Readers have been asking me for an update on how we like our new to us Winnebago Ultimate Advantage motorhome, now that we have lived and traveled in it for almost six months, as compared to the MCI bus conversion we built and lived in for over eight years.

Overall, we are both very happy with the Winnebago, though we have had to make a few adjustments. We love having the extra room the bedroom and living room slides give us. However, we actually had more inside storage room in the bus, due to the extensive cabinetry that Miss Terry designed and built for it.

But, even though we had three huge bays underneath the bus, we still have more basement storage in the Winnebago than we did with the bus. The reason for that is that one entire bay of the bus was used for our holding tanks, which do not take up bay space in the Winnebago, and also because half of one bay in the bus held our house battery bank and inverter, and half of the third bay held our twin propane tanks, plus the fuel tank for our Onan gas generator.

We had a huge gray/black waste tank in the rear bay, and when we were parked in a campground with full hookups, we could turn a diverter valve and let the gray water run directly into the sewer, which meant we could go a long time without dumping the waste tank. In the Winnebago we have to dump the black tank about every seven days. We could probably stretch that if we were boondocking and being very careful, but the difference in tank capacity is really noticeable.

After our first night in the Winnebago, we could really tell the difference in insulation between the two rigs. We built a lot of insulation into the bus, and it was both quieter inside, and much warmer (or cooler, depending on the season), than the motorhome. But, the bus had a single rooftop air conditioner that was vented directly inside, which was much nosier when running than the ducted basement air conditioner in the Winnebago.

After driving across the country in the Winnebago, I don’t know how I lived with the tired old Detroit diesel in the bus for so long. These days I think nothing of cruising up long grades at 60 miles per hour, passing eighteen wheelers, instead of crawling along in the right lane with the radiator misters on at fifteen miles per hour, hoping some eighteen wheeler didn’t run over us. The Winnebago definitely has more power and gets better fuel mileage than the bus did, but I find that I don’t have as much confidence in the Winnebago’s exhaust brake as I did the Jake brake in the bus when going down steep grades.

Everything in life is a tradeoff. Terry misses the household style refrigerator, gas range with oven, and separate washer and dryer that we had in the bus. But, the larger kitchen area and the spacious bedroom/bathroom layout of the Winnebago is much more comfortable. She’s learning to live with the Winnebago’s microwave/convection oven, and the Splendide RV washer/dryer combo.

When you add in a lot of creature comforts and handy accessories, such as cruise control, automatic HWH leveling jacks, automatic Winegard rooftop TV dish, two gas furnaces, and a heat pump, for us the Winnebago comes out the winner.

Several readers have asked us if we will be at the Winnebago Grand National Rally in Forest City, Iowa in July, if we’ll be vendors, and if I’ll be presenting any of my seminars at the rally. The answers are yes, probably, and I don’t know. Yes, we plan to attend the rally, we’ll probably be vending (I haven’t registered yet), and I don’t know if I’ll be presenting any seminars. I haven’t been invited to do any, and the inquiry I sent was never answered. But if you are a Winnebago owner and will be at the rally, and would like me to do a seminar or two, why not give the folks in Forest City a shout or an e-mail? They have no idea who I am, since we have not had our coach that long, but if they see there is an interest, they might invite me to do a couple of seminars.

Speaking of RV seminars, while our schedule won’t allow us to be at the RVSEF RV Lifestyle, Education and Safety Conference in Bowling Green, Kentucky, June 3-6, Walter Cannon has come up with an excellent RV education program filled with great seminars. There is a 10% discount for anybody registering for the conference before March 1^st, so if you plan to attend, register now and save yourself some money on this excellent program. 

Thought For The Day – Virtue is the only true nobility.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

I think the old Willy Nelson song with the above title must be the theme song for fulltime RVers, and I bet a lot of us hum or sing it to ourselves when we pull out of a campground. It sure brought a smile to my face to do so yesterday morning!

It was 19 degrees at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington when I fired up the Winnebago and pulled out of our campsite. After a quick stop at the dump station to empty our holding tanks, we were on the road by 9:15 a.m. We usually wait until rush hour is over before we leave in the morning because we can’t see any reason to get out there with all the commuters on their way to work.

We took the Bluegrass Parkway southwest 90 miles to Elizabethtown, where we got onto Interstate 65. All along the way the rock faces, where the route was carved through the mountains, were covered with long icicles that looked like stalactites found in Kentucky’s many caves in this region. They call this area Cave Country, and it’s one of our favorite places, but not this time of year. We’ll be back sometime when it’s warm.

As we traveled south, eighteen wheelers and RVs going by us from places further north occasionally showered the highway with great sheets of snow and ice that slid off their roofs and exploded into white bursts as they hit the pavement. I guess we’re not the only ones in a hurry to get out of the cold!

I wrote about how much I hate driving through Nashville when I reported on our trip north, and several people suggested we take the State Route 155, known as the Briley Parkway, as a bypass. We had been on this stretch of road several years ago while it was under construction and were faced with long delays. This time around there was no construction, and though there was a lot of traffic, it moved along pretty well as we skirted the east side of Music City, passing by the Grand Ole Opry, where I imagine Willy Nelson has sung On The Road Again.

We made good time as we scooted across Tennessee, then crossed into Alabama. Rain had been predicted for much of our route south, and a few miles north of Birmingham it began to sprinkle, then picked up to a steady shower. Roadways are most dangerous just after it begins to rain, because all of the oil and road film gets wet and very slippery until it rains enough to wash it away. This is a very dangerous time to be using either a Jake brake or cruise control. We slowed down to a safe speed on the wet road and continued into Birmingham, another city I really don’t like driving through. There was a lot of road construction, with narrow twisting lanes, and the drivers all seemed to be in a hurry to be the first one to the accident.

The sky had been gloomy since we left Nashville, and as the afternoon wore on, it got darker and darker. By the time we were approaching Montgomery, it was pouring rain and visibility was dropping fast. Time to get off the highway. We pulled into the Prattville Moose Lodge, about ten miles north of Montgomery, and just a mile off the Interstate.

The lodge has a small campground for traveling Moose members, with a dozen sites with water and 30 amp electric hookups. We stayed here once before, in dry weather, but I wanted to test the dirt RV parking area before we pulled into it with our heavy motorhome. It was pretty saturated, and we decided instead to pull around behind the lodge and park on the edge of the driveway. There are no hookups back here, but that’s not a problem for us, with our Onan generator and fresh water holding tank.

We had covered 490 miles, and that was more than enough for one day. It’s chilly here, about 42 degrees overnight. But since that was about twice what we had the night before, and four times what we faced in Elkhart, nobody in our coach was complaining!

Today we have an easy run of about 185 miles to the Escapees Rainbow Plantation RV Park in Summerdale. It will be nice to be back with our extended family of RVers for a while.

Thought For The Day – Love your neighbor, but do not pull down your fence.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

I must be directionally challenged. In spite of the fact that I can read a road map, I have three different computer mapping programs, and two GPS units, yesterday we found ourselves driving north when any RVer with half a brain would be headed south!

Under a gray sky that threatened rain and looked like it really wanted to snow, we left the Mercer County Fairgrounds in Celina, Ohio, our home for the last three weeks or so, and drove back to Elkhart Campground in Elkhart, Indiana. I’d much rather have pointed the nose of our Winnebago motorhome toward Florida, but we have some things we need to get done up north first.

The Winnebago ran fine as we cruised north on Interstate 69 out of Fort Wayne, Indiana and then hooked up with the Indiana Toll Road, which we took into Elkhart. It was fun being able to pass slower moving eighteen wheelers without a second thought, the big Cummins diesel not even running hard to do so.

We stopped at a service plaza for fuel, and on our first full tank of diesel since we got the motorhome, we averaged 7½ miles per gallon. Other Ultimate Advantage owners with the same engine/transmission combo we have that I have talked to have told me that they are getting anywhere from 7¼ to over 9 MPG while towing a dinghy behind them.

Of course, I’d much rather be in the 9+ MPG neighborhood. But, considering the fact that we pull a ¾ ton extended length Ford cargo van behind us, and that I had been pushing the motorhome harder than I normally drive while on our trip to Lexington, Kentucky this week to see how it performed on the hills, I guess I can’t complain.

I still have to learn to drive the new rig. The Allison six speed automatic transmission has an Economy Mode setting that shifts the transmission to overdrive, and for a couple hundred miles of driving on that first tank full of diesel fuel, I had forgotten to use the Economy Mode. I’m sure that once I get into the habit of using it, as well as the cruise control to help me keep my speed down, our mileage will improve a bit.

Elkhart Campground is a lot emptier than it was when we left it in September, and we had our choice of RV sites. Our normal parking space has 50 amp electric and water hookups, but this time we opted for a full hookup 50 amp site so Miss Terry could use the Splendide washer/dryer combo without worrying about filling our gray water tank.

Once we were settled in, we met Ron and Brenda Speidel for dinner. They are back here in Elkhart having a wood floor put in their Winnebago Journey DL, and even though we saw them less than a week ago, it was good to have the chance to meet up again. 

Back at the bus, I posted a new Bad Nick Blog on Health Care Death Squads, and then we settled in for a night of television and relaxing after our busy days before, during, and after our Gypsy Gathering rally.

We’ll be here at least a couple of weeks, while we get the new issue of the Gypsy Journal out, finish up some last minute details, and meet with a couple of different prospective buyers for our MCI bus conversion. If the bus doesn’t sell, we have to winterize it and arrange for storage during the winter, so I’m really hoping one of the folks coming to look at it takes it home with them.

Once that is all done, I plan to start driving south, and not stop until I see girls in bathing suits. Preferably very skimpy bathing suits.

Thought For The Day – Live life. Stop planning and start doing.

My gosh, I think we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel in our move from our bus conversion to our new to us Winnebago Ultimate Advantage motorhome!

In spite of all of the rain we have had this past week, Miss Terry has been hard at work emptying closets, drawers, and everywhere else we had stuff stashed away in the bus. Yesterday I managed to empty out the cavernous bays on the bus, sort through everything, and move what we are going to keep into the bays of the Winnebago. As I have said before, the great thing about a bus conversion is that you can carry a ton of stuff, and the bad thing about a bus conversion is that you usually do end up carrying a ton of stuff!

A lot of stuff did not make it into the bays of the motorhome, and Bobby Patel, owner of Elkhart Campground, is the proud new owner of some tools, a lot of hardware, and other things he can use around the RV park. Bobby and his wife Gita have always treated Terry and me like family, and we were happy to bequeath it all to him.

My friend Mac McCoy from Fire and Life Safety called the other day to see if we had buyer’s remorse yet. He said when he first bought his American Tradition motorhome, he went through a period of near panic, wondering “What did I do?” This is common after any major life event, from getting married to making a large purchase. Mac said all of those misgivings disappeared when he was about forty miles into his first trip in the motorhome.

We have not taken any trips in the Winnebago yet, but we have been living in it for several days now, and it is starting to feel more and more like home to us. So far we are very happy with it, except for a couple of little things.

The shower doesn’t have as much pressure as we had in the bus, even here on the same site where we always park the bus. My buddy Ron Speidel did some adjusting, and hopefully that will help. We may just need to replace the shower head, and we have been looking at the Oxygenics models, which we have heard good reports about. I am also finding that the shower is a bit more cramped than in the bus, where we had an apartment sized tub and shower.

The motorhome has an open bath/bedroom arrangement, with a separate water closet, so the bedroom area feels very large to us, which we enjoy. And with the two slides, as well as the fact that the Winnebago is six inches wider than the bus, we really notice the extra space. In the bus, when I was sitting at my computer (and it seems like I am always sitting at my computer), Terry had to squeeze between my desk chair and the couch to get past me. In the new rig, there is plenty of room to walk around, even when I am working at the computer.

Miss Terry loves to cook, and we seriously considered moving her stainless steel Avanti range into the Winnebago, but it would require some major renovations to the kitchen area, so she is going to try to adjust to a simple cooktop and a convection oven. The jury is still out on that one.

Terry also has a learning curve to adjust to the Splendide washer/dryer combo in the Winnebago, after her separate washer and dryer in the bus.

We are looking forward to getting back on the road soon so we can experience traveling in the new rig. I’m especially looking forward to tackling some of those mountains in the west, which were so problematic in the bus. There are a few creature comforts we’ll enjoy when traveling that we didn’t have in the bus, such as cruise control, that will be fun to have.   

On another note, Bad Nick tells me he has a new post on the Bad Nick Blog for those of you who have been waiting. Check it out.

Thought For The Day – We have confused the free with the free and easy.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally