We were up early and ready to complete our trip back to Pahrump. It took a couple of hours, but it eventually cooled down enough to at least cover up in a sheet.
I took a quick walk around the Burro Creek Campground and wished we could stay longer. When I returned to the campsite, Linda was outside and simply said "I'm ready".
Okay, so in the fifth wheel, Linda has a routine when we leave a campground. It requires moving several items, turning furniture so the slides can come in, and a few other steps. She has it down, and it only takes her about twenty minutes. But with the Class C, no furniture has to be moved, and she just will have to make sure there is nothing obstructing the slideouts. Of course, we have nothing in the rig yet, so this morning it took about five minutes to get ready to leave.
With the slides in, we pushed the button for the leveling jacks and got a "travel mode" light which indicates they are properly retracted. But there is a big, bold warning in the manual that says it's still the owner's responsibility to do a visual check, which we did.
I gave Linda the option, and she chose to drive. Since we didn't have a coffee maker, the first order of business was to find her some coffee. She pulled over at the first gas station/convenience store and handled it perfectly.
Later, I used the cardboard sleeve on her coffee cup to squelch some of the rattles. Some strategically placed cardboard on the screen door and on a couple of cabinet latches helped tremendously. We'll get the noises figured out. I've decided that the people in charge of building roads should ride on them in a motorhome so they can see what a terrible job they've done. Bless the smooth roads. :)
I called Diesel Specialists in Vegas to see if our truck was ready, so we could pick it up on our way through. Unfortunately, the part they were waiting for didn't come in until late yesterday, so the truck wouldn't be ready until late this afternoon.
So, we just headed on back to Pahrump.
We stopped for fuel at a gas station I never would have attempted in the fifth wheel. While we were there, a Class A motorhome pulled in towing a three-axle cargo trailer. All of us at the gas station watched in amazement as the driver tried to make a sharp turn around the pumps and nearly hit a truck. Seeing he wasn't going to be able to make the turn, he backed up and eventually determined he wasn't going to be able to get gas there. It took some maneuvering, but he finally got out of the gas station and headed down the road to find another one.
We were feeling quite smug in our smaller motorhome. Linda got us out of there easily and we completed our trip arriving at Nevada Treasure RV Resort in the late morning. We pulled into the check-in lane and walked to the office not knowing exactly what we were going to say. Fortunately, Bill, the manager was there and we talked through our situation with him.
He gave us lots of options. On Sunday, a spot will open up behind our fifth wheel to help us make the transition easy. In the meantime, we paid for a second site for the motorhome about eight sites away on the same row. Fortunately, we could use Passport America for two nights.
After we complete our transfer of stuff (pared down significantly), we'll put the truck and fifth wheel in their storage area ($50/month) until our buyers, Doug & Kristi, arrive in mid-May. And we'll put the motorhome in our current site. When Doung & Kristi arrive, we'll put the truck and fifth wheel on a site and have it ready for them. We'll then spend a couple of days going through everything with them to get them as comfortable as possible.
We backed into the site and then met the neighbors who are here for the Spring Rally.
Back at the fifth wheel, we just got something to eat and relaxed for a couple of hours.
Here's the plan as Linda sees it .... and, therefore, as I see it, too. :)
We'll get a storage unit here in Pahrump. We will put everything we use for rallies in the storage unit, and she will pack up bins of other stuff we want to keep and they will go in storage as well. Her vision is that we will come back here in the Fall, get a small cargo trailer and make a cross-country trip. We'll drop off rally stuff in Tennessee and then continue on to Florida to store the rest of our few bins at our rental house.
Moving forward, while we will do Boondocking Rallies and Reunion Rallies in the areas we travel - they don't require as much and we can have what little we need shipped in. However, we will hold only one more Educational Rally in the west in 2019, and then all future Educational Rallies will be at River Plantation RV Resort in Sevierville, Tennessee.
After we drop off our items in Florida and get our wills and living wills redone there, we'll head back west over the winter.
We went to Walmart to pick up some storage bins, and then the process began. Linda was a bit overwhelmed when she started emptying cabinets.
We have different approaches in our minds. I want to take everything we absolutely have to have in the new RV and put it in. We can then see where we are and fill in and figure it out from there. Linda wants to keep everything we need in the fifth wheel until the last minute and pack up the things she knows she wants to store or donate and move those items out first. Then we can move the necessities on Sunday when the motorhome will be in a closer site.
I went to the motorhome site and cleaned out the "trunk". The prior owner left several things in there, and the RV dealership assumed it was ours and didn't clean it out.
Then, I thought it would be a great time to completely photograph the Winnebago Aspect before we put anything in it. So, here is a separate entry with a comprehensive photo tour for those interested.
Later, Leesa came over to help Linda pack up the stuff we won't need.
By the end of the night, Linda had made great progress, and we had moved a few items into the Aspect. We were exhausted and the "house" is a wreck.
Tomorrow, we have to go back to north Las Vegas and pick up our truck as we got the call late this afternoon that it is ready. I'm not sure how, but we'll get everything accomplished before the Rally starts on the 23rd. :)
The InstantPot may have to ride on the bed :-)))
Posted by: Jodee Gravel | Saturday, April 14, 2018 at 08:14 PM
Looks like you've got some serious adapting and adjusting to do. Best of luck. We'll be watching this process with great interest.
WS
Posted by: W Sutherlin | Sunday, April 15, 2018 at 12:15 PM
Hey Howard and Linda, We saw you at the Phoenix show. We had just arrived in Mesa to spend 10 weeks. Six weeks in, we traded our travel trailer for a fifth wheel! We spent the weekend at the dealership transferring all our stuff. But we went from smaller to bigger. So we know what you are going though! Can't wait to talk to you at the Spring Rally. See you next Sunday.
Posted by: Jan and Dave Abbott | Sunday, April 15, 2018 at 07:21 PM