RV Show

Yesterday we drove down to St. Louis to visit the St. Louis RV Vacation and Travel Show. It was well worth the drive. We were able to look at a lot of different vehicles and narrowed down a few things:

We want a 5th wheel. We had already eliminated any actual 'motor' homes because there isn't really a safe place to put car seats in them, plus we are anticipating maintenance to be less complex and expensive if we just have a tow vehicle to maintain at any old car place, instead of being restricted to RV repair centers. We were deciding between travel trailers and 5th wheels. Even though 5th wheels are more expensive, they do offer substantially more storage space. If we can't even go across town for Christmas dinner without filling a minivan, we're definitely going to need all the storage we can get to move in.

We don't want anything labeled "lite". No matter how much we try to follow the warm weather, it's almost guaranteed that we'll need to park ourselves in Cleveland for at least a few weeks in the winter. Since we don't want to freeze, I think it will be well worth the additional expense and larger truck to have the heavier, more insulated vehicle. Plus, I think the lightweights skimp on things like wood cabinets and solid countertops to save weight too. If we'll be there more than a few weeks, we'd like lots of cabinets and countertops that Ian can't break by throwing his wooden trains at them.

We want one of the "big boys". We're definitely looking in the 35+ foot range for this to be livable long term. But once you get that big and add a couple of slides, it's really 400+ square feet of living area with tons of storage below and much more functionality than a small apartment. Yes, it's still small. But we'll have the world at our fingertips. And we won't have nearly as much junk we don't need taking up all the space.

We need a BIG truck. To tow one of those puppies, we're probably looking at a one ton truck with a diesel engine. ROAR!! We were worried about fitting car seats in a truck, but it doesn't look like that will be a problem. At least with Dodge, even the crew cab offers more space than our little Pontiac Vibe and they also have a "mega cab" that can comfortably hold an elephant in the backseat.

Most importantly, the visit convinced us that this is really, really possible and would be not only doable, but exciting and fun too! After looking at some of the big 5th wheels, we are really looking forward to our new adventure.