Back on the road (soon)...
It was inevitable I suppose. We've managed 4 blistering summers in Benson and we really don't want another without having a break from the constant heat. We made an attempt in summer 2019 and both ended up in the ER (sequentially). The guy at the Banner Hospital ER near Show Low, AZ (Pine Top, AZ?) said it was most likely an intestinal virus. The Admiral is convinced it came from the motel room and I have nothing convincing to dissuade her opinion.
Friends in Key West are nearing retirement and have purchased a van, had it modified and outfitted, and are taking as many trips as they can to get the bugs worked out before Apr 2022. Michael & Layne are inveterate global travelers including a few years cruising on their Gemini catamaran... which is how we came to meet them: we were cruising on our own Gemini at the time and I was full of questions. Their years cruising Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean in their catamaran gave them the insight to work out design details for their camper van.
So I had it in my head that a van would be a good next step for occasional travel. I've been locked to that path for 2 years now. The appeal is that you get to sleep on your own bedding and don't spend each nite inhaling someone else's left-behind whatever.
But the pandemic introduced a wrinkle that derailed our plan. Currently builders of class B vans (camper vans) can't create them fast enough. I guess being cooped up 24/7 with a whining 2 year old has broken the dam and anything from FWD mini-vans to 4WD Mercedes off-road delivery vans have become scarce as a hen's teeth. And the backlog of work at each builder's facility is overwhelming. There are literally hundreds of RV manufacturers and custom builders creating these camper vans. It's a bubble predestined to burst but not in the foreseeable future.
Undaunted by the writing on the wall we headed over to Lazydays RV in Tucson on Memorial Day weekend. Why Lazydays? We have history. In 2010 we traded our first RV, an old 2003 Montana 5th wheel, for a new Montana 5th wheel from Lazydays in Seffner, FL. Fast-forward to 2015 and we again found ourselves at a Lazydays dealership, this time in Tucson, AZ. This time we traded that 2010 Montana 5th-wheel for our Cedar Creek Cottage 'destination trailer'. So...
Once we got to Lazydays we saw what happens when you read the writing on the wall but choose not to believe what you just read. Aside from a few big class A motor homes and perhaps thirty 5th-wheel & travel trailers, there was a distinct lack of class B (camper vans) motor homes. They had a 2008 Roadtrek which was tired looking and felt pretty confining. It required young knees to squat down to the floor in order to operate/use both the microwave & 3 cu ft fridge: pass. The only other camper van was a brand new 2021 Airstream class B built on a 4WD Mercedes Sprinter chassis which had an asking price of $235,000 (and the sales rep managed to say that with a straight face!).
The sole remaining small motor home was a 26.5' 2016 Vegas built by Thor Motor Coach which the sales rep called a class C (it's not a class C but it doesn't matter). Our two Montana trailers were built by Keystone in Elkhart, IN. Keystone is owned by Thor, so the Thor name was at least familiar. To be polite (and to keep from getting skunked by the dearth of inventory) we drifted along behind the sales rep to have a quick look then get the hell back in the car and the AC!
We really didn't want to like this thing. But damn- it checked most of the must & must-not boxes in the Admiral's well thought-out list:
- decent fridge size of 6 cu ft (we prefer a 8 cu ft like our Arctic Fox),
- the microwave is a microwave/convection oven,
- neither appliance requires getting on your knees to operate/use.
- there's a 3-burner propane range-top for cooking
Now for the goodies that got our attention. Unlike some camper vans, this Vegas 25.2 includes
- a bathroom* (yeah, really; they're rare on class B though not on class A or C). This bathroom includes-
- a toilet* (another rarity in class B conversions) plus a
- 30" x 36" dry shower (dry shower means a shower stall with a curtain or door; a wet shower means water goes everywhere; again a rarity on class B conversion vans),
- a vanity sink and
- at least 3 cabinets for storage.
Unlike many class B camper vans this rig has a front lounge with a settee which is actually a jack knife sofa which converts to a bed. The clever folding mechanism opens up to provide additional sleeping for 2. And there's another double above the the front cab which is accessed via an elevator.
The big surprise was a queen size bed that can be accessed from either side so we can each get up during the nite to get to the bathroom without climbing over the other person. That was a biggy and we had pretty much accepted we would have to have twin beds. The queen size bed is located in a rear slide-out and the mattress folds in the middle to make the bed shorter when the slide is retracted. It also means that this 26.5 foot class A motor home extends to possibly over 29 feet when parked and ready to be used.
No solar (damn!) and only two coach batteries, but these flooded cell batteries appear to be new. There is no power inverter (an inverter is a battery-powered source which produces 120 VAC 60 Hz power for running household appliances). This coach has the motor home builder's solution for that: a 4kW Onan gas-fueled generator.
The fridge is made be Norcold (not our favorite!) and uses an absorption cooling unit. We would have preferred a compressor-driven refrigerator but like the cook-top it requires solar & big batteries.
The biggest ugh! is probably the 6.8L V10 Triton engine by Ford in their E-450 chassis: lots of power from lots of torque which requires lots of fuel. That E-450 chassis (Lazydays claims it's an E-350 chassis but the build info from Thor, the manufacturer, says E-450) is the base-platform for this Vegas (and well as many, many other RVs). May get as much as 10 mpg down hill with a tail-wind. Most vans today use smaller, more gas-efficient engines, e.g. the RAM Promaster (build by parent company Fiat) gets about 20 mpg at 60 mph. On the plus side Ford has been making this same engine for a very long time. Still, with the generator sharing the same 55 gal fuel tank it's probably going to get pretty ugly.
We talked it over and with our 30' Arctic Fox in trade we can manage it. So I guess this is it: we're about to become owners of our fist-ever motor home. Not exactly our game plan but it's our get-out-of-jail-free card. Well... not exactly "free" but you get the idea.
This is a photo of a similar Vegas 25.2:
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| 2016 Vegas 25.2 Class A motor home from Thor Motor Coach (similar to ours) |
We are scheduled to deliver our travel trailer to Lazydays and take delivery of our Vegas 25.2 on 16 June. We have a storage site here in the park's storage yard for our Arctic Fox but we probably need to change locations to get some level ground. And in the 2 weeks available we need to get insurance and arrange to pay for it.
And if you look at the ground clearance below the sole entry door it doesn't look like we'll be venturing very far off the main road. And that is very disappointing!
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* Apparently millennials neither have to pee nor poop as custom van conversions often exclude this nicety which old farts (that would be us) expect as standard features.
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