A Grand Tour of the US and Canada


TexasClodhopper

Senior Member
Re: A Grand Tour of the US and Canada

Before we purchased our MH, (I was a skeptic) I created a whole spreadsheet with everything I could think of in costs comparing MH traveling to car/motel traveling. (Believe me, if I could find it I would post the spreadsheet here.)

What I'm remembering from that is that the ballpark number is $200 to $300 per day for car/motel traveling when you average in all the major expenses that you COULD have in one year's time. That turns out to be from $90,000 to $110,000 per year. (I'm sure that is high, because 'stuff' doesn't ALWAYS happen.)

What I'm remembering is that you would have to keep a MH about 3 years for it to make sense FINANCIALLY. Now, this was using a model MH of about $60,000 new.

Living in a $16,000 Class B COULD be the equivalent of staying in $30/night motels.

I wish I could find that spreadsheet! I might have deleted it after we bought our MH, because I didn't want Sallyberetta to remember how STUPID I was to doubt her decision to buy a MH ... ;)
 

wanderingbrits

New Member
RE: A Grand Tour of the US and Canada

Hi

Have just picked up your messages. We are Brits here in the States on a E2 Visa. We will be buying a RV soon. No problems to buy or sell. you mentioned 90 days here then returning for a further 90 days. You will not be allowed to do that without a Visa, so suggest you check that out before you do anything more.

Go to usembassy.org.uk to read all about getting a visa. Staying in the USA for longer that 90 days per year will be your biggest problem. Good luck.
Bob
 

marstrings

New Member
Re: A Grand Tour of the US and Canada

Hi folks

Just thought I'd check in and do a brief summing up of how we got on.

THE MOTORHOME
We ended up buying a Born Free 24RB President (1997) class C motorhome with just short of 90,000 miles on the clock. We bought it from the manufacturer in Iowa last April. It cost us $23,000. Probably a little high for the mileage and we did have a few things go wrong with it.

The first thing that went wrong was that little 'service engine soon' light on the dashboard. Being unfamiliar with US vehicles, I hadn't seen anything like this before. We immediately put it into a Ford service centre who found a small leak in one of the air lines and they blamed this for the engine running slightly weak. They fixed this, but 60 miles down the road the light was back on again.

A month later we took it into another Ford truck service centre who this time diagnosed a failing fuel pump. We got that fixed ... and 60 miles down the road the light came back on again. We've not had any trouble from the engine, but the damn light is still on! We had a few other things break on us - mostly early on, and now we seem to have shaken out all that's going to break for a while. Most of the problems we've had we've been able to fix ourselves.

The motorhome has fairly consistantly delivered about 10 miles per gallon, whether we've been climbing over the Rockies in Colorado or on the flat in California. Actually, since we carefully checked the tire pressures a a friend's garage, we've got about 11 MPG.

The motorhome has been comfortable inside pretty much all of the time, with the furnace and the air-con being able to cope with being snowed in at Castle Rock in Colorado last April or 'baked-out' in Phoenix, Arizona.

So. Basically, we've been pretty happy with our choice of vehicle/home. It's been easy to drive, and has held the road well in very windy weather and with passing trucks. The only gripe I'd have is that it is so easy to drag the motorhome's rear end on the ground when turning into parking lots etc. Why do US roads/lots have that big slope so often?

THE TRIP
We've had a ball! We picked up the motorhome in Iowa and drove to Colorado first (where we have friends). We stayed in Colorado Springs for a while before an un-planned return visit to the UK interrupted our travels. We resumed from Colorado Springs again in August and made our way through Colorado to Utah (where we took in Dead Horse Point, Moab and the Hovenweep Monument.

Then we drove up to Salt Lake City and west through the Bonneville Salt Flats (how strange to see the landscape covered in white in the middle of summer!) By the Labor Day weekend, we'd got to Yosemite Park in California, where the signs and the talk was all about bears. Didn't see any bears, but we saw a lot of squirrels. At one point, we were wondering whether there was some confusion amongst the rangers between the two ;0)

We've visited San Francisco a couple of times and Mendocino on the northern Californian coast. We got as far north as Seattle and then drove most of the coast road down to Los Angeles.

We've seen the high desert in California, Nevada (near Las Vegas) and Arizona. We hiked into the Grand Canyon (not all the way down, but we did walk down 3,000 feet and back up again in one day. (Met a tatantula spider there). We've also been whale watching in Monterey Bay and went to a couple of music festivals in California.

We've been briefly in New Mexico in the Sante Fe area and are now back in Colorado Springs spending Christmas with our friends. All this time we've continually met such great people. So much so that, when we started off, we were staying in campsites and wal-Mart parking lots. In more recent weeks, we've been able to stay with new friends most of the time; people we've met along the way who have almost immeduately said to us, "come and stay with us" if we were on the way past again.

Anyway. This post has pushed the definition of 'brief' somewhat beyond credibility! So I'll sign off here.

thanks again to everyone who gave us advice when we posted here back at the beginning of the year.

Martin and Strings.
 

WandaLust

Member
RE: A Grand Tour of the US and Canada



marstrings - 3/4/2007 11:45 AM Hi folks. I'm from the UK and am planning the trip of a lifetime with my musical partner in crime for next year. The basic idea is to tour for most of next year, hitting the festivals in the summer and gigging as much as possible in the spring and fall and tying in visits to radio stations as often as we can swing it as we go. It's a kind of adventure, so we'll be doing a lot of sightseeing too, if possible. :) :cool: :laugh: We've decided we can probably cope with a class B (van) camper, but as the trip will be so long, we'll be wanting to buy. Does anyone know anything about restrictions/requirements for buying a vehicle as foreign nationals? Also how to do the insurance? Does anybody have recommendations for what would be a good camper? Our budget will probably be in the area of US$16,000. Thanks in advance. Martin.

=====================================

We bought an 1987 Dodge Xplorer (class B) and have had no trouble with it. Everything works. We paid less than $4000 for it last spring and are selling it for $3,775. You just need to shop around. We bought a small 16' Sunline TT for the extra space. You can see the Dodge add w/pics here: http://nashville.craigslist.org/rvs/966701616.html
 

marstrings

New Member
RE: A Grand Tour of the US and Canada

Hehe. Things have moved on since I originally posted this thread Wanda. We've chosen, bought, traveled in and are now preparing to sell our RV as we're returning to the UK. It's been a great year, full of new stuff. I could get used to it for sure, but it's time to return to 'real life' now!

Martin.
 

C Nash

Senior Member
Re: A Grand Tour of the US and Canada

Martin hate to see you go :( keep in touch and ya'll come back :approve:
 

marstrings

New Member
Re: A Grand Tour of the US and Canada

You can't get rid of me that easily - I'll be checking to see who's not behaving from time to time ;)

M.
 
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