Hi Everyone. Well, after 15 years the RV-Dreams Community Forum is coming to an end. Since it began in August 2005, we've had 58 Million page views, 124,000 posts, and we've spent about $15,000 to keep this valuable resource for RVers free and open. But since we are now off the road and have settled down for the next chapter of our lives, we are taking the Forum down effective June 30, 2021. It has been a tough decision, but it is now time.
We want to thank all of our members for their participation and input over the years, and we want to especially thank those that have acted as Moderators for us during our amazing journey living and traveling in our RV and growing the RV-Dreams Family. We will be forever proud to have been founders of this Forum and to have been supported by such a wonderful community. Thank you all!!
We’re Deb and Jim Scharmota, and we hale from Canby, just south of Portland in the beautiful Willamette Valley, Oregon! I’m sixty-three years young, and Deb is...well...”younger”. You can put us in the group of “not quite there yets”, as we don’t yet own an RV, and we’ve only recently started preparing for the FT experience. We have decided that we need to spend the next eighteen months learning, budgeting, saving, shopping and downsizing, with the idea that we’ll be ready to hit the road in late 2016 or early 2017. We look forward to everyone’s advice and suggestions in all those endeavors. I’m sure we’ll be asking lots of questions and hopefully most of them will be good ones!
Since coming upon the RV-Dreams site a month or so ago, I’ve been a voracious reader of the various forum postings here. So many of you have so much great information to share, and you’re all to be commended for your eagerness to help all of us “newbies” by sharing that wisdom. We thank you in advance for all your advice and helpful guidance, and look forward to meeting many of you face to face down the road. We hope that we will get to the point that we’re able to share our new found wisdom and pass along helpful information to those who follow in our footsteps.
As I said, we’re from Oregon, and after meeting each other in Phoenix, Arizona we moved north, and have lived here in Oregon since 1975 where we’ve raised four wonderful sons. We are working right now on downsizing, just getting to close on the sale of an investment property in Arizona, (we were fortunate to pick up a good buy at the bottom of the market several years ago) but still have a residence in Oregon that we aren’t sure we want to dispose of yet, so we’ll hang on to that for the time being. ( I’m not ready to give up my North River boat, dozens of fishing rods, thousands of lures, etc., etc. just yet. We plan to schedule our travels so we are able to continue salmon and kokanee fishing at least a few weeks a year...If you’ve not had fresh, smoked or canned salmon, you’ll understand why I want to keep fishing after you’ve shared a chunk of ours one of these days over a glass of wine.)
Professionally, I retired from law enforcement after twenty-five years back in 1998, and at the same time started my own business in the Criminal Justice field which has kept both me and my wife extremely busy since then. I was fortunate to have a business partner that I knew I'd never have to part with, (cuz we're married!!), and Deb has run the office for me while I have done the field work so to speak. The business has kept us hopping, and it’s been great, but after a total of some forty years in the business we’re really ready to wind down, and agree that it’s time to “head off to smell the roses”.
Thinking back, while raising four boys, it seems as though their school and sports activities played such a priority in our lives for over twenty years, we didn’t seem to have any time for camping, travel, or other outdoor activities. Even though we owned an RV for a few years “way back when,” I recall using it mostly for a base and place to sleep or rest in at weekend long baseball or basketball tournaments, and only a few times did we actually go camping in it. Eventually the motorhome was traded in on a new car purchase, and only recently did we start thinking it was time for a new one. We haven’t found the right one yet, but we’re leaning toward a 38 to 42 foot DP coach, something with just a few years on her, but not too old, and of the ones we’ve looked at so far we like the Tiffins, Monacos, Forest Rivers and Entegras. But we’re still shopping for just that right one. I don’t think we’ll actually pull that trigger for another six to eight months.
While most of our children and grandchildren still live near us, we do have immediate family in Arizona, along with lots of extended family members as far south as Arizona, (where Deb grew up) as far east as Ohio and as far north as Minnesota and Montana (where I grew up). Our travel plans of course include occasional visits with family. We enjoy among other things, fishing, golfing, bike riding, hiking, hanging out with the kids and grandkids, and sightseeing....we have a huge bucket list of places we want to visit and sites we’d like to see over the next ten years or so. Our plans at this point, in addition to the DP, include the purchase of a Jeep Wrangler toad, which we’d like to use for side trips, any maybe a little four wheeling, though nothing too extreme in that regard.
Fortunately I don’t think right now that we’ll have a need to consider workkamping to make our budget work, but we’ve talked about doing some volunteering as time and travel allows. Meeting and making new friends and seeing the country are on top of our to do list.
Because it’s been about fifteen years (or more - I forget), since we’ve owned an RV, we have so much to learn, and while I’ve been lurking around the forum for the past month or so, I’m now ready to start interacting and posting some questions of my own. To all of you, I’m so happy that we found this forum, and we look forward to all the interactions to come, hopefully many that will lead to new friendships along the way and the chance to “pay it forward”.
Put Newmar on your list to look at, and also Foretravel if you can find one. I'd go slightly older to get a Foretravel coach, they are very good coaches.
Make sure you read the blogs of people who post on the different RV forums, you'll get an idea of all of the different ways to full time.
Have fun with the planning, it is a great adventure.
Barb
-- Edited by Barbaraok on Wednesday 13th of May 2015 06:13:16 PM
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Barb & Dave O'Keeffe
2002 Alpine 36 MDDS (Figment II), 2018 Ford C-Max HYBRID
Thanks for the warm welcome you guys. Barb, I like your suggestion on the Newmar and Foretravel. I'd thought they might be a little out of our range, but I'm gonna keep them on our list following your suggestion.
If you are looking at 2006 or newer, You can probably find a very nice used one for a fraction of the new price. I'd check out the various models owners' forums to gain a better insight into the pros and cons of each make, they usually have a classified section on them as well with rigs for sale. While we are leaning toward a 5er, Class A DPs are still on our radar, but we'll be looking at potential rigs from about 2012 thru 2015 in a DP or a bit newer to brand new in a 5er when we hit the road hopefully in 2018 or late 2017. Looking at rigs at the RV shows today gives us a good feel for the amenities and current pricing... with depreciation over 3-4 years, they should fit nicely into our budget, with the prerequisite emergency repair fund set aside... just in case there's work on a used one to bring it up to snuff. It has been suggested on the forum by a veteran poster that 10% of the purchase price be set aside for such a fund (can't recall who recommended that... was that you Barb?) ... I think that is sound advice.
Yes, I'm the one that recommends 10% of purchase price into the repair fund. Then keep adding to it each month. ALL used rigs will require some things to bring them up to YOUR specs. Even if it is just replacing fluids/filters/hoses to give you that feeling of 'starting out right'.
Barb
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Barb & Dave O'Keeffe
2002 Alpine 36 MDDS (Figment II), 2018 Ford C-Max HYBRID
Well, we've been away for a bit, still lurking and absorbing knowledge from everyone but putting most of our energy into concentrating on getting all those extraneous life things in order, however......after all the searching and searching, we finally found the one we've been looking for, and it only took about a year! Tuesday we're off to San Antonio for two days to do a final inspection and tie up all the loose ends on a beautiful 40' 2007 Tiffin Allegro Bus. If all goes well, I and I'm certain it will, we'll return in three weeks to bring her home to Oregon. We hope to get a solar install completed by fall, add a few more bells and whistles, get her stocked, and then hit the road mostly full time. (We'll keep a home base in Oregon for the time being). All the research has paid off, and we're both pretty excited to head out for parts unknown!!! Looking forward to meeting as many RV Dreamers as we can!
for your eagerness to help all of us “newbies” by sharing that wisdom. We thank you in advance for all your advice and helpful guidance, and look forward to meeting many of you face to face down the road. We hope that we will get to the point that we’re able to share our new found wisdom and pass along helpful information to those who follow in our footsteps. 
