Two recent road trips across Canada and the USA led us to the decision to buy a campervan. We have always loved travelling; we backpacked through Europe and Asia in the 1980, and went on many trips with our daughters.  Now that we are empty-nesters, our idea of fun is to travel as much as we possibly can.  You could call it a race against time; we  look at it as having fun while we still can…

HOw should we travel?

We toyed with the idea of buying an RV before, but thought that it can wait until we retire, which made me push for retirement soon… Briefly, we considered modifying a van on our own.  Briefly, we considered a travel trailer since we already have a truck to pull it.  We went back and forth between the many options available, but after lengthy deliberation and couple of visits to RV shows we reached a few important decisions:

1. we don’t want to wait for retirement – we want it now. You just don’t know what’s ahead…
2. Although we are capable of modifying a van ourselves, there is the time issue again.  We don’t know how long it will take us, and in the meantime, we could be travelling. And,
3. We decided that we liked the class B the most.  We don’t want to pull anything – regardless of its size, we don’t want to drive a monster, and we want to be very mobile because we like to move around a lot.

Spending few weeks in an RV park is not what we have in mind because as I said before, we like to move.  The only things that we had to compromise on so far by opting for the smaller Class B are having an the inability to tow and off-road vehicle or take a canoe with us. We will try out an inflatable kayak that we purchased from Amazon and see how it works for us. We’ll keep you posted on how we like it once we get in the water.

As to an offroad vehicle, we have yet to find a solution…I’d love to hear from you if you found some solutions for , or how much you dared to take a ProMaster off road.

Learning from past experiences

One of the biggest challenges for us was travelling with our dog, Emma. You can’t leave her in the hotel, and you can’t leave her in the car. Many parks in the US and Canada do not allow dogs on trails, most rest stops do not allow dogs in picnic areas, you can’t take them into museums or restaurants, so you are basically limited to the few places that will allow dogs. The biggest surprise for us was the parks. Some do not allow dogs to enter into the park at all! I won’t get into whether this is just or not, but I will say that it’s very frustrating if you travel 4,000 miles to find out that you can’t do many of the things that you planned on doing.

You may end up like this:

So an RV will alleviate some of these issues as we can leave the dog inside with the air conditioning on and just hope that she won’t destroy the RV in the process.

Finding a place to sleep when travelling long stretches can be stressful. You don’t know when you will want to stop driving so it’s a bit hard to plan ahead. When you are starting to have an idea that you may want to stop soon, there may not be a reasonable hotel or motel in sight, or when travelling with dogs, one that will accept you and your furry buddy. Even if they say online that they do, you may get there and there are no dog-friendly rooms left and there is no way to find out online unless you book through Bring Fido, which may or may not be accurate in my experience.

If you want to camp, it can be frustrating to get there at night.  Also, campgrounds can be a detour from your route if you are just passing through. Of course the weather may be prohibitive to camping.  In an RV however, you can just decide to stop at a rest stop, a truck stop, or even in a Walmart parking lot for a short shut eye, or for the night. We tried to do this with a car in December and nearly froze to death.

Space is an issue too.  We love each other, but really?

I will not even start talking about the chore of disassembling the car for the night and reassembling it the next day. Almost very night. For three weeks. You have to do this whether you are camping or spending the night at a hotel.

We definitely need an RV

What about cost?  Hotels can be expensive and even motels in popular areas can exceed the US$100 per night easily. Oh, and don’t forget to add about $20 for the dog, please! The cost of accommodations exceeds the cost of fuel tenfold. And yes, with an RV you will pay more for gas, most likely about double, but the savings that you will be making on accommodation exceeds the extra fuel cost so you come out ahead.

Looking for a place to eat and all these bathroom stops – again, time consuming and costly if you are eating even one meal in restaurants every day. In an RV, you have your kitchen with you, you can continue eating healthy food, and yes, if you feel like eating at a restaurant, you still can, and you are taking your bathroom with you wherever you go.

There just seems to be more options when you are travelling with an RV and we found ourselves eyeing the ones that we saw on the way with envy.

When we came back, we went to an RV show and looked around; an overwhelming experience. The variety, technical side of things, the sheer size of some of the rigs, and the prices…a range between $12,000 to over a million dollars…

This was the mid-range price. Oh, my!

Enter CLass B

We knew what side of the spectrum we are on! So we looked at used ones. We found a lot of used travel trailers and fifth wheel for sale, but at this point we solidified our RVing identity a little better and decided that we don’t want to pull an RV behind us. Not even one of the cute small ones. Our style of travel is very mobile and we wanted something that you can just stop and drive away with minimum hassle.

Now if you can find a used class B motorhome that is in good shape and at a decent price (good luck with that.  At least in Canada) you may want to consider it, but we decided to go with a new one for – hopefully – some piece of mind on the road.

Can we afford it?

Once we got over the sticker shock, and found out about financing, we decided to go for it.  Yup, the cliche you only live once is actually true.  We were always sensible about our finances, so really,  this is the time to go for what we really want.  And now!

Bringing back the frugal, sensible voice, we will probably save some on repairs by opting buying a new van that is under warranty. Rather than spring the money upfront (yes, pricey), we chose financing it with a 25 year bank loan.  It looks like campervans do keep their value, so hopefully, when we do sell we will get some of our money back.

So we went back to the next RV show (and of course a lot of online research). During our first visit to the RV show, we didn’t really look at the pricy Class Bs. This time we concentrated on these, asked questions, took brochures, went home and continued our research. We narrowed down our preferences; what we liked and didn’t like, and what we thought that we had to have. The next step was to go to a dealer, ask more questions, and test drive a few of them.

Our Dream Campervan

Forest City Motorhomes near London, ON had the best prices and a variety of the smaller campers. We drove over and were smitten by the Carado Banff almost immediately. It had everything that we wanted: no fuss sleeping arrangement, comfortable bathroom, solar, under-hood generator, ample storage, good driving visibility, and an open and airy environment. We liked the Dodge ProMaster even though it didn’t have some of the bells and whistles that the Mercedes has. It was easy to drive, very maneuverable for a van this size (19’6″).  It even had a back up camera and navigation system. Good enough for us.

We found our mobile and versatile dream campervan.  Let the adventures begin!

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