Changes to the Plan

When Mike and I started our adventure in this big-ass RV almost a year ago our plan was to travel across the US exploring as many state and national parks as we could while enjoying the various different regions of the United States. The US is a vast and varied place!

We hung out around the southeast through the end of 2021 so we could spend Christmas with our family. Then, in January, the push toward the West began.

We didn’t get to visit as many state parks as we would have liked for a couple of reasons. Being able to get two-week reservations in a state park usually means making reservations six, nine, or even 12 months in advance. Since we started our adventure sooner than anticipated, that necessary advance planning didn’t happen. The other reason is that many state and national parks either don’t have sites big enough to fit this 45-foot-long rig or roads to get to the parks that can accommodate this beast. That means we haven’t been able to go to many of the places we really want to go to.

We want to stay in those kind of parks. Staying near those parks is an okay alternative, but it’s not the same thing. That fact really hit home for me when we were in Texas visiting Big Bend National Park. We made the best of it and enjoyed our camping spot outside of the national park in Terlingua, Texas, but it would have been soooooo much more awesome if we’d had a smaller rig and could’ve camped inside of the national park.

I also spent a great deal of time making future reservations while we were in Terlingua. There was tons of availability for smaller spots in the state and national parks we are looking to visit, but very limited availability for our big rig. So I had to settle for reservations that were mostly in commercial campgrounds near the parks. I did manage to reserve spots in some cool Utah state parks, but most of our reservations were in commercial campgrounds.

After Terlingua, we were supposed to visit Carlsbad, New Mexico, where we planned to see Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains national parks. Then, just days before we were due to leave Terlingua, while we were sitting perfectly still, relaxing in the coach, the inside pane of the driver’s side window decided to shatter. We knew there’d be no getting that fixed in Terlingua. The nearest town was 80 miles away, and it wasn’t a big town. So we had to change the plan a bit, nix the visit to Carlsbad and detour through El Paso for repairs before continuing on to Las Cruces, New Mexico. The AquaHot water heater had also stopped working, too. About $1,000 later, things were fully functional and we were able to relax and enjoy our time in Las Cruces. We particularly enjoyed seeing White Sands National Park as well as the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument.

We left Las Cruces at 11:00 a.m. on March 15 and headed to Tucson, where we had a one-month reservation at Far Horizons RV Park. It was to be our first stay in a 55+ resort and we were both looking forward to the experience. It’s not the kind of place we usually like to stay–we much prefer being surrounded by nature over sitting in what’s essentially a giant parking lot surrounded by other campers–but there is a bike trail system here that Mike was excited about exploring and I was intrigued at the advertised activities on offer, such as a pottery shop, rock tumbling, glass making, etc.

We were only 18 miles away from Las Cruces when disaster struck.  We were headed west on I-10 nearing the border patrol checkpoint where traffic chokes down from two lanes to one. We were already in the right lane with plenty of room in from of us when a smaller Class C motorhome pulled into the lane in front of us. Mike applied the brakes to slow us down to regain the approprriate following distance when the Class C stopped suddenly in front of us. Mike put the brake pedal to the floor and veered off to the left to avoid the Class C, but wasn’t able to stop our mammoth coach in time. The left front corner of our coach bumped the right rear corner of the Class C. It wasn’t a hard hit–we had almost stopped–but there was a ladder mounted on the Class C that stuck out just enough to crumple the corner of our coach and shatter the windshield. We both wanted to sit there and cry. We had JUST had the water heater and driver’s window fixed, and now the thing was essentially undrivable.

It could have been worse. We were lucky that no one was seriously injured. But we knew it was going to throw a big wrench in our future plan. The COVID supply chain issues coupled with more demand for RVs in general have seriously impacted RV repair times. Issues that used to take days or weeks to fix are now taking weeks and even months for the simplest of issues.

At the time of the accident, we both knew we HAD to get to Tucson. Neither of us wanted to drive 250 miles with a shattered windshield, but we felt there would likely be more and/or better options for repairs in Tucson, which is not only much bigger than Las Cruces, but is also a winter haven for RVs.

So we used some super-strong duct tape and transparent packing tape, taped over the cracks as best as we could, and limped on our way. We crawled along I-10 at around 50 mph, stopping every hour or so to add more tape to the windshield, which was slowly disintegrating before our eyes. It was a harrowing experience. All we could do was keep plodding along, hoping for the best.

We finally reached Tucson around 6:30 p.m., just before sunset. Neither of us have ever been happier to reach a destination. It was such a relief to finally get there, safe and sound.

That was a Tuesday. I think it was Friday when the insurance adjuster paid us a visit. The following Monday, the body shop guy came. He confirmed our fears that repairs could take about a month once parts arrived. Of course, getting parts is another story. It could take a month or more. It’s been about a month since parts were ordered already.

There’s no way to know when the needed parts will arrive, so we are stuck, waiting, with no known end in sight. Lucky for us, the RV park we’re in is a haven for Snowbirds, people from  northern parts of the US and from Canada who flock to Tucson in the winter to escape the cold. Most snowbirds leave at the end of March or April to head back home. Some stragglers hang out into May, maybe June. It’s really a bit of a ghost town these days, which means there’s room for us to stay indefinitely until our RV can be repaired.

Meanwhile, we have decided we want to downsize our rig. We had both, individually been regretting having purchased such a large unit. It’s been great having so much space, but we have more space than we need. Really. We spend most of our time outside, at least when we are in the kind of campgrounds we enjoy.

We are carrying quite a bit of stuff, however, that’s necessary for full-time RV living and won’t fit into a much-smaller unit. We already have storage space rented on the East Coast housing the bulk of our belongings, so we didn’t want to rent more storage space in Tucson. We also didn’t want to get rid of even more of our stuff! That’s when we started thinking about making Tucson our home base. We explored a lot of different options. We both felt like renting would just be throwing money away and, with rents increasing at crazy rates thanks to the current housing shortage, feared we’d be putting ourselves at even more risk. Mike has always wanted to live in the desert, so we decided to buy a house here in Tucson where we can stay for a couple or three years and explore the West from here.

Once the big-ass RV is fixed, we will sell it and then buy a small, towable travel trailer that we can use for month-long trips around the western US. There’s a shortage of new RVs these days, so we don’t know when the one we want will become available, but Tucson is a great place to wait. Once we get a camper, we will also need to buy the appropriate-size truck with which to tow the thing. We may need to wait for truck availability, too. But, again, Tucson is a great place to wait.

And that’s how we ended up buying a house in Tucson, which itself was no easy feat. The real estate market here is just as crazy at it is everywhere else. Over the course of about three weeks, we looked at around 30 houses in and around the greater Tucson area and submitted three offers that were declined before finally having a fourth offer accepted.

It’s close to the bicycle trails, which Mike and I both enjoy, and has a swimming pool, a must for us if we are going to be living in the desert. It has a guest room, too, for those of you who would like to come visit.

We officially closed on Wednesday, May 4. Today, there are movers on the East Coast loading our belongings into a truck, which should be delivered to the house on Sunday or Monday. Unpacking will keep us busy for a while, but it’ll give us something to do while we wait for the coach to be repaired.

We’ve changed the plan a bit, but we haven’t changed the goal, which is still to travel around the US in an RV seeing as many state and national parks as we can. I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t been stressful. Losing Belle during the whole thing didn’t help either. But, really, we can’t complain. Things could be a whole lot worse. Now we have a new plan to look forward to, and we get to live part-time in the beautiful city of Tucson.

So now y’all have the scoop.