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Is This Typical MH Behavior?
As stated on other threads, I’m a wannabe newbie to the MH world. I thought I’d ask others if they grew up camping with motorhomes or is this something that came along later in life?
For me, it seems that I always enjoyed my recreational activitites. It was gadgets and technology, then motorcycles, then sports cars and now I’m facinated with motorhomes. So, for me, it’s a type of migration from one stage of life to another.
How about you? What triggered your motorhome lifestyle?
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22 Replies
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Thinking back I remember seeing Prevost buses sometimes parked at marinas where we had docked our boat. I owned 13 boats over the years. Selling our last boat and looking for another hobby one of my accounts was an RV dealer, Buddy Gregg Motor Homes, Lewisville, Tx. We purchased a new Country Coach Affinity from BG owning it for 10 years.
After about 3 months without the CC- RV I saw a Prevost Marathon conversion at a KC RV show. We narrowed our choice to Marathon and Liberty. Purchased the Marathon and have never looked back.
Like driving it …smile… that is one of the best parts. Prevost is the best over the road …bar non. It’s the gold standard. Drive one, you’ll be hooked.
Buy what ever … there all compared to Prevost.
Post often on PC, ask questions. I guarantee we can help you manage your bank account.
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Never camped in a MH, never drove a MH until 3 years ago when we bought our first bus. I figured, how hard can it be. One can always slow down/stop which is not an option in a plane.
It was truly eye opening when we encountered this log truck on a narrow two lane bridge at 45mph+ about 20 minutes after I picked up the bus. Great times…To this day I don’t know how we made it passed each other without a scratch.
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I forgot about the boating stage. That was just before the motorcycle stage.
Hmmm, it appears that a motorhome is a logical progression.
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As it goes in life so I was told: Sailboat, Powerboat, Motorhome, Casket!
Seems to be pretty accurate for me! 🙂
In the RV phase, I started out with a LTD class-A in 1974 and worked my way up, down, and back up to a Prevost. Some photos of the lot: http://bottieri.com/remote/Bottieri/Vehicles/Pages/My_RV_history.html
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Like this?
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I always thought if I couldn’t pass my medical for my pilot license I would get a motor home, but I did not want one that was unreliable. 25 years ago a nearly new Prevost showed up for sale in our local newspaper. It was being sold by a newly widowed lady. I told her I was NOT going to buy it, but wanted to ask some questions.
My wife made it clear she was not going camping so there was no way she was going to look at it.
A week later however we did look at it and the rest is history.
Until then we had never looked at or stepped into any type of RV.
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I know exactly when the bug hit me….. it was in August of 1996. We booked a trip to Alaska that included ‘trains, planes and automobiles’. I had never camped as a kid or even tented.
The trip started on a seated bus through the Yukon. The bus was the type that had an accordion in the middle, the front 2/3rds of the bus had seats, the back 1/3rd of the bus was a lounge with a private bathroom. The roads were so narrow and twisty through the Yukon that we had to have a leader car with a big sign on the roof ‘wide vehicle’.
Finally, we made it to Anchorage to catch a boat down through he inside passage.
Ok, getting to the RV bug part……. Part of the trip included a train and I sat next to a couple and we started chatting. They drove their RV from South Carolina to Washington state to join this Alaskan trip. I was intrigued. The guy told me about all their stops, etc. They put their tow vehicle on a tow dolly as a dingy. I thought how nice it would be to travel at your own pace and on your own schedule.
The guy told me that they didn’t want slides because they were something new just coming out and he wasn’t sold on them (reliability). He was such a nice fella but his wife was an ice queen…..very unfriendly, I felt sorry for him having to live with her (funny what you remember).
The RV bug started crawling… I signed up to get Motorhome magazine. Read it from cover to cover every month. Since we were traveling a lot during this time, I never could get real serious about a purchase but I certainly enjoyed reading about them.
Fast forward to 2004. I decided it was time to rent one. I found a rental company that rented only new units. This guy auctioned off his whole fleet for new ones every year. Not knowing what in the world would work for us, I rented a 31 ft. Fleetwood Tioga class C (one slide). We drove up from Southern California to the wine country. Loved it!
In 2005, we rented a Fleetwood Expedition, 38 ft. class A (three slides). Again had a great time. In 2006, rented a Fleetwood Expedition, 38 ft. class A (four slides). I was hooked.
So, here comes 2007, we decided to jump in the RVing world and ordered a new 2008 Monaco Dynasty 42 ft. 4 slide unit. It took two months to build and when it was time to take delivery (April of 2007), it was like waking up Christmas morning as a kid. I could not sleep the night before.
We drove that coach for 7.5 yrs. I thought if we ever bought another coach, I wanted the quality and durability of a Prevost chassis. So, I read about Prevosts for a good six months before we decided on a converter. This site, Jon, Tom and all the fine folks here helped with ALL their opinions.
Mark
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I went from a Klepper folding kayak in my early tenting days, to a small motorboat, to cabin cruisers, to offshore race boat to 36′ sailboat, to 40′ sailing yacht which I bought in Holland and sailed across the Atlantic to Boston. My brother in law was and is into MH. Never thought I would get the itch. Always thought MH’ing is for old farts. Then I realized … I am one of them now … 6 years ago we bought our first MH, a 39′ Newmar Ventana. It did the shake, rattle and roll when we crossed the USA. Thought this was normal behavior for MH. About 4 years ago, I found Olivia and was hooked after the first test drive. Went home, printed money and never looked back.
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Excellent Grizz, love the history in pictures. -
Jon said “My wife made it clear she was not going camping so there was no way she was going to look at it.”
I talked to your wife once on the phone for a very few minutes a year ago before she could get you on the phone to talk to me. She seems like a really nice person. It has been very kind of you to honor her wishes and NOT take her camping!
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We didn’t grow up with Rvs but our kids did… we wanted to spend quality time with our kids… so many times we see people wait until it’s almost too late to really enjoy our lives…. we decided to make our family our life.
Our first coach was a 26′ GMC… kinda like a big van… we bought it used it and loved it and the kids loved it too we would go to Galveston or somewhere in Texas every weekend. We would leave Friday when school got out and come home Sunday night.
After a few months Larry decided he wanted a new GMC so we shopped around and bought an almost new Eleganza II… boy we were all so excited it was gorgeous !!
After another 6 months Larry still wasn’t satisfied so we bought a 33′ Bluebird with a gas engine… 4MPG and that might have been downhill !! We loved it and gas was cheap then. We then bought our first diesel Bluebird front engine model and we loved it and took lots of trips as a family.
Still not satisfied Larry bought a 35′ Newell Showcoach and we then thought we had “arrived”… Had lots of fun with that one. Then as usual he wanted to trade up again… so we bought a gorgeous 38′ Newell Coach and had even more fun… by this time the kids were teenagers and wanted to be home more on weekends so we sold that one and took a 35′ Bluebird pusher in trade knowing we would sell it immediately which we did and took a 26′ GMC in trade knowing we would that immediately as well which we did and we then got out of Rving for 20years or so… and got into boating for many years but in Texas boating isn’t as much fun for us so we bought another boat to keep in Florida and loved that for a few years then started going to the boat less and less and Larry got the RV bug again but this time it would be just the 2 of us.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that as we still owned 2 big boats… so we bought a used 42′ single slide Holliday Rambler Navigator… we really enjoyed it and traded up to a 2005 45′ Navigator with 4 slides and it was a dream..
Naturally Larry still not satisfied kept talking about Prevosts… I thought he’d lost his mind… but he assured me it was a whole different ballgame and he would send me pics all the time and I was saying no… all the time.. we drove over the Shreveport one weekend and looked at a 2001 Vantare H3-45 that was to die for and I drove it and was totally sold.. I thought I just needed a chauffeur’s hat to complete the “look” down there in that drivers seat !!
We couldn’t put a deal together on that bus but became good friends with the owner and our search continued… Larry was convinced he wanted an H and not an XL. We checked out Buddy Gregg’s in Dallas and a friend purchased an XL from him and we drove all over Denton in it but Larry still liked the H better.He finally found one we could afford on Ebay a 1998 H3-45 Vantare with 2 slides.. we had to have slides after having 4 slides… so we made a deal and bought it sight unseen… NB…. DON’T EVER DO THAT !!! do your homework first we had NO idea what we were getting into…. but as it turns out…thousands & thousands of $$$ later we ended up with a great bus and an expensive education !!! Like I said don’t do that not knowing what you are getting into.
We ended up selling that bus to a very happy owner as everything was replaced and it was ready to go !!
We bought a 2005 Liberty H3-45 which we love and are not planning to sell anytime soon… Is this our last bus?? I have NO clue…. but probably not !!
Good luck in following your dream !!
Cheers Diane
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Dick,
Di had a mental picture of a motor home that did not reflect what a Prevost conversion was. She literally did not know what I was talking about.
But she and the lady selling it got to talking before I returned from a trip and to be polite she told the lady if I felt up to it when I got home we would come look at it. She thought I would be whipped because I had to drive because the plane was being annualled. When she asked me if I wanted to go look at “Marilyn’s camper” she couldn’t believe it when I said yes.
The Prevost was sitting up a long driveway and it looked really great when we pulled in. The very first words out of Di’s mouth when she saw it was “I could get used to that.” The rest is history.
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All of the helpful stories, opinions and notes you are taking will be helpful but when new people want to get in Rving some I believe over do it.
You sound well off, go buy a bus for a couple hundred grand. Have your PDI done by someone reliable and roll the dice. You can check the big ticket items on a bus but that’s not what will drive you nuts. Until you work a bus and get it out there it won’t show up.
This is where experience gets you thru but you don’t have that. I would say out off 1800 members here at least 95% of us got our ass kicked at least once. You will learn, you will make mistakes and you will be better because of it.
I say jump off the bridge, get your ass kicked and learn, it’s the only way I know. These are my opinions, now I will give you some facts.
When you own a bus, beit 100k or 2million you are a member of a very exclusive bunch. We are few, we are proud and our opinions are not to be challenged. We have egos the size of mountains and yet you could put us all in one room and we are equal. We own a bus, there is no higher place to go in the so called RV world.
Bus people will go out of their way to help you, no questions asked.
On a side note the Essex is a piece of shit and the Godfather gets Saint of the week award for his diligent help.
Later
bv
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I started camping early in life by taking camping trips with friends, etc. Of course, while in the Army, I had some fantastic camping experiences, like, camping in a fox hole in Korea in sub-zero weather or the deserts in California. Those kind of experiences just endeared me more to camping!
My wife & I did the tent camping thing for several years in the Colorado mountains with friends and decided to buy a used Dolphin to “get off the ground.” When kids came along, we upgraded to a new Class-C. Never owned a Class-A/DP, Prevost, but I’m looking forward to camping once again, just maybe in a little more style, but nonetheless, camping and the joys that camping brings.
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Bernie, I wish you wouldn’t beat around the bush….but you’re right. Get some knowledge, use some common sense, ask questions and take the plunge. The #1 thing to remember is that almost any used Prevo is a better choice than any plastic. They are all a huge expense. Geo.
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