Settling In

The busy days continue and our home is really coming together into a very cozy, efficient, comfortable living space.

We've been really fortunate to meet our neighbors, Bill and Marilyn Theis, who caught our attention when they arrived in a NuWa Hitchhiker...one of our favorite choices during the research period. We had fun giving and getting tours and talking to seasoned RVers.

Having purged most of our belongings when we left San Diego anticipating a completely fresh start, we have been shopping for the many little bits and pieces that make this minimal, mobile lifestyle comfortable. After each shopping foray we spend several hours installing and tweaking and arranging...it's awesome!!

Thursday we finally hooked up our sewer and learned that necessary job, with excellent supervision and advice from neighbor Bill who has been a perfect mentor for us newbies.

Friday we got practice towing the trailer once again. We had to take it to a hitch shop to get a real bumper and receiver hitch installed on the back to carry our mountain bikes instead of the rinky dink bumper/hitch assembly that came with the Montana.

We successfully navigated the departure/hitching up process, and driving and unhitching again and left the trailer at the hitch shop. We made another trip to our RV dealer to pick up DMV paperwork and purchase more supplies (of course). Then off to the DMV just over the border in Ontario, OR where we were able to collect our new trailer license plate.

A little more shopping (thank goodness that's pretty much done with, neither of us is big on shopping) then we picked up the trailer and made it back to the campground and got set up with no problems at all!!!!!! (Knock on wood.)

We had dinner with Bill and Marilyn at Pizzalchik, a restaurant that was featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, just down the street from our campground, and wished them safe travels as they head off tomorrow.

Dinner with Bill and Marilyn

Tomorrow we actually get to relax and play! We've paid for another week at this RV park so we can now start exploring Boise. One of our intentions with this lifestyle is to take it slow and dig in to each area we stay in when the situation allows.

We are very happy with our cozy home, life is very, very good.

We are Full Time RVers!

It's been a whirlwind few days. On Saturday we left Portland and headed for Myrtle Creek to pick up our belongings from Chantal and James house (our home address). It took a couple of hours to pack the truck, making sure everything was secure and protected from the elements for the 500 mile drive ahead of us.

On Sunday we drove from Myrtle Creek, OR to Meridian, ID (just West of Boise) in 10 hours. Upon arrival at our hotel we had to unload the truck completely because our stuff would not have been safe left in the bed overnight. We then drove the half mile to the RV dealer, who was closed, and saw our home sitting in the parking lot. That generated a lot of excitement and nervous energy!

After a night of so-so sleep we reloaded the truck with less attention to detail because we only had to drive a short distance. Thus started an 8 hour day at the dealer.

A lot of stuff had to happen before we could hit the road: we unloaded the truck contents into the RV's storage bays, we had the fifth wheel hitch installed in the bed of our truck, we had an inspection and instruction session (the instructor was not as thorough and knowledgeable about our rig as I would have liked, being a newbie), we had them fix a few minor items that showed up during inspection, we had to shop for various items we needed immediately in order to live in the RV, we had to take care of the financial transaction, and we had a lesson in hitching up.

We finally departed the dealership at about 5pm. We were really thankful it is summer so we had a lot of daylight left. It was slightly nerve racking to drive across town during rush hour, our destination was about 12 miles away.

We are staying at  Boise Riverside RV Park, which is right on the Boise River and the 27 mile long Boise Greenbelt trail system.

Even though we had a pull-through site reserved, it still took two trys to get parked properly! One definitely has to turn wide with a long rig. There are a lot of things you need to be aware of when getting situated in a campsite, and as newbies we were a bit flustered! We had to watch for trees, space for the awning, where the steps/door would open up, placement adjacent to the utility hookups (water, electric and sewer), room for the two slides to open, and ability to access the storage bays if the utilities were in the way. And that was just at this camp site, others will have additional nuances.

Then we started unpacking...overwhelmed fairly describes what we were feeling at this point! ALL of the stuff we had packed in our big truck was now piled inside our new home; we could hardly move inside. We got the basics taken care of like the bed made and clothes available, and some kitchen stuff situated before crashing from exhaustion. It had been a long day with a big lifestyle transition and the place felt pretty darn small with all our belongings piled around.

On Tuesday morning we discovered the water heater had been turned off at the dealer and that we were supposed to turn it back on when we arrived at camp...Hans had a cold shower before we discovered that! We had to go out for breakfast so we also did some grocery and miscellaneous shopping before heading back and tackling the unpacking. It took all day long, but by the end of the day we were probably 95% done. Here's our cozy new home  (these are pictures of our rig from the dealers website):

2013 Keystone Montana 3000RK floorplan

Main living area w/kitchen, dining and living room

Bedroom w/king bed

Shower and sink in bedroom, toilet is in it's own small room behind the sink

We are feeling much more comfortable with all our stuff put away and will shop for a number of items that will make life in our new home as comfy as possible. As we have read on others blogs: this is a lifestyle, not a vacation! The last few days have been full of "work", now we need to add some play!

A Bridge and Forest Combo Hike

Today we did another Portland combo hike that went from urban neighborhood, crossed a gorgeous bridge, climbed through Forest Park, and passed through a unique pocket neighborhood. We found this hike detailed here.

We did this hike a little differently than detailed in the link above because we needed to start with lunch. There is a burger chain in these parts called Burgerville. They bill themselves as fresh, local and sustainable and today we tried their veggie burgers and the yummy, seasonal Walla Walla onion rings...not too shabby for a chain!

Once fueled up, we walked across the St John Bridge. Originally completed in 1931, it is arguably the prettiest bridge in Portland. Walking across it was exhilarating; the views were fabulous but the traffic was heavy and very, very close, including lots of BIG trucks! I am amazed the picture below has no vehicles in it!


St John Bridge

It's really difficult to see in the photo above, but from the bridge on a clear day you can see Mt Hood, Mt Adams, Mt St Helens, and the top of Mt Rainier. (If you click on the photo above you'll get a larger a picture and you may be able to see Mt Rainier and Mt St Helens faintly to the left of the bridge and Mt Adams to the right.)

We then traversed another section of the extensive Forest Park.

Then dropped into the funky pocket neighborhood of Whitwood Court that boasts views of St John bridge and snow covered mountains in the distance...and this unusual feature left on the side of the road:

And back over the bridge with Mt Hood, as always, in the background...

Just another exceptional September day in Portland!

Our New Home

One of the main reasons for writing this blog is to chronicle what we have gone through to get to full time RVing as well as what the lifestyle entails. Reading those details in others blogs was immensely helpful to our planning and research.

This post from 2010 describes how we decided the fifth wheel/truck combination was right for us. Subsequent posts (here and here) show that our choice of fifth wheel trailer has evolved over time.

When we arrived in Oregon in August we thought that the Arctic Fox 29-5k fifth wheel was likely to be our new home. Once we got here and sat in it once again with the intent to actually buy, we began to feel rather cramped in it and had a hard time visualizing storing some bulky items we intend to carry.

So now we were ready to buy but felt like we were starting over again! It was a bit disheartening and rather overwelming when we considered how much time we had already put into this decision.

We revisited (via the internet) our previous first choice: the NuWa Discover America 345 LK WTB. We had previously decided against it because it was around $75-80k and was pretty much only available in the midwest. We couldn't rationalize paying at least $25k more and driving to Kansas for the "perfect" aesthetics when the Arctic Fox was about $48k with virtually everything we wanted (we thought).

Now we had to find all the dealers in Portland and survey their inventory. The primary RV's in our price range ($50k - $65k) were Heartland Big Horn and Keystone Montana. I had grown to dislike Big Horn over time so we focused on Montana. I liked the 3000RK (very similar to the Arctic Fox we liked) and Hans was favoring the more spacious 3400RL (very similar to the NuWa we liked).

Turns out most of the dealers in Oregon and Washington were low on inventory at the end of summer. We were able to view representative examples of the models we liked, but each of them had aspects that would be a compromise if we were to purchase.

Finally, we narrowed it down to the Montana 3000RK. Our rationale was: 1) shorter was better (35'6" long), 2) having only two slides on one side gave it a narrower profile which will allow us to fit into narrower campsites if necessary, 3) the kitchen appliances were NOT in a slide (we felt the frequent in and out movement of the slide could cause problems for all the infrastructure required for the appliances), and 4) it had two more closets than the Arctic Fox thereby alleviating the storage problem we had worried about.

With that decision made, we just had to find the actual rig in the decor choice we preferred! Trailer manufacturers tend to be rather old fashioned in their design choices. Montana provides three fabric choices and only one of those really appealed to us.

Thank goodness for the Internet! We found a 2013 model with the Blackthorn decor in Boise, Idaho! The 2013 model comes with an automatic leveling system and a quieter, ducted air conditioning system. The dealer happened to be open on Labor Day and several phone calls later we had a deposit on our new home:



Floorplan of the 2013 Keystone Montana 3000RK

Now we are working on the logistics. Our host for our first house sitting gig has returned. Our second potential house sitting hosts have someone else able to take care of their house...we just have to stay in Portland until some items we've ordered arrive in the next day or so. Then we'll head to Myrtle Creek to pick up our belongings at my daughters house then make the 10 hour drive to Boise to take delivery of our new home.

We plan to stay in Boise for a week or two to get used to the rig and take care of any warranty issues that might show up. No plans beyond that except to be in San Diego during the holidays!

Awesome Urban Hike

One of the things we love most about Portland is the easy access to trails all over the city. A couple of years ago we discovered these maps that detail walking and biking trails in each section of the city.

We needed a break from intense research on fifth wheel trailers and Hans found this hike description that seemed to meet our ideal urban hike: somewhat strenuous, 5 - 8 miles long, a combination of beautiful neighborhoods, trails through forest or other natural area, and views.

This particular hike starts out in downtown Portland. One of the challenges with city hiking can be parking, and that has become even more challenging now that we have the big truck! We don't want to take the truck into a parking garage as it is fairly tall (and long) and much of the downtown area street parking has time limits of half an hour to two hours. We managed to find a stretch of NW 24th Avenue (near Irving) that had no parking limitations and was free.

We set out going up, up, up through a beautiful old neighborhood (early 1900's) including steep staircases.

The first set of stairs through lush gardens (you can  only see half the stairs in this pic)

A 1926 mansion with a view of the city below

After about a mile of gorgeous homes, gardens and views we dropped into a wooded trail in Forest Park, Portland's enormous forested park in the heart of the city.

Steep, forested canyons dropping below Cornell Rd., seen from the trail.

A mile or so of lush forested trail later, we came to the Audubon Sanctuary. Our timing was perfect, they had just brought out all of their "educational birds of prey" from the Wildlife Care Center.

Beautiful birds of prey at the Audubon Sanctuary

After visiting the Sanctuary's interpretive center (and getting a piece of cake in honor of National Vulture Day!) we continued on to the Collins Sanctuary Nature Trail. 

More amazingly lush forest...

The trail continued up, up, up to Skyline Drive, into another interesting neighborhood, with amazing views (of Mt. St. Helens on a clear day) and more stairs. This was the half way point, where we turned around and made our way back the way we came but with a couple of detours from the previous route that kept it interesting. As we neared our starting point we found different sets of stairs to take:

Another great thing about this hike, we parked near NW 23rd Avenue which is a vibrant shopping/dining district with a variety of options for lunch.

We highly recommend this particular hike! The description was accurate and it was exactly what we were looking for on this particular day: It was quite strenuous, with lots of up hill hiking and stairs,
gorgeous neighborhoods, excellent views, serene and lush forests, and not too many people even though it was a Saturday.

Happy Hour River Cruise

We've done a lot of walking around Portland in the last week and decided it would be fun to see it from a different perspective...the river. Portland Spirit offers a variety of daily cruises on the rivers that flow through the city. We chose the Friday Early Escape Concert Cruise. It's a two-hour cruise up the Willamette, departing from downtown Portland.



Ready to go cruising!

We were entertained by The Strange Tones, who bill themselves as a "Crime-a'billy" band. They were thoroughly enjoyable with a bluesey sound and some surf influence, and Hans traded a Sand Devils CD for a Strange Tones CD.

It was a gorgeous afternoon with temps in the high 70's, sunny skies, a light breeze, and lovely views of the city, the river, the bridges and lush green hillsides.

Heading North towards downtown Portland

House boats on the Willamette

A fun way to spend a Friday afternoon!

New Truck!

The next piece of our transition to a mobile lifestyle is in place: we've got a new truck:

It's a 2013 Chevy HD 3500, 1 ton, extended cab, long bed, 4x4, turbo diesel in metallic gray with ebony leather interior.

We traded in our Toyota Tacoma for this truck on Tuesday, got running boards installed the next day, and have enjoyed driving it around the city for the past few days. We need to put at least 1,000 miles on it before we get a trailer and we will have a fifth wheel trailer hitch installed soon.

Closer and closer to the full time RVing!