I smell freedom! - RV-Dreams Community Forum

Phyl · RV-Dreams Community Member

I smell freedom!

Second Chance · RV-Dreams Family Member

Phyl,

You will get any number of helpful responses regarding what type of RV best suits your needs for full-timing. We chose a fifth wheel - partly because we already had the truck. Read all you can on this site and on the Escapees web site. There is a wealth of information both places.

I'm primarily responding to your post because you asked about cooking, baking, and the much-revered KitchenAid appliances. My wife is a world-class cook and has lived in several cultures and immersed herself in the foods and customs. She loves nothing more than entertaining and feeding people memorable meals. She especially likes to bake. We have found that, for the most part, the types of cooking and baking we've associate with a large kitchen don't translate to the full-time RV lifestyle. We still eat and serve wonderful foods... we've just had to change our expectations and simplify the process. When you move into your RV, everything becomes a trade-off between utility, weight and space. Of the four or five KitchenAid appliances she owns, only the blender came along for the ride. She has me for a food processor and packed a hand-held mixer instead of the 30# monster. The blender is the one function we haven't found a way to replicate in a more old-fashioned way.

RV ovens are the next obstacle you will encounter. Unless you have a million dollar coach, most have a very small oven. It'll do for some biscuits, cheese toast, a small pizza, and such, but you'll need a cooking stone or an unglazed ceramic tile to even out the temperatures. Most full-timers we've talked to do 1/2 (or more) of their cooking outdoors (largely on the grill) and, for the rest, depend on slow cookers and the like for easy but tasty fare.

Enjoy the research and planning phase of your adventure and take advantage of all the helpful folks on this forum. I also recommend the RV-Dreams educational rallies - we found the one we attended extremely helpful.

Rob

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

"I'm concerned about losing the roof over our heads when/if a motor home has mechanical problems."
We have friends who had to stay in a motel when their 5th wheel or trailer was being worked on, so it is not just motorhomes. Some other friends recently were kicked out of their house while fire repairs were made to the kitchen, so it can happen with a house. But the majority of the time, they will allow you to stay in your RV when they know you are a fulltimer, be it trailer, motorhome, 5th wheel. If not, then find someone else to fix it. We have 12 years on the road with a motorhome and only once did we have to stay in a motel, when the siding was being replaced. Even if you have to go to a motel or stay with friends or family, it is not for long and a very small number of nights compared to those on the road. There are so many other reasons to choose your RV type, but worrying about being kicked out for repairs should not be high on the list in my opinion.

Another option for an oven is a Breville Smart Oven, which runs on electric. Many of us here have these and they are great for baking, roasting, broiling and even toasting bread. They are smaller than a normal oven, a 13" pizza fills them, but work reliably.

Read through the forums, ask questions, read through the main RV-Dreams website, and also check out the blogs and journals of the members here. There is a lot to learn and many of your questions will be answered.

-- Edited by bjoyce on Tuesday 1st of September 2015 08:50:55 AM

NWescapee · RV-Dreams Family Member

Welcome to the forum, lots of great info here.

We have a 5th wheel and have 3 different times when we had to be out of it for repairs / upgrades. When we had solar installed we chose to stay in a hotel, we could have stayed onsite but since I work from home, it would have been way too noisy to concentrate on all my work conference calls, etc. while the work was going on. Another time we were able to sleep in the rig at the repair facility at night, working out of our truck / campsite during the day. The third time was our own fault, we made arrangements for a repair to be done at a shop we had used before going full time but didn't realize they didn't allow overnight staying in the rig due to their insurance coverage, so we ended up in a hotel for a night.

Regarding cooking, we have a convection oven, didn't want the propane oven as I had those in our previous TT's and didn't really like how hard it seemed to be to regulate the heat for baking. Instead of a heavy Kitchenaid, have you looked at the Braun kitchen machines? They are lighter, but I've had one for years that I'm happy with, mixer, food processer, blender and dough hook all came on the road with us and I've used everything but the dough hook. We have simplified our cooking a lot, most nights we grill, but we still enjoy good food.

Barbaraok · RV-Dreams Family Member

Why not a Class A? Class Cs really don't have much storage space and as fulltimers you will quickly find that lack of storage can be a real PITA. And Class As are no harder to drive than a Class C and have better view of the road. With either of them you will need to pull a toad, which means that once parked, your daily use vehicle can really save money on fuel and be easy to get into and out of places. Most places that work on big RVs can do the work during the day, push your rig out at night for you to use, take it back the next day. Think of it as a really expensive RV park for a few days. Same with maintenance - we come in the afternoon before, park and spend the night, next morning they take the rig in and usually sometime after we return from breakfast (the techs will give you good recommendations for breakfasts) the rig is pushed back out and once we pay we are rolling on to our next stop.

We were torn between a 5er and a Class A before we purchased ours. We had a Class C at the time for weekends, short trips, and started taking our cats with us - - that we didn't have to move them each day was what sealed the deal for us. They become great travelers because they were always at home. The second reason was the ability to quickly get to the toilet should the need arise for the navigator.

Barb

Phyl · RV-Dreams Community Member

Thank you all for your welcomes and your responses. Looks like hubby may win this one as I hadn't really considered the possibility of the 5th wheel or travel trailer going into the shop. Should have - we've had the current one in for a couple of days and we've only had it about 15 months. Of course that means one more thing to sell - the F250 diesel...

I'll have to check into the Smart Oven. I don't think I've heard of them. A convection oven had occurred to me. I have micro/convection oven and thought that replacing the microwave that is in whatever RV we have with one of those would make it possible to actually bake. In smaller batches for sure, but baking is my winter pass time. We've actually baked biscuits on the grill almost every weekend this summer - I'm pretty sure we won't be hauling around as well equipped grill when living on the road. Besides, regulating temp requires my all around grill and fire guy to pay very close attention, which he's willing to do first thing in the morning on Saturdays when he's really hungry, but day-to-day? I think he would go on strike after awhile. Especially in the winter months when I really love to bake.

NWescapee - Working on the road. Hmmm. I too work from home, and we've thought about moving our "departure"date earlier. How are you handling your internet access? I would need a pretty good speed - had to upgrade our current service and need to be hard-wired for some of each day as wifi is not consistent enough. Also have VOIP phone though I frequently transfer calls to my cell so that may not be an issue IF we're in a place with good cell coverage.

Barb - Why not Class A? Neither of us has ever driven one. I know they're taller and some are wider going down the road, so we're not "against" the idea, it's just a big unknown. So much will be changing all at the same time, but I guess you could argue, "Why not change EVERYTHING?"

We're very much looking forward to learning as much as possible from all of you! Thanks for taking the time to respond

Phyl

Barbaraok · RV-Dreams Family Member

Some other things to consider. If you are like most of us, you will follow the sun, which means that in the winter you will be someplace that has mild temperatures - and if so, you may find that you really don't have time for baking with all of the other things that you will be doing!

Our rig came with a microwave/convection oven already in it - - most of the newer (ours is a 2002 model) will have them.

Class As are no harder to drive than a Class C and the vision is SO much better. Actually like driving our Class A, I do about ⅓ - ½ of the driving and once you get a little practice you will wonder why you were hesitant about it.

I would suggest that you read the blogs of a lot of the people you see posting on the various forums - - that will give you and idea of all of the different ways that people fulltime and also some of the neat places that they visit.

Barb

NWescapee · RV-Dreams Family Member

Regarding the working from the road, that is one reason we chose a 5th wheel. Both of us work from the road, hubby is an artist and I have the teleworker job where I'm always on calls, working on line, VOIP calls almost constantly, etc. We found the "perfect for us" floor plan, a 5th wheel with a built in desk for me and a couch that could be removed to put in a work bench for Dale. We then removed the recliners and put in a loveseat, doesn't leave much room for company to visit inside, but since we try to travel with good weather, most of our entertaining is done outside. We literally work back to back most of the day, he uses his blue tooth headset to play his music, podcasts, etc. so he doesn't have to listen to one side of my multiple conference calls each day.

The topic of taking the corporate job on the road has been discussed in multiple threads in the Working on the Road section of this forum, and also in the Technology section. I will never pretend to be an expert on technology, but Technomadia falls into that expert category and I rely heavily upon their testing, advice, suggestions, etc.

A couple of suggestions for more reading:

www.technomadia.com/ Chris and Cherie are the technology experts, they work / live from a converted bus. Their website also has ideas regarding office / working space conversions.

rv-dreams.activeboard.com/t60135451/corporate-job-while-on-the-road/ Trace and Lee have a good blog, she shares some of the working from the road frustrations in a very honest, real way.

rv-dreams.activeboard.com/t60579065/snowmads-blog-post-online-job-and-travel/ Another very honest blog post about the trials and rewards of this mobile working on the road life style.

One caveat I will add, we were part time RV'ers long before we became full time, I started working part time on the road when we started doing art shows further away from our old home base and by the time we decided to full time we were traveling 25% of our time. I found Technomadia's website while we were still part time RV'ers and invested in the technology which made it easier to prove to myself and my boss that I could do my job from the road. Of course, I've upgraded since then as 4G became more prevalent and know we'll have other upgrades in the future. I do have to be "picky" about where we decide to settle for a few days or weeks at a time, as I have to have connectivity and we always have a plan B if it's a new location and we aren't sure of the connectivity and we do move if necessary to ensure I have the bandwidth needed to do my job.

Terry and Jo · RV-Dreams Family Member

Phyllis,

Welcome to the RV Dreams forum "family." You'll find this to be an excellent site for information because the folks here are very knowledgeable about RV's and the RV lifestyle.

Be careful with the planning. Your 2-year plan could extend even longer if you really like the lifestyle, as it has for others here on the forums. With that in mind, you might find a Class C to be very limiting in size and comfort, even with just a 2 year plan. Before we purchased our current fifth wheel, we owned a 26-foot fifth wheel, which was just fine if we were only going to be in it for a week. However, when we took a two week vacation in 2009, we found the furniture be becoming very uncomfortable in that second week.

If your plans are to spend a limited amount of time in each place you stop, you may find that a motorhome will work best for you, but if you plan longer periods in one place, a towable (fifth wheel or travel trailer) might work best. We fall into the latter category, even though we aren't traveling much yet. We lived in our RV in Oklahoma City for 3 years before retirement and are starting our second year here in the Colorado Springs area. Another year or two, we plan on getting to do our traveling, but as it is, this is giving us plenty of time to see so much more of the area and the state we are now in.

Since I can't cook, I can't help you with your cooking desires, but the wife is very good at finding space for something new. We purchased a Bosch mixer that we thought was way too big for the RV, based on what she had seen online. However, after seeing the unit in person at a Costco, she realized that it would "break down" enough for easier storage. Also, since we have a fifth wheel, we've gotten rid of the rear couch and she now has a sewing/embroidery center in the rear of the coach. I'm no expert, but I think a fifth wheel would allow more for "customization" of one's living space than a motorhome.

Terry

WestWardHo · RV-Dreams Family Member

I too love to bake. Our Trilogy 5th wheel had a full pantry and a pull out appliance shelf. That's where I kept our Braville Oven as I preferred that for baking over our microwave/convection oven but you could take your kitchenAid instead with that kind of a set up. I also definitely preferred our residential refrigerator with ice and water in the door. I could store a lot in that puppy!

Sherry

gilljr · RV-Dreams Family Member

The fragrance of freedom is awesome. As others have said this Forum is awesome. We chose 5th wheel for the room and feel we made the right choice. Good Luck as you proceed.

Sushidog · RV-Dreams Family Member

gilljr wrote:
The fragrance of freedom is awesome.

As long as you don't forget to bathe, then it's awful.

Phyl, one thing to consider in your decision on a motorhome (either A or C) is that you will probably want a toad, as unhooking your house, and securing everything for travel will get old quickly every time you want to run a few errands, go sightseeing, etc. This will negate the advantage of a MH over a fiver or TT of not having something in tow.

Chip

Phyl · RV-Dreams Community Member

I've been reading online about the Bosch mixer and this may be a good sub for the Kitchen Aid. I does weigh in at about 1/2 the weight of my KA and reviews are good. I'll plan to get out to the store to see one in person.

We've looked at several Class C motor homes over the weekend and I think I could be comfortable in one that is about 30 ft long. We're actually going to rent one for an upcoming weekend and "kick the tires" so to speak. I know a weekend won't tell us everything, but I think we'll be able to better define our needs.

Thanks for the welcomes. I'll be asking lots of questions as we plan and proceed. I have quite a list already. I'm reading lots of the questions from those who have gone before... and I keep crossing off questions, then think of another. It's fun and a little scary. Having the first of many yard sales this weekend!

Chip - we try to bathe as often as possible, which is why we've found that we have one MAJOR requirement when we select our full time RV! Shower size is very important. I'm tall and my husband is taller. If my knuckles rub the skylight over the shower when I shampoo my hair, it ain't big enough!

Sushidog · RV-Dreams Family Member

Sounds like you may be looking for one of these: www.bing.com/videos/search

I think a fiver will have the maximum headroom you can find. Maybe something like this floorplan: www.heartlandrvs.com/?
The bathroom is not in the elevated front portion, but on the lower level, so ceiling height in the shower should be cathedral like.

Chip