A New Adventure Begins

 I went white-water rafting for the first time in early August 2021.  Including flying time, flight delays, airport layovers, and driving, it took about 18 hours door-to-door from South Beach to the Payette River Rafting Company in Idaho.  That journey was brutal.

 

The two-hour raft ride on the Payette River was delightful and exhilarating.  As we approached the end, floating through the gorge, the sky framed by steep rugged rock, I wasn’t ready to leave.  And I wasn’t looking forwar d to the hour and forty-minute drive back to Boise. 

 

That's me in the coral jacket on the left rear of the raft

 

 It had never crossed my mind to go white-water rafting.  The activity for our sibling weekend had been organized by my brother.  I enjoyed it so much that two hours wasn’t enough, and that short time on the Payette River made me think about all the things I hadn’t done, all the wild and beautiful places of America I hadn’t seen.

 

I noticed camper vans parked along the banks of the river, people in lawn chairs, nursing beers, starting barbecues or nibbling on sandwiches, their dogs sniffing nearby or at their feet.   

 

They get to stay here all weekend? I asked. 

Yup, said our rafting guide. 

How come? 

You just book a site.  If you have a reservation, you can stay.

One couple on our raft mentioned that they had an RV.  The wife was a traveling nurse; they moved from one location to the next, spending six to eight weeks at a time.   I don’t know if it was destiny or coincidence that a couple with an RV ended up on our raft, but I do know that when I got on that raft, I wouldn’t have gone camping if you had paid me, but before I got off, I decided that we should rent our apartment, pack up our things, and go on the road for a year to explore America. 

Marina had been trying to get me camping for years, and I had refused.  I need my long luxurious daily showers, and I like indoor plumbing and modern conveniences.  No roughing it for me.  So when I flew back to Miami and proposed this plan, she couldn’t believe it, and was all for it.  I started this blog on our cross-country move from Los Angeles to Miami Beach in 2013.   On that trip, Marina and I planted seeds for this journey today -- we talked about traveling around the country in an RV, and now nine years later, we were actually going to do it. 

We listed the apartment for rent in early September, bought an RV in early December, secured a tenant by the end of the year, moved out on January 27^th, and hit the road March 9^th.    That sentence encapsulates six months of uncertainty, inconvenience, packing up a three-bedroom condo, whittling down a lifetime of accumulation into necessities for the road, organizing work to operate from afar, stocking and preparing the RV, learning all about its mechanical, plumbing and electrical systems, selling the two vehicles that couldn’t be flat-towed behind the RV and buying a Jeep Wrangler that could, and finally, saying goodbye to family and friends.   Much of those six months was arduous, but we kept our goal firmly in mind, and that helped us get through it.  

Marina had suggested we rent an RV for a weekend to make sure this lifestyle was something I liked and could handle.   We rented a 28-foot Jayco motor home and stayed at an RV park off a busy road, motor homes and campers parked practically on top of each other at a nondescript site.  It rained all weekend.  There was nothing to do at the RV park, and we didn’t have a vehicle with us since we had left it where we picked up the rental.  Even so, I loved it.  I loved the feeling of waking up in the camper, the coziness of the dining booth, the outdoor grilling and eating.  I loved being away from the relentless routine of daily life, and I even got used to not having cell service all weekend.   Marina was satisfied that if I loved being in an awful RV park during bad weather with nothing to do, then I was ready to get on the road and see some truly beautiful places. 

We had already spent quite a bit of time hunting second-hand RVs, but we couldn’t find anything that satisfied us.  Everything was either too big, too small or too brown.  (I can’t understand the fascination with brown interiors in RVs.)   We had rented the 28-footer because that’s the size we thought we wanted, but by the end of the weekend, we decided that for full-time living, we needed a few feet more.   Marina had thoroughly researched the various RV manufacturers, and she had narrowed down our options to two brands for reliability and quality – Tiffin and Newmar. 

While sitting at the dining booth in our rental, we looked at the floor plans for those two brands, and eliminated the Tiffin because the TV was in an awkward location on the smaller models that we wanted.   We set our sights on the 31-foot Bay Star by Newmar, which had everything we needed in the right configuration. I lobbied hard for the 34-footer, which came with a washer and dryer, but Marina was concerned it was too big.   “What’s an extra three feet?” I argued.  But she would be the one driving so I had to defer to her judgment.   The Internet revealed that the exact model we wanted was sitting on a dealer’s lot not far from where we would return the rental.  In fact, it was literally on the way home.  We decided to go check out the floor plan in person to make sure it was what we wanted so we could then find a second-hand one.

We called ahead and made an appointment after dropping off the rental.  We had to wait a long time to see the salesman, and almost gave up, but since we had narrowed down our options to this model and this alone, and there was none other for at least 500 miles, we needed to see it.  

She was parked by herself in a lot, slides out, blue and gray paint bright even in the cloudy weather.  The salesman opened the door, and the minute we stepped inside, I fell in love.  The cabinets reminded me of a French farmhouse – a warm crème color with an oil-rubbed finish along the moulding.  The sofa, dinette booth and cab chairs in front were a soft gray.  All the lights were on in the coach and they created an inviting glow.  As the salesman walked us through, showing us the bedroom in the back and the bathroom, I knew this was The One.

The test drive went better than expected; Marina drove her smoothly through highway traffic.  Afterwards, we were in the coach for a long time.  I lost track.  He sat on the sofa, in no hurry to leave, discussing all the features, answering Marina’s questions.  I sat on the dinette booth, and all I could hear was a voice in my head saying, “We have to have it.  We have to have it.  We have to have it.”

 

Everything I knew about negotiating went out the window.  Not just because of the insistent inner child inside me who demanded that we not leave without it, but also because we were in a time of scarcity; houses, cars, RVs, all had crazy prices due to lack of availability from supply chain issues caused by Covid.  I managed to shave a little bit off the price and a point off the interest rate, and about three hours after we walked into the dealership, we had found our new home for the next year.  

We named her Duchess, and the new Jeep Wrangler to tow behind her was called Duke.  If you're on Instagram, you can see a video tour of her: part one and part two.   You can also follow our adventures in Duchess on our Instagram page.  

Duke and Duchess