there is the guy standing there with CASH in a bag!!! The owner apologized and said it was sold. So as you can see, in this market you have to move FAST! And that’s difficult for us..we like to pray and research and really KNOW that it’s a “God Thing”. And I have to say, when we called and made that offer, I felt like God was there…saying “yes…this is the one”. I mean, I honestly didn’t have butterflies in my gut, only a confidence that we were doing the right thing. And then afterwards, it still felt that way.

We left Spokane on the 26th of June to fly down to Asheville, NC. We were in the air near Chicago and flew around in circles for a bit as they were trying to wait out the storm that was brewing down below. When we landed and got to our gate, they kept delaying the flight until finally they said it was cancelled. Oh joy.

We were instructed to walk to a kiosk to try and figure out what we should do.  No help from anyone on United, just pointed us to the kiosk. We finally figured out we would have to catch a flight the next day or wait around for standby.  We booked our flight for the next day but it had to be to a different city as all the flights were booked. So we booked one for Greensboro, SC which was about an hour away from Asheville.
Since this was a weather-related delay/cancellation the hotel was on our dime. 

We found one close to the airport and took a Lyft/Uber to it and then once there decided to take another one to downtown Chicago to see the sites.  Since the flight was cancelled due to the weather, imagine our surprise that it was pouring rain downtown and a tornado warning was issued! LOL! The driver was very informative and told us quite a few things about downtown as well as old town.

Once we were in downtown, we got out of the Lyft and into a Walgreens and bought a couple of ponchos and preceded to walk around and see the sites in the rain.  It was a warm rain and only our feet were getting wet, and we had sandals on, so no big deal.

Since our #2 daughter was proposed to in Chicago, we looked to her for help as to where to go. She of course mentioned a ton of places but we only had a few hours before it was going to get dark so we basically found a restaurant, walked round there, and then walked to the river and walked by that.  All in all, it was enjoyable.

Here’s the big tourist attraction that was nearby: Cloud Gate

Cloud Gate in Chicago

Just a bit rainy

Acanto’s by Cloud Gate on Michigan Ave

Start of Rt-66. Very cool since I’ve been on parts of that route.

Trump Tower – Not once did we feel nervous in downtown, unlike our Spokane downtown lately.

I took 3 pictures…all of them she had her eyes shut! LOL!

River Walk…reminded us a little bit of the river walk in San Antonio

NBC Building. We were standing outside waiting for an Uber to take us back to the hotel as we were exhausted!

We had a wonderful time in downtown Chicago and I do believe we will come back to explore some of the older sections on our bikes.

The next day we went back to the airport and caught our flight to Greensboro, SC and then took another Lyft to Hendersonville, NC where our hotel was. We attempted getting a hotel closer to the owners of the rig, but since it’s a tourist area, everything was way over the top expensive. Holiday Inn Express, over $200 a night!

When we got into the hotel, the owner, Kevin was waiting outside to take us to the rig. Oh boy..the moment we’d been waiting for.

Here’s some pic’s and then I tell the ‘story’.

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As you can see…there’s a bit more room than our old one.

This is a 2005 Newmar Essex 4502 diesel pusher. As you can imagine it takes a pretty beefy engine to push all 46K pounds of this beautiful rig, and the 500 horses appear to be plenty!

The Story: Kevin & Kimberly were the owners of this rig and were very accommodating. They even lent us their 2014 Dodge RAM pickup for us to use to shuttle between the RV and our hotel.

We got to the RV later in the afternoon on Sunday and once we were inside we were very impressed. The fit and finish of everything was so much higher than anything we had looked at to date, even the Monaco Camelot wasn’t as well built. Turns out the woodwork is done by the Amish (I’ve been told this, but I don’t know for a fact…will try and verify).

We did a quick walk through as it was already getting late and we wanted to do a test drive. TEST DRIVE? Me? Drive a FORTY FIVE FOOT RV?!!! Yikes!

I sat down in the amazingly cushy drivers seat and attempted to acquaint myself with the dash. It’s like looking at a Boeing 747 dash!

Well…it seemed like it to me!

SEE?! Exactly the same!

Once I got the steering wheel, the pedals (yes they move forward and backwards) the seat, the mirrors and my guts all in the proper position he said to go ahead and put it in gear, release the air brakes and head down the driveway.

Sure, sounds easy, right?

Well, it was even more narrow-errr! And THEN we had to make a hard right hand turn onto a narrow country road with LOTS of hills! Oh my goodness!

But…he coaxed me through everything and it wasn’t long before I realized this baby can TURN on a dime! It has IFS, Independent Front Suspension and by the time we got to the highway I was feeling pretty comfortable. I wasn’t going fast, but I was feeling more confident the more I drove it. That is until……

Welp..that’s all the time I have today to write, I’ll continue this tomorrow…stay tuned! (Hee hee hee…can you say “Cliff Hanger”)