Suddenly Without Work

On January 12, 2018, Scott was laid off.

We certainly weren’t expecting that! On a good note though, this really helped to push Scott into being ready for a major life change. At the time, I was out of town for work, and in hindsight, it was probably a good thing. He was able to work through the anger without me being around trying to make plans and fix things. The end result was we decided to accelerate our timeline.

Originally, we had been targeting a January 2019 departure. We figured that we would sell our house, purchase an RV and move into it in September 2018. That would give us some time to adjust, a little extra time for the animals to adjust, and the option to take a few weeks of vacation in December to visit family as a test run.

But now, Scott wanted to leave as soon as possible. I’m so glad we got this kick in the pants, because everything took so much longer than we thought. Instead of a 4 month process, it was an 8 month process.

I continued my RV search, but this time with added excitement that I was looking for THE ONE! I stumbled on an ad for a 5th wheel with two bedrooms and two baths all in 36 total feet. What the bleep?

It was a 2014 Open Range Light 315BHS.

2014 Open Range Light 315BHS

It was different from any other layout I had considered. While the kitchen had hardly any counter space, the flexibility of the living area with two removable tables was very appealing. And! The ability to close off the back room? Can you say home office/ movie room? The second bathroom would be a perfect home for the cat’s litter box, and there was a second entry door (not very common) in the rear bathroom that could be used to set up a temporary dog run while camping so that we could let the dogs out for their middle-of-the-night potty runs.

Needless to say, I was pumped! We had to go see it! And once we did, I felt a strong pull to buy it because it seemed to be so unique. Scott even took a liking to it after our first viewing in early February. By President’s Day, we had completed the purchase and were scheduled to take delivery the first week of March. As many who have purchased RVs before have experienced, it was not a very smooth process, but it was on par for the RV world.

We found a place in Harrisburg, Oregon that would let us rent a space month to month, and we officially moved in on Friday, March 23, 2018. We were both pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to adjust to the small space. When I was a kid, we referred to it as the “boat dance” as people/animals trade places in a small space. We all, even the fur kids, picked it up rather quickly! And the biggest win of all - by mid-April, Scott was all in on this new adventure! The ease of the transition won him over to feeling that we could be successful.

As with anything that is new - there is a learning curve!

Four days after moving in, as I was showering getting ready for work, the shower stopped draining. My first thought (with my sticks & bricks mindset) was that we had already clogged the drain and I started googling appropriate ways to unclog RV plumbing. By mid-afternoon, it donned on me. When we use water, it goes into a tank, not just directly to the sewer. Duh! We had already filled up the gray tank. Sure enough, when I pulled the valve open, everything drained like a champ.

When we purchased our new home, we didn’t have the truck to tow it yet. By the end of March, we found a 2016 Ram 2500 that met all of our wants and needs, right down to the color! After we had a 5th wheel hitch installed, we decided to hook up for some test towing. This was our second learning moment. When you want to extend the front jacks, make sure the rear jacks have been retracted. As a rule of thumb, make sure to retract the rear jacks before you mess with the front at all.

Remember that the awning is like a giant sail. While we didn’t actually have any problems with this, we didn’t think of it until our very nice neighbor, Tammy, pointed out the risks of a wind gust kicking up and ripping it off the trailer. From that point on, we were much more aware of the predicted wind speeds for the day and had an ear trained for any uptick in the breeze that could result in an issue.

And finally, when you go somewhere, remember to bring the keys to the rig with you! We went back and forth on whether or not we should take the rig over to the coast for a coworkers wedding vs just driving over the next day. At the last minute, Scott agreed to tow it and I was dizzy with excitement! As we were driving, I kept running through the mental list of things I would need for the weekend - make up, dress for the wedding, shoes… and with each, I reminded myself that my entire house was following behind us, so I didn’t need to worry. How cool is that?! About an hour away from our destination, we pulled over to get some water for the animals. I walked back to the rig to get a bowl and thats when it hit me. The keys (we only had one set) were sitting in the cup holder of my car. Which was back at the RV space in Harrisburg. There is not an easy way to break into an RV. I tried. It was a very quiet drive home with a very annoyed Scott.

Ultimately, there were some challenges we couldn’t cope with.

The Open Range used a cable system to move the slides in and out. This worked great for the bunkhouse (rear) and bedroom closet (front) slides because they were appropriately sized. The living room slide (middle), however, was problematic 4 of the 6 times we moved the rig in the 2 months we had reason to move it. The only true camping trip we took (the rest were test runs/maintenance moves) was at the beginning of June. We were headed to Boise, Idaho and stopped for the night at a campground just outside of Sisters, Oregon. We didn’t even bother to unhitch the truck because we were only going to be there for a few hours. 

In the morning, we pulled in the bunkhouse & closet slides first. No issues. Then we tried to pull in the living room slide. We typically did it in this order because once pulled in, we wouldn’t be able to access either of the other two rooms to make sure that the slides pulled in okay (something we checked from the inside & outside). When we tried the living room slide, it would retract about 6 inches and then it would stop.

Side note - for those that don’t know - when a slide extends, it dips down at the last few inches of movement so that the floor settles into place. This means that when you pull it back in, the whole room has to go over a speedbump of sorts.

Indian Ford Campground where the Living Room Slide Was Stuck

We were stuck. With the slide extended, there was no way for us to move anywhere - first because you should never move with the slide extended, but second because we would have been too wide to fit through the campground roads. We looked up the slide manual online and tried making some adjustments to the cables. No dice. Then, we called a few mobile RV repair shops to see if they could help or give us tips. The first place didn’t work with cable driven slides, and the second advised that we shouldn’t have made any adjustments to the cables. Oops! While on the phone with the repair guy, we had happened to connect the truck and it had been running just long enough to give the RV batteries a little extra umph to pull the slide in. Crisis delayed (but not quite averted).

At the end of June, we scheduled the rig for some warranty work and asked the RV shop to look over the slide cables to make sure everything was properly adjusted, thinking this would resolve the issues. Not the case. The RV shop advised that cable driven systems tend to have issues and that the living room slide is maxing out what the cable motor could handle. They recommended we keep an extra motor on hand to swap out when it failed as it could very well be while we were in the middle of nowhere.

On top of all of this, we had found that the layout we thought would be perfect, actually wasn’t. The rig only had one air conditioner, which meant that the bunkhouse that I was using as my home office wasn’t cooling down in the afternoons. I had stopped working from it, so the last 8 feet of our total 36 had become a glorified cat feeding station. Scott wasn’t finding the couch comfortable, so after dinner, he was retreating to our bedroom and essentially was only using 8 feet of our total 36. The kitchen counter space was just too small and the corner shower barely gave room for either of us to turn around.

We had a tough decision to make. Do we stick it out and travel for the year in the Open Range, making the best of it? Would these frustrations be enough to cast a shadow over the whole experience and result in us having a jaded view of what RV life could really be like? Would our relationship even survive the continual possibility that the slide motor would fail in the middle of nowhere? If we managed to stick it out and decided that we liked RV life, but wanted to change rigs next year, would we be able to get a loan after not having had jobs for the prior 9-12 months?

In the end, we decided that while it wouldn’t be cheap, now was the best time to make a change.