Ok, so I stole it.  My first RV was an 18 foot Nomad travel trailer.  I bought it when I was 18 years old and moving from Indiana to Florida.  I was going to Ft. Myers to attend Edison Jr. College and it seemed like a cheap way to live.  I lived in a small trailer park south of Ft. Myers called the Tip Top Trailer Park.  It was ok, but myself and a couple of other college chums were by far the youngest folks there, so we didn't exactly fit in.  The Nomad had no air conditioning, so when it got really hot and humid (remember, we are talking about South West Florida and I moved there in August of 1967), I would go to the Edison Mall and sit on a bench, reading a book just to keep cool.

After several moves and other types of dwellings, I bought a VW Westphalia camper.  A wife and two kids made this a rather crowded camping experience, but I was young and a school teacher. I couldn't afford anything bigger at the moment.  The VW took me across the entire U.S. one summer.  I went from Florida to Indianapolis, to San Diego and back.   The gas gauge didn't work and again there was no air conditioning.  It was a wonderful trip.  My son threw up in the VW in Tallahassee and I shut my daughter's hand in the sliding door in Beaumont, Texas.  That was the same night the big storm came up and I had to bring my son down from the top bunk for fear the wind would rip the pop up top off the VW.  Later in that trip I lost a valve lifter in the Colorado mountains and limped over the continental divide on three cylinders.  After getting the engine repaired, I bent the shift linkage and drove from Kansas to South Florida with no 1st, 2nd or reverse gear.  It was a real hoot trying to get through Marietta, GA before I 75, without stopping for a light on a hill.  I drove around one block three times before I hit the light green.

A couple of years later I sold the VW and bought a used Eldorado Class C.  I think it was 20 feet long.  It had roof air, but no genset.  I bought it from a police officer who had six kids and an ex wife.  They were not kind to it, but it was luxury for me.  Being the wonderful mechanic that I am, I decided that the solution to my non functioning amp meter in this rig was to installed an outboard, after market gauge.  It worked just fine.  I drove this rig on an around the county odyssey that included Birmingham, Indianapolis (figure out that I have relatives in Indiana?) Ft. Dodge, Grand Canyon, AZ, San Diego, Yakima, Washington, before Mt. St. Helens blew, Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Mt. Rushmore, Bryce Canyon, Arches, Zion, Mammoth Cave and maybe another National Park. All along this wonderful trip my rig refused to start when it was hot.  After I got back to Florida a friend in the alternator and generator business pointed out to me the fuse that was blown on the Chevy amp gauge that lived on the firewall.  He also pointed out that my add on gauge which I hooked up with zip cord, was carrying the entire current load of the starter, and thus, not being able to handle the current, refused to let the engine crank when it was warm.  So much for shade tree mechanics.
This was the start of real RV adventures.  I even drove this rig across my septic tank, not knowing exactly where it was.  By the way, the septic tank was made of fiberglass.  The tow truck driver couldn't stop laughing as he pulled me out.

A divorce got in the way of my RVing at that point and I was off the road for several years.  In 1985 after Libby and I had been married for three years we got a new rig.  We built our own home , with our own 10 hands, in Loxahatchee, Florida, big enough for our blended three kid family.  We saved the money for a pool and just before we signed a contract to have it built, we took that money and made a down payment on a brand new 27 foot Winnebago Chieftain.  It was one of the smartest moves we could have made with the kids.  (We paid $38k for the Chieftain, ah the good old days.)  The first week we had the Winnie, one of the kids broke a windshield with a BB gun.  To this day we do not know which one did it.  At the time it was that sibling that all children have called "not me".

Our first trip in the Winnie was to the Smoky Mountains.  We waited an extra day in Chattanooga for the weather to clear so we could go "see Rock City".  As I drove up to the turn to go up the mountain, looked at the road, thought about this huge motorhome that I had had for two weeks, I looked over at Libby and said "no way".  We went to the Jack Daniel's Distillery instead!

I learned what burning brake linings smell like on my first trip down from Clingman's Dome into Cherokee, NC.  I also learned what the lower gears are for very quickly after that.  We also learned that nature does not really want U.S. 64 from Franklin to Highlands, NC to exist on that mountainside.  It was a white knuckle trip for me and an eyes closed trip for the kids.  Libby watched the scenery.

Our next big trip in Winnie I was to Yellowstone.  It was grand.  On the way to Colorado,  I chewed up a tire.  When I took it into a shop in Boulder to have the tire replaced the mechanic ask me how much pressure should he put in the air bags up front.  My reply----"what airbags?".  Its amazing how much better the rig rode with some air in those puppies.  Never buy an RV from a car dealer.  They know less than you do about them.

Anyway, Dinosaur Monument in Vernal, Utah, that wonderful long grade pulling out to the north, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, Wall, SD, the Badlands where the genset wouldn't start and the engine air broke down, the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD and Forest City Iowa, the birthplace of Winnie I were a lot of fun.

When our oldest son graduated from high school, he elected not to go on our next vacation.  So the four of us trotted up to Nova Scotia and PEI in Winnie I.  Newark is oh so much fun at rush hour in a motor home.  Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia were absolutely wonderful.  We headed for Washington, DC to complete our summer vacation. It, too was great.  We stayed at Cherry Hill and after a couple of days there, I almost completely forgot about the erroneous turn I made in New York state to get into a gas station.  Actually, the turn was ok, but on that model of Winnebago, the dump valve hung below the chassis and if you went through a dip, it was designed to pop off of a little rubber coupler to keep from damaging the plumbing.  It worked.  Unfortunately, the holding tanks were both full and I left an incredible legacy on that gas station driveway.  Two guys sitting in front of the station must have been telling really good jokes, because they laughed the entire time we were there.  They so distracted me that I never noticed I was pumping full service gas which at the time was about $1.65 a gallon.  This was in 1988 and regular was running about $1.25.  Libby, not wanting to interrupt my introspective meditating at that particular moment, chose not to point out that I was pumping 70 gallons of very expensive fuel into the rig.

We abandoned Winnie I to an RV condo in Okeechobee, Florida.  We eventually sold her and bought a park model trailer which we used almost every weekend.
After a year or so, we just had to have another RV.  Libby came home from KMart one day telling me she had found our next motorhome.  I went back with her, looking for the blue light special.  It was an 84 Holiday Rambler class C.  It turned out that the rig belonged to one of our neighbors, was in great shape and soon thereafter, graced our driveway.  Libby and I, sans kids, who had all gone off to college, made a trip to Asheville, NC, pulling our first Toad. A Saturn SW2.
We had a few mechanical problems with this rig, but nothing that I directly caused by personal intervention.   About a year after we bought this Class C, the company transferred me from West Palm Beach to Ft. Lauderdale.  We moved back to the coast and thus endeth the legacy of the Holiday Rambler, because we bought a house in a restricted neighborhood and couldn't park the RV in the driveway.

In 1996 the company told me my paycheck was going to Atlanta and if I wanted to keep getting paid, I should move. Understanding that concept, we moved to Atlanta in May.  The first weekend we lived in Georgia, we went to the mountains looking for a vacation home.  In April of 1997, we bought a house  in Blairsville.
Blairsville is about 100 miles due north of Atlanta and only about 10 miles from North Carolina.  Our house sits about 5 miles north of Blairsville.

About a year later, we were searching for another motorhome, since we were suffering from withdrawal, when we came across a 1992 Rockwood Class A. It had low mileage and the folks who owned it had just come off of a two year fulltime trip.  They were anxious to get rid of it and sold it to us for what they owed.  We immediately took the rig to Florida to visit our kids.

We were 25 miles from home on our very first outing in the Rockwood.  We were pulling our Lumina APV on a tow dolly.  I had never pulled a tow dolly before so I stopped in BlueRidge, GA to check the hitch and all the other stuff that goes with a dolly.  After I got back in the driver's door, I hopped up to check something inside the coach.  The TV in that coach is mounted over the dash, hangs lower than I thought and was surrounded by hard wood molding.  It leapt toward me as I was rising to go to the back of the rig.  We had a terrible clash and the TV won. Libby took one look at my bleeding scalp and said "hospital, now".  Off we went in our 30 foot Rockwood towing our van to the Fannin Regional Hospital ER.  Ever try to park a motorhome and a toad in a hospital parking lot?  Oh what fun.  A couple of hours and three staples in the head later, we were on our way and didn't even have to unhook to get out of the parking lot.  Are we lucky or what?

The rest of that trip was uneventful.

In June of 1998, our daughter gave birth to twin boys.  Being excited about this grandparent thing, (and turning 50 the same year), we piled, carefully into the Rockwood, hitched up the tow dolly and Lumina and set off for St. Petersburg, FL.  This time we got almost 100 miles from home.  I looked in the rearview mirror as we were exiting I 575 to I75 and saw billowing white smoke coming from our motorhome.  My lighting fast reflexes took over and I said "Libby, will you go look out the back window and see if that smoke is coming from us?"  She complied and answered with an affirmative preceded by a descriptive adjective.  I immediately pulled to the shoulder of the on ramp, jumped out with a fire extinguisher ready to do battle. You see, my Eldorado Class C had caught fire once and it scared the hell out of me.  It turned out that the transmission was leaking fluid onto the exhaust pipe.  Not knowing if the tranny was damaged or what, I called our Motor Club for assistance. This was a 1 p.m. on July 1.  They responded promptly and courteously told me it would be about three hours before a tow truck could come to our aid.  Ok, I cranked the genset up, turned on the roof air and popped a cold coke open.  Four hours later, we were still there.  Five hours later, we were still there.  Six hours later we were still there although by now three tow trucks had stopped.  Two were too small to tow us and the one that was of an appropriate size, broke before we got hooked up.  Finally at about 7:30 p.m. (it was 94 degrees that day) a truck large enough to tow us showed up.  I had already removed the toad from the dolly, so he hitched us up and took off down the freeway.  We had to get to Bleakely RV in Douglasville, GA by their 8 p.m. closing time.

At ten minutes to eight, I blew past the tow truck and our motorhome as they were rolling down I 285 at about 75 mph.  I raced to Bleakely where a sales guy, a service guy and the janitor were waiting for us.  An hour later the motorhome was still not there.  The sales guy, Mark Tuggle, took me in his truck to look for our motorhome.  Just before we left a bunch of emergency vehicles went screaming past.  I told Libby that if it was our rig in the accident, I hoped it was totaled.
We found the cause of the delay.  A very serious accident on I 20 just before the exit ramp to where we were.  As I looked down on the Interstate from a bridge, I could see our RV, only three cars back from the wreck that completely blocked the three west bound lanes of I 20.

The RV and tow truck, not in that order, finally showed up at 9:10.  Bleakely let us stay in their lot overnight.  They have several full hookups for this purpose.  The next morning, they pushed our rig into a service bay and started to work.  By the time they got it fixed at about 11 a.m., we had already purchased Winnie II.  Winnie II is a 1998 Chieftain 35 foot class A on a Chevy P30 chassis with the Vortec 7.4l engine.

We rolled out of Bleakely at about 6 p.m. on July 2.  Since we got such a late start, we stopped in McDonough, GA near Macon.  Everything was fine until we started into the campground.  The road was steep and gravel.  The campsite was short and narrow.  I was in a brand new wide body motorhome.  Libby got out the butter and we squeezed into the site.  If we had slides, they would have stayed in on that campsite.  The next morning the neighbor had to move his car so I could make the turn and leave the site.  Aren't new rigs just wonderful?

We spend a couple of days in St. Pete in the KOA .  It cost us around $30 a night to squeeze into that old park that wasn't built for big rigs.  It was the 4th of July weekend, so we got to listen to lots of music and kids at maximum volume.  Hmmmm I guess I understand adult only parks now.  The power transfer switch failed our first night in Florida.  I had no power when plugged into shore power.  If I ran the genset, everything worked.  I figured it out fairly quickly, but did not want to disassemble a brand new motorhome, so we stupidly suffered through two July nights in Florida with no air conditioning.  On the way back to Georgia, we stopped at the KOA in Ocala.  I had the attendant put us in the very back of the nearly empty campground and I ran the genset all night.  Bliss!

We dropped the rig off at Bleakely on the way home and they promptly fixed the switch and also installed my HWH levelers.

That pretty much brings us up to the prequel of our full time adventure.  I have owned seven RVs at this point.  Libby had a Coachman travel trailer in a previous life so between the two of us, we have had 8 RVs.  I guess that makes us either hooked on the lifestyle or sadomasochists.