Tag Archives: Buying an RV

Downsizing Home, empty nesters, freedom, Roadtrips, rv living, travel, usa travel

A QUICK TRIP TO WILMINGTON, NC – Food, Fun and Wonderful People!

Leave a comment

Linsley and I were preparing for our next adventure.  I have landed a workamping position at Jellystone Campground in Warrens, Wisconsin for the summer season 2020, we had bought our car, and now needed a way to take the car with us on our journey to Wisconsin.  We leave South Carolina on February 29, and wend our way north and west over a 5 week period, so lots to see and do along the way……

We had bought our RV from Billy and Ada, a lovely couple who had bought it brand new and lovingly used it for over 20 years.  When we bought the RV, the price included a tow dolly, but at the time we picked the RV up from Billy and Ada, we were unable to take the tow dolly with us, so our friend Janet ( a fellow RVer we met) came with me to Wilmington, NC to pick up the tow dolly.  It was about a 6 hour drive, so it was lovely to have Janet’s company for it.

The drive there and back we made in torrential rain, which really made it much harder than it should have been, but when we arrived in Wilmington, the sun came out and stayed out for the whole time we were there.

Janet met Billy and Ada, and was totally bowled over by this lovely lovely couple.  Billy pulled out the tow dolly and showed me everything I needed to know about it and how to attach and secure the car onto it.  He even gave us the magnetic lights that attach to the car once it is attached onto the tow dolly.  The one thing he did warn me about driving it back to SC was that without a car on the dolly, it could bounce, so drive carefully and at a reasonable speed.

After the tow dolly was all hooked up and ready to be driven down the road, Ada and Billy gave us a huge bag of collard greens from their garden that Billy went and picked while Janet and I were talking with Ada.  I shared pictures of our travels, our grandchildren and our newest great nephew, and then Janet and I were on our way to find some dinner and check into our hotel.

We arrived at the hotel, and had a lovely suite, which we shared, and then went for a walk in search of somewhere nice to eat.  We had thought about going to the canal district, but decided that parking with a tow dolly attached might be a problem.  Luckily, on our walk, we found The Bonefish Grill not too far up the street from our hotel.

Dinner was amazing!  I have always been allergic to zinc, which meant that I was never able to eat shellfish as it tasted like old gun metal to me.  Recently, however, while cooking shrimp, it smelled really good to me (which is a huge change from previously, when shrimp smelled awful to me), so Janet and I went to Bonefish Grill for dinner, and I told our waiter Lucas (who was incredible by the way) about my prior inability to eat shellfish.  He suggested that I try the bang bang shrimp, and if I couldn’t eat it, he would take it away.  I was ok with that, and soon he arrived with a steaming plate of bang bang shrimp that smelled divine!

I tried one of the shrimp and to my surprise, as soon as I put it into my mouth, it tasted so good, like nothing else I had ever tasted.  I couldn’t believe that suddenly, I was able to eat something that for the whole of my life I had not been able to eat, and I was loving it!

What a great start to  dinner that was.  Janet and I shared the bang bang shrimp as there was so much of it, and Lucas, our server, was very happy to hear that it was a big hit.  He brought our drinks and we had another little surprise, no, I wasn’t drunk, but my glass was!

The restaurant was very quiet, it was a Tuesday evening, and there were very few people around, so I think we got his full attention and he had more time to talk to us than he normally would on a busy night at Bonefish Grill.  He was so knowledgeable and helpful, possibly the best server I have ever had (and he was pretty cute too!)

Main course and Janet had Tuna Sushimi, and I had Salmon in a lemon caper sauce, which was delicious.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At this point, both Janet and I were really full, but when we saw the chocolate lava cake, we couldn’t resist and decided to share a plate between us.  It was well worth it!  OMG it was good!

After dinner, Janet and I walked back to our hotel, and basically both fell into a food coma………..

I was a little worried about the tow dolly being parked outside, and hoped no-one would steal it overnight, we had put a small padlock on it but it would have been easy to break it off…. Fortunately, no-one stole the dolly and the next morning, we were up bright and early and on our way back to South Carolina with the tow dolly in tow.  Again, we drove through torrential rain but actually made pretty good time.

We are now one step closer to heading out on our next adventure. And those collard greens…. we made a huge dinner for all our friends at the South Carolina campground and cooked two huge pots of collards.  Ada and Billy, the collards were delicious, and everyone here enjoyed them.  Some of our friends had never had collards before, but said they will make a point of eating them now they have tried them.

Uncategorized

Our New BEAUTIFUL RV

2 Comments

My one reservation with all this downsizing, selling the house and heading out in an RV was that we didn’t own an RV yet . I had this vision of us destitute, no home, no belongings and in dire straights! Sleeping on a park bench, or worse!

We had been searching all avenues for an RV, but as we were looking for an older model that we could buy outright, as soon as they came on the market, they were gone, or they were out in California (there are not too many good used RV’s for sale in North Carolina), or there was something majorly wrong with them.

Then, by chance, one day, when I was angry with Linsley because he had refused to go look at an RV which was 5 hours drive away in Virginia, I started looking at Craigslist, even though I had sworn I wouldn’t look until he apologized! Well, there was an ad which had been placed by the son of a couple who were selling their RV. We had almost been burned before with a scenario like this, so I was very dubious, but thought what harm can a phone call do? So, courage in hand, I made the call and got voicemail! I was ground to a screaming HALT! I left a message, not expecting to actually hear back from a real person, I was sure it was going to be a scam.

Half an hour later, our phone rang and it was from the same number I had called. On the other end of the line was Ada, a wonderfully lovely lady, who confirmed that her son had placed the ad for her and her husband because they were not tech savvy! We had a lovely chat and she told me about their RV, which they had bought brand new and loved so much. From the pictures that were posted, you could tell that this RV had been loved over the years. The great surprise for us, was that it had a new engine and transmission and many other new parts in recent years.

We arranged to drive the 3.5 hours to see it, we also made sure to take the money with us because if it was as good as we thought, we intended to buy it. Sure enough, this beauty was everything that Ada and her lovely husband, Billy, had told us it was, and we were very happy to buy this well loved RV. She is a Four Winds Hurricane, 1996, but the inside looks almost like it did when it was brand new. No wear, no stains, just lovely! The only thing that we need to do to it, is to replace or add our names on the outside where Ada and Billy’s names appear.

We weren’t able to take it with us the day we saw it, because it was a Sunday and we couldn’t find a notary public to take care of the title transfer, so we agreed to come back the following weekend. We put a good deposit on it and left for home.

The following week, we headed back down to Ada and Billy’s home to seal the deal and have the title transferred over to us and we drove home in our new home, this beauty!

I will always be very grateful to Ada and Billy for taking such great care of her, and we will stay in touch with them and keep them updated on our travels and adventures. We couldn’t have hoped to find a better RV or such a lovely couple to buy it from. Thank goodness Ada and Billy didn’t suffer any great damage from Hurricane Dorian that just passed them by.

Since we bought her, our RV has been great, I cleaned her from top to bottom (more because I am anal about that) and she is now packed up with all our belongings, ready for us to hit the road as soon as the estate sale is completed. Our neighbors have been wondering what we are doing, having the house prettied up and then an RV arriving on the front, so we talked to them and explained what we are doing, and to our surprise, none of them thought we were crazy!

Some friends sent a big sticker for the side of the RV, (we must find a name for her!) and we stuck it on her this Saturday. It looks great and Linsley was very happy with the fact that the colors matched perfectly with the original stripes on the RV.

Everything is coming together now and although neither one of us has any regrets about our decision, we are nervous/anxious/scared/freaking out because it is all very imminent now. We will be moved into the RV in 6 days from now, and then all our belongings will be sold, and we will be officially full timers! Very exciting, but also pretty scary!

Although we paired everything down to bare essentials, the RV is packed to the gills, and we figure that along the way, we will realize that there are things that really aren’t essentials once we get used to living free of material possessions, and when that happens, we will have a second pairing down and unload some of the things we now feel are essential. The one thing that our two eldest sons asked us to keep for them….. their childhood teddy bears! So they are just a couple of things that will always be carried with us, at least until they visit and take them. They both live overseas, so that won’t be any time in the next few months.

When we move into the RV next week, we will be staying on the driveway for a few days, then we will move to the campground around the corner from our house at the lake, and this will be our first real test of all the systems and our first real taste of what life on the road will be like. If you weren’t already aware, this will be Linsley and my first time in an RV, we have been camping (or more like glamping) for a few years, but this will be our first experience with RVing. We are anxious to work out how everything works and get used to all the systems on it. Fortunately, Billy gave us all the original books and manuals on everything, so we have a big advantage there.

My next post will be from the lake, I may even post a picture of Linsley emptying the waste tanks for the first time! (That should be hysterical!) He is absolutely dreading it! LOL