The New Rig

We arrived in Asheville, NC yesterday afternoon. Our friend Lindig is here….we worked together at Amazon in Coffeyville, Kansas. We set up at Bear Creek campground, which is only a couple of miles from her. We took the car to get her and went out to eat. Had a good meal at Stone Ridge Tavern just down the road a ways. Was great to catch up on what she’s been doing and have a laugh and drink with our good friend. After dinner, we took her back to our rig so she could see it. We watched a little HGTV and then took her back to her rig. It was great to see her. We stayed another day at the campground, as I needed to get some things done around the rig and we went out and did some errands.
Yesterday we got the Roadmaster Invisibrake installed at Camping World in Statesville. Turns out they were running a special on the installation of this particular braking system so we saved about $150, which was a wonderful surprise. The control box is under the driver’s seat in the car and a cable runs up under the carpet to the brake pedal of the car. When I step on the motorhome brake,it applies the same amount of braking pressure to the car’s brake. Only thing to hook up, when it’s time to hit the road, is the breakaway cord and a little cable that connects the motorhome to the car. That’s it….off we go. We picked this system since we move so often…every one to two weeks and we didn’t have to be crawling around on the floor boards, hooking up a braking system. We wanted a “set it and forget it” type of system. Hooking the car to the motorhome is fast too with the Blue Ox tow bar. We can be hooked up in just a couple of minutes and on the road. It seems so nice to be able to go out and shop and do errands in our car.






People ask us how we like the motorhome, as compared to the 5th wheel. Since we’ve never known anything different, we loved the Excel and truck. Now having this, the ride is so much smoother and so pretty looking out the large windshield. We love the set up inside the rig and I love having a garage for the trike. I can putter around in the garage, waxing the bike or whatever. Here’s some pictures of the rig…its hard to get much in the picture.
There isn’t a regular oven. It’s a combination microwave/half time/ and convection oven. Haven’t used anything other than the microwave yet. The microwave makes a weird buzzing sound and needs to be replaced but we have to know where we’ll be in 2-3 weeks so it can be shipped to an rv repair shop for install.
  Other than that, we haven’t found any other things that need to be fixed. That’s a good thing. Yesterday at Camping World, a guy came in with a Winnebago Itasca and he had a laundry list of items that needed attention…..a long list. Hope he brought his sleeping bag…he’s going to be in that waiting room a long time. The sleeping loft wouldn’t be something that everyone would care for but we like it. We call it the “tree house” and that was where Teagan (Linda’s grandson) liked to go to take his naps cause he could watch TV. We’ve never had a TV in the bedroom…is kind of nice.


I love the engine braking system and the tow haul mode. So far, with the hills we’ve encountered our fuel mileage has been running 6.8 miles to the gallon. The “info” gauge, on the dash automatically calculates the “number of miles to empty” based on the last 500 miles of driving. Nice feature. We haven’t really missed the 5th wheel or truck. There are a couple of things I liked about the 5th wheel that I wish we had with this rig but nothing we can’t live without. We’re really happy we made the switch. So easy to drive and easy access to everything while we’re driving. Even with the slide in, there is a large aisle down through the rig with full access to everything in the kitchen and we’re able to sit at the dinette (which we love) to play cards, eat or work. Next time I’ll tell you about the new wax I bought for the rig. Awesome stuff !