Send a photo of your RV and a 150- to 200-word description of it, how and where you use it, and what you like or don’t like about it, to Diane (at) RVtravel.com . Be sure to include your name(s) and hometown, or if you’re a full-timer. (These are posted in the order received.)
The RVs of RVtravel.com readers and how they use them
Issue 86; Posted September 2, 2017
Richard and Karen Hime
This is our 1999 Excel (Peterson) 35-foot SEO and our 2005 Chevy K3500 Duramax long-bed dually tow vehicle along with our 2013 Znen scooter. Photo taken at the 2016 Excel Family Reunion in Branson, MO.
Until this summer, we had never spent over two weeks at one time in the fiver in the 18 years we’ve owned it since new, even though we had put 60,000 miles on it. We were “casual recreational vacation and weekend campers.” But we took our “Bucket List Trip” this summer – 56 days, 6,600 trailer miles and 10,000 truck miles.
Karen loves the floor plan and hasn’t found one she wants more, and I love the dependability and torque of the Duramax. Neither of us “likes” repairs and tire replacements but we understand they are part of the RV adventure. We don’t foresee full-timing but now know, after our recent long trip, that we could if we had to! We are both officers in our Excel of Missouri RV Club and enjoy following RVTravel.com. Keep up the good work.
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Allan and Carol Colgan, Columbus, Ohio
This is a picture of our 2004 35-foot Bounder and our tow. It is a Snyder 600 that was made in China.
Our Bounder has two slides and 30 amps. It is our second RV; our first was a Gulfstream (2002) and it was a 30-footer. On our 12-week trip to Alaska in 2014 we learned that it was too small for us, so we upgraded to the Bounder and we love it. It gives us more room, has a bigger bathroom and shower than the Gulfstream, has a washer/dryer so we can save time and money by not using campground facilities, thus allowing us more time to see the sights. We have two TVs, a microwave, and two A/C units, which makes our unit comfortable when it gets hot outside, particularly since we like to travel to the western states to see the national parks. We have been to Yellowstone twice, the Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, Mt. Rushmore, and Devil’s Tower, just to mention a few. In the fall we like to travel east and northeast to be leaf peepers and see the fall foliage.
One thing we include in our trips is to see the state capitol buildings, since it is on her bucket list. We only recently started this but we have 20 under our belt so far. Our trips also include other things to do — like in 2015, on a trip to Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Kansas, we also spent a week at a horse ranch (Cherokee Park Ranch in Livermore, CO).
Trip planning, for me, can take anywhere from 9 months to 16 months (our trip to Alaska), so we can get the most out of our trips and create those memories. Our motto for trip planning is: “When we get really old, we want to be able to say, ‘I can’t believe we did that,’ instead of ‘I wish we had done that.'” We are not full-timers or snowbirds, but we do travel about 12-16 weeks a summer/fall every year. We recently got hooked on rallies and have been to the Balloon Festival with Fantasy Tours (2016), and this year we took a 7-week trip down south (including two weeks with Adventure Caravans) to celebrate Mardi Gras in NOLA. Mostly, however, we travel solo. We just have four states to visit to complete the U.S. states (CA, OR, NV, and WA), and we have toured seven provinces in Canada (on our Alaska trip).
The Snyder has a 4-gallon tank to run the motorcycle engine and gets fantastic gas mileage. It is a four-speed transmission. We use it when we are camped somewhere for a few nights to see the sights in the area. It is a basic model — a heater and a radio. No A/C unless you call it a Snyder “250” — two windows down and doing 50 mph. The seats are very thinly padded, so it is not comfortable on long trips. It is registered as a motorcycle, but it is a 4-door, 4-passenger motorcycle. So, at the age of 72, I bought my first motorcycle! We used to tow our car on a dolly, but I got into a gas station that really was not designed for RVs (even though it was a truck stop) and I had to disconnect everything. In the process I injured my back and had to cut short our trip with a quick trip to our doctor.
Everywhere we go, people ask permission to take pictures of the Snyder (although some don’t ask first). On our trip to the Balloon Festival in N.M., we had at least 5oo requests for pictures (one lady took 15 so she could prove to her guy that such a motorcycle existed, if he wanted to buy one she would ride on).
MORE IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS
