June 15 and we are still waiting for the repairs to the RV. In the interim, we have been supporting the US economy!
After much discussion about racks, we decided that we will try to travel with nothing hanging off the back of the van. This keeps the total length at 21 ft, which means we can park anywhere that a car can — including parallel parking on the street. Essentially, we are a panel van (although we have some windows instead of solid sides). To make this possible, we now have a collapsible ladder (to reach the roof when necessary) folding bikes and
blow-up kayaks. We are looking into how to attach the sails to the kayaks, although probably we will not be bringing the sails with us on this trip.
I am also reading the Facebook Group for Travato owners. It seems lots of people are busy making modifications to increase storage, reduce noise, add solar panels, etc. The Travato is not only an RV, it is a project for tinkerers. The bad news, though, is it is not any more reliable than the Vista (recall that we named the Vista, “John Lemon”). On the other hand, it has fewer parts that would immobilize us if they fail. (If you followed us on our last trip, you will know that we had a lot of problems. However, none of them were in the actual truck – they were all the RV, built on a Ford truck chassis. Similarly, the Travato is built on a Promaster RAM van, which can be served at any RAM repair shop.)
On Tuesday Chuck convinced me that we should pick up the unrepaired RV with the replacement part, and pay the folks taking it as a trade-in to do the repair. It was quite a bit of money, so we were happy to learn during our drive to Northeast, that the repair had been done and that we could pick up the RV after supper. We were home just before midnight.
Although I am sure that we are making the right decision by downsizing to a van, once back in the Vista, I have been nostalgic. It was very comfortable and I shall miss the space and the option of bringing anything we want.
For comparison, here are the old 31 ft Vista and the new 21 ft. Travato. Note that with the Vista we also towed a car, which carried our bikes and kayaks. With the Travato we are not towing and we are going to put everything inside.
We spent Wednesday afternoon emptying out the Vista. It really was like moving house – clothes, bedding, electronics, cooking gear, food, lawn chairs, bike and kayak accessories … As well, Chuck needed to dismantle some of our add-ons, such as the towing gear, tire pressure monitors, etc. The Vista now looks pretty much as it did when we bought it, ignoring a few scratches on the wood.
We also had a bit of excitement very early Wednesday. We decided to better protect our house while away with a complete alarm system – burglar, fire and water. Around 4 a.m. the fire alarm went off. This led to two calls from the alarm company’s response team and an half-hour of ear-piercing alarms until Chuck found and removed the alarm battery. Fortunately, despite the ungodly hour, Chuck remembered the password, so the alarm company did not call 911. This is lucky, as I totally forgot we even have a password. We still have to determine how to re-arm the alarm without setting it off.
On Thursday we headed to Souderton to pick up the Travato. Everything went smoothly despite some torrential rain.
We decided to test out the Travato by camping locally at the Tohickon Family Campground on the banks of Tohickon Creek. Little did we know that the recent rains had turned the creek into a raging river. The campground has its visiting sites on the river bank, and the permanent sites uphill.
3 rows of visiting sites were under water and as the manager said, we had a waterside campsite. However, the Canada geese, the fireflies and the incredibly loud grey tree frogs were all very happy with the weather. The campground is right beside a historic covered bridge (which we drove through twice — never could have done it with the Vista) and historic grist mill.
Except for the fear of the creek rising even more and our finding ourselves boating instead of RVing, we spent a pleasant enough evening. It was quite hot and humid, so we tried out the air-conditioning. As we have heard from the Facebook group, it is extremely noisy (although we could certainly sleep through it). At some point we decided to turn off the air conditioning, open a window and turn on the fan. The temperature immediately plummeted and I ended up grabbing the quilt.
In the morning, in the interest of trying out all of the RV systems, we took our showers in the RV. The RV has a sophisticated water heater that can use electricity, propane or both. It took us a while to figure out how to turn it on. However, we were pleasantly surprised that since it is a continuous flow system, once the water was hot we were both able to shower with no break between. On the other hand, in the condensed space, the bathroom IS the shower stall, so having a shower on board means that anything in the bathroom that is not in the waterproof cabinets gets soaked. Still, it was a better experience than I expected.
Since we did not take any cooking utensils or food with us, we broke camp and drove to Quakertown for breakfast. In the Vista, this would have meant stopping at a truck stop. In the Travato, we just parked on a side street and walked to the main street. We had a nice breakfast at a diner.
As we had never visited Quakertown before, I was surprised that many store fronts advertised Mexican goods, food or other supplies. The breakfast specials at the dinner all had Mexican (or at least Tex-Mex) themes.
Chuck noticed that our license plate was hanging off the van, so we headed for the local 5 & 10 to do some shopping. (For those readers in the younger set, the Walmart equivalents of my youth were called 5 & 10s because they sold most goods for 5 or 10 cents. They usually had some type of lunch counter (if you know civil rights history, think of the Greensboro Sit In) and several departments such as housewares, sewing, snacks, clothing, etc. Woolworth’s and Kresge’s are two chains that come to mind.)
Sine’s 5 and 10 had much of the look of these old stores (although it is now 5 and 10 dollars) with an eclectic set of departments, including a Christmas shop, candy store, knitting and sewing section, dishes, games, hobby shop and an authentic old-style lunch counter. The owner was clearly a collector, as well. One huge display window was devoted to model airplanes (enough for a museum) and there were more models, as well as a model Zeppelin in the hobby section.
There were collections of old cameras, bottles, even rulers (which were much more interesting en masse than they would have been individually). We did our bit to keep the place in business by purchasing a screwdriver and a few sewing items.
Then we headed for home and dinner with friends as well as our first RV “showing”.
On Saturday we started getting organized for the trip. Quite a few of our neighbors came by to see the Travato and the bikes. I took a bicycle out for a test run down to our local hardware store, to pick up duck tape for some projects.
Chuck worked on his do-list (which is extensive) and getting the appropriate EZ-pass (for toll roads) while I worked on the bedroom and kitchen. For the bedroom, I cut some memory foam to fit the odd-shaped mattress, and worked on getting some of our old sheets to fit the same odd shape and thickness.
The bed has a weird FROLI bedspring system that consists of a bunch of springy plastic pieces that are tacked to the plywood bed. The springs are actually quite comfortable, but unfortunately they tend to get stuck in the mattress and pull loose, to the detriment of both the springs and the mattress. I cut an old flat sheet to fit over these and used my duck tape to keep it down. We then dumped the mattress supplemented with memory foam over this and we now have a much improved bed that still can be folded up to reach the storage beneath.
We also confirmed that 2 folding bikes, 2 blow-up kayaks and 2 stadium chairs can be stowed under the bed. That pretty much uses up our main storage so everything else needs to be stashed into our tiny cabinets and the very narrow space over the cab affectionately called the “Pizza Oven”.
In the Vista we had a microwave, stove top, small oven, and lots of room for coffee pots, toaster ovens, etc. Most days I used the oven to roast our dinner. In the Travato we have a microwave, very small stove top, no oven and no room to store appliances. So, again we are helping the economy by shopping.
The hardware store had a tiny one-cup coffee press. I also got the smallest size Instant Pot (our current one would not fit anywhere except under the bed – space already filled with our toys), a collapsible microwave hot air popper and an electric frying pan. The frying pan is too large to store any place but the Pizza Oven, but it did a great facsimile of my roasted veggies with salmon this evening, and can even be used to make brownies. I think it will be worth the hassle of bringing it (and our dinner plates can be stored inside). We will also bring a pot that can be put on the propane burners, in case we camp without an electric hook-up. And that is it for the kitchen.
Meanwhile, we finally got the correct pump to blow-up the kayaks, and Chuck tested them out. In our living room, they seem fine.
I entertained hope that we could leave on the weekend, but organizing our packing has been more challenging than expected.