Category: Not Quite What We’d Planned

Welcome to the fleet, little buddy!

Do get ahold of yourself. This is not a birth announcement.

Nor is it a puppy announcement.

We’ve added something else to the family, and although it means we do in fact now own more, we can travel for part of the year with less, and there’s kind of a sweet little coincidence thrown in too.

It’s a lot less.
Like less-than-half less.

But first… my existential crisis

Own more, do more? Oy vey. Let me type through it.

We wanted this, it feels right, and we’re confident with the decision — which was a good two years in the making.

But I don’t know how to sit with “owning more” yet, and I feel like the more I try to justify it, the more it sounds like I’m making excuses.

So indulge me while I examine things with my head tilted and one eye squinched.

Even with the contents of our storage unit considered, we still own significantly less than we did before we downsized to our first RV in 2015 — from a 2900sf 4br 2.5ba house with a 2-car garage, a shed, 3 vehicles, all those sets of sheets and towels, 4 people’s worth of shoes and clothing, formal living and dining areas, multiple desks and dressers, and walk-in closets containing all the we-might-need-these-somedays.

At present, we own one vehicle. As for our “houses,” the 5th wheel offers up about 350 square feet of living space, and the truck camper… maybe 150? All the furniture came with (and stays with) them, and we can travel with only one of these boogers at a time.

Well, then.

No name change is forthcoming. Own Less Do More stays.

So why did we do it?

We’d started talking about it maybe a year after we traded in our old 5th wheel and moved into this Mobile Suites in 2018.

It’s really big, y’all. There are places we can’t take it because of its size. And at great risk of making the poor thing feel fat-shamed, we really thought we’d be happier if we had a more svelte companion.

A lot of places we’d like to go are remote, petite, or require travel along roads that are unsuitable for 60 feet and 10 tires worth of moving mayhem. Plus, we’ve got our eyes on RVing to Alaska in 2023, and although we know folks who’ve done it in large rigs, we’d prefer something more stealthy and streamlined, so that we have a wider selection of places to stay, minimal need to book sites in advance (we hope), and far less worry about banging the thing up a bit in the name of adventure (we hope again).

In a truck camper, we can squeeze in just about anywhere, and scratches and dents on an 8-year-old previously owned unit become the start of a good campfire story.

However, we aren’t ready to give up the comfort of using the 5th wheel as our home, nor are we ready to return to sticks-and-bricks living, so we think of the truck camper as our mobile summer cabin. Our plan is to take off for about 5 months of travel in it this April, so that we can get the feel for a season of use in the Lower 48 before we try schlepping up to Alaska next year.

Plus, we helped Tim’s folks do this same thing just a few months ago, and that definitely stoked the fire. We did first ask if we could borrow their truck camper for Alaska 2023, but those two actively traveling seniors weren’t yet ready or willing to relinquish the rights. They might still be using it themselves, and we quite honestly hope that’s the case, so we bought our own.

This is the one Tim’s folks bought (the in-law suite?).
Joke: Just how old does Tim have to be before his father will let him borrow his toys?
Apparently 55 is still too young.

Got some specs?

Of course we do.

It’s a 2013 Lance 1050S, and I’ve taken the liberty of adding a column for our 5th wheel’s stats, so you can appreciate the differences.

Truck Camper5th wheel
Length19′ 8″40′ 6″
Height during travel11′ 8″ 13′ 6″
Dry weight3,030 lbs17,000 lbs
Mattress size60″ x 74″ (RV queen)72″ x 80″ (RV king)
No. slides14
Fresh tank30 gal100 gal
Grey tank27 gal75 gal
Black tank22 gal50 gal

There are more specs here, an actual brochure here, and I’m not going to give you a video walk-through because this dude has already done that in one like ours, and as a salesperson, he got paid to do it. Ours lacks the slide topper and the drop-down bunk over the dinette. Other than that? Samesies.

This is confusing af. How’s this gonna work, Em?

We are in the right place at the right time with the right friends.

J & K are fellow RVers, they’ve got acreage near our home base of San Antonio, and we’ve been staying on the property since early November. They’re letting us leave one unit here while we travel in the other.

Plus, J is every bit as much of a handy fixit guy as Tim, if not more so, and he’s got a tractor.

Why is that important? Okay, well, when we’re using the 5th wheel, we’ve got a big-ass hitch in the bed of the truck, plus bed-wide boxes full of tools, and a 65-gallon auxiliary fuel tank. All of that heavy stuff has to come out in order to slide the truck camper in, and then be put in again when we’re ready to switch back. So twice a year, we’ll take advantage of tractor-assisted switcheroos and an assortment of outbuildings in which to leave whatever ain’t ridin’ with us.

We pay for the privilege by helping out with projects on the property, and we’re also trying to convince J to accept something more valuable than an occasional family-size bag of peanut M&Ms for this stupid convenient option he’s given us. This would be tremendously more difficult for us without his generosity, and although we could do it without him, we probably wouldn’t.

Number of pairs of jeans I own: 2
Number of RVs we own: also 2
I am now afraid to buy more jeans.

Do they have names?

Not really, but we’re trying.

In homage to the largest and smallest states in the continental US, we’d like to go with Tex for the 5th wheel, and Road Island (misspelling intentional) for the truck camper, but neither of us is doing very well with the mental gymnastics.

The big one is usually “the house” or “the RV,” the truck camper is usually “the camper,” and if we’re inside one, then the other is simply, “the other one.”

What about that coincidence you were talking about?

When we were in San Antonio back in May of 2021, Tim and I spent a couple of days helping with clean-up efforts at an Escapees RV park near here, after it was walloped by severe storms with record-breaking hail and tornado-force winds. Almost all the RVs and vehicles on the lot were totaled, forcing this senior population to start over. I wrote about those emotional, sad, yet hopeful days here.

On December 30 of 2021, while in the San Antonio area once again, and shopping-but-not-shopping like we tend to do, Tim texted me a link to the craigslist ad for this camper. 

I looked at the first photo and could tell immediately where it was: that very RV park.

The owners — who we determined we had not met while we were helping with the clean-up in May, but wow, would that have made an even better story — had bought it in Dallas, after the storms, to live in for a few months until they could obtain a new 5th wheel to replace their totaled one. 

We spent about an hour checking it out the next day (no odors, no stains, spotless fridge and oven!), went out to lunch to talk it over, and texted the owner an offer from the table. He came up a little, but said he’d throw in a bunch of accessories that we might want/need, so we settled on his counter-offer and got approved for a loan that afternoon.

New adventures, coming soon

And that’s about as much as I can tell you without actually having lived or traveled in Road Island, which means I can’t yet say how awesome — or awful? — it is to cut our living space, storage space, and amenities by more than half. That’s coming up when we get back from our 2-month trip to Mexico. (If you missed that news, I included it in our previous blog post. We’re flying!)

Over the past two weeks, Tim’s been tackling caulking, wiring, and other fixits to get the camper ready to go, and I’ve been taking care of transferring and procuring interior items. We’ll have time to spend a night or two onboard to test all the systems before we leave for Mexico on Feb. 1, and we’ll move into it fully when we return at the end of March. We’ll then give ourselves an additional 2-3 weeks to take care of any issues before we roll out of Texas for the season.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got packing to do, but at least the bathing suit decision is easy. I’ve only got one of those.

Help, humor, and hope: giving back to our own

On April 28, an over-55 RV park west of San Antonio was shattered to bits during devastating wind, rain, and hail storms, including an EF1 tornado that touched down nearby.

Miraculously, there were no fatalities, and only one injury that required an ER visit,
but most personal vehicles and RVs were total losses.

Although we’ve never stayed at this park, it is affiliated with the Escapees RV Club, and as Escapees members, we felt called to lend a hand to this branch of our RVing family. (Coincidentally, it was this time last year that we spent a month in service at the Escapees Care Center in Livingston, TX.)

This announcement on Facebook was our first alert, and the news video at this link added jarring visual evidence of the loss.

We happened to arrive in the area (our home base) the week after the storm, and were able to spend a couple of days working on site. Many volunteers had preceded us, so by the time we arrived on Day 9, much of the large debris had been placed in dumpsters already.

There was still more to clear, and we did a lot of that, but we found that one of the most valuable services we could provide was listening. The residents needed to tell their stories from that terrifying night; needed to tell us how much they’d been helped by volunteers; how they appreciated losing only things, not lives.

The hailstones were softball size and larger.
One was measured at 6.4″ in diameter — a record setter.
We saw tow trucks and insurance adjusters coming and going all day long, both days we were on the property.

Almost all the residents we spoke with said they were thankful they didn’t have it as bad as some of the others. We saw what they were dealing with. Just who were these others who had it worse?

Maybe it was because we weren’t on the scene until several days had passed, but we were surprised by the community members’ senses of resiliency, positivity — and even humor. They were in it together, holding each other up, cracking jokes about taking margarita breaks (at 10:30 in the morning), and making light of getting the job done, just slowly, due to age and associated infirmities.

“We can’t thank you enough for coming out here and doing this.”

“It’s… We just wanted… You’re welcome. This time, it wasn’t us. Someday, it could be.”

a typical exchange with residents as we worked
We borrowed the park’s trailer and began picking up piles of debris that had not yet been collected. There was a lot of metal roofing, sodden carpeting, plastic shards, and even ruined personal belongings like books, puzzles, and home decor.
Heartbreaking.
One of the two dumpsters brought in for storm debris was full when we got there.
Three trailer loads later, we’d topped off the second.
He wins at Garbage Can Jenga here at home, because I always cave way before he does.
He wasn’t going to be the one to dump that dumpster either.
(If the video doesn’t load, try refreshing the page. I have the same issue with my browser, and no earthly idea how to fix it. Sorry.)
Some owners were offsite for the season when the storm hit.
We covered a few shed windows and vents with plastic, and hoped for the best.
Those are the crumbs of an RV window on this couple’s wheelchair ramp. The floors inside were peppered with them as well.
Most lots are covered with gravel, not grass, and picking out all the shattered glass will take… well… maybe scraping it all off with a bulldozer and spreading fresh is the way to go.
We saw lots of places where hail had punctured exterior walls.
We also saw one instance of hailstones having fallen with such force that they came through an RV bathroom skylight and punctured an interior wall.
Damage at every turn
A few residents asked for our help clearing yard waste.
Those who were still physically able to stoop, bend, reach, lift, and climb prior to the storms had reached their limit by the time we showed up a week later.
So we raked (and stooped, and bent, and reached, lifted and climbed).
And I got a good reminder that I should have worn boots on that first day.
See those slashes across both shoe tops?
I must have dragged a piece of metal roofing across my feet.
Dummy. And a lucky one at that!
Next trip out, I wore my boots.
Community Support
A nearby business, the Graff 7A Ranch, has served multiple meals to their RV park neighbors since the storm struck, setting up a cafeteria-style line in the park’s clubhouse so that the residents don’t have to travel.
They are charging nothing.
And these business owners were hit by the same storms, and are dealing with clean-up and repair issues of their own.
I can’t even.

The level and amount of destruction we saw certainly filled our minds with our own what-ifs.

What if we lost our home tomorrow? With our full physical capabilities and financial stability, we’d start over, and eventually recover, with ample time ahead of us to appreciate the lessons learned and the blessings of a new beginning. 

But what if it happened when we were closer to our 80’s, when neither physical nor financial strength are assured? When it might be only one of us left able or alive to deal with the aftermath of a natural disaster? How would we begin again? How could we?

No answer. I have no answer to that. These folks probably didn’t either, and I’m sure they handle their “one step at a time” better during some hours than others.

One gentleman needed our help moving some furniture out of his ruined RV and into the outbuilding on his lot. He was unwell. He was living alone.

And yet, he offered to compensate us for our assistance.

We declined.

He insisted, and as the hand holding his wallet began to tremble, we realized that turning him down would likely add to his grief rather than alleviate it, so we told him we’d be stopping at a Dairy Queen for treats on the way home, and that if he’d like to pay for those, we would gratefully accept a few dollars. That earned us a smile.

I don’t think he knew that it was Mother’s Day. 

I also don’t think he knew how he was going to get through the next day. 

But rewarding his helpers was something he could do, while facing so many things he couldn’t.

Blizzards.
After helping people clean up from a tornado.
Um. Way to adhere to a theme?

Surviving such devastation takes more strength and patience than I can imagine, and so does enduring the lengthy and confusing insurance claims process, not to mention the hassle of finding new cars and RVs in which to start over — to start over at age 70 or even older.

I’d also argue that it takes strength to accept assistance. Our hope is that we helped the people of the Alamo Area SKP Co-Op/Lone Star Corral feel just a little stronger this week.