Prologue

Many people ask us how we got into RVing, much less full time RVing. In his younger days, David used to go backpacking and truck camping with his friends and often on his own. They used to scoff at the people in RVs in the park campgrounds. That wasn’t real camping they would say. If your not sleeping on the ground and crawling into a tent, its not real camping. They were right, being in an RV is not camping, it is RVing. Not that one is more enjoyable than the other, they are just different approaches to enjoying the experience.

On one of David’s trips, he was camping in Pine Canyon campground at Guadalupe Mountains National Park. He had gone there in early November to catch the trees changing colors in McKitrick Canyon. The weather was cold, misting/drizzle mixed with rain and sleet for the whole four days he was there. Sleeping in a damp tent, cooking in the cold rain and sitting in the truck until bedtime to stay warm and dry does not make for a good camping experience. Every night, when he would walk up to the bathroom before bed, he would walk past the RVs in the parking lot. Looking through the windows as he walked by and seeing people sitting in comfortable chairs in the warm, dry, brightly lit interiors was enough to make him wonder if there might be something to this RVing.

A couple of years later, David rented a 30 foot travel trailer and spent two weeks traveling from Fort Worth, to Palo Duro Canyon State Park near Amarillo, to Guadalupe Mountains National Park and then down to Big Bend National Park before returning home. He went hiking and mountain biking almost everyday. He decided there was definitely something to be said for a nice hot shower after a long day of playing, not to mention a hot meal at a cozy table and a comfortable bed. He met so many nice people in the RV parks and made friends at each stop. He decided that RVing was a good way to travel and you always had the option to sleep in a tent when you could not use your RV. So a plan began to come together.

One of our goals that we shared when we met was that we wanted to travel the United States and see all the beautiful parks we never had time to see when we were working. David had developed a plan to buy a nice RV when he retired so he could travel. When they met, Leslie was not so sure about this idea (visions of being in a single wide in the middle of the desert came to mind). So we agreed that we would rent a trailer and do a trial run of the RV plan to see how we both would like it together. So began out journey described in the following pages.

Long and short of it was we enjoyed our camping experience but not the camper. So we made notes of everything we would want different and the things we liked. As the date of our retirement came closer we began going to RV shows and talking to other RVers to see what we might want. As researched, we realized only one company made an RV with a 4 foot motorcycle garage in the back. That was an ideal size for the toys we had in mind (Kayaks, Bikes, etc.) that we did not want hanging off the back of the rig. Further research showed that the company, New Horizons, was a custom RV builder specifically for the full timers. We contacted New Horizons and set up a trip to visit the manufacturing plant. After much back and forth with New Horizons, our design was set and we purchased our first RV.