Blog #6

Part of the reason we’ve been able to feel as flexible as we do about selling our house is that we have a different constant in our lives. We own a travel trailer, a towable RV, from Airstream. You’ve seen them, the classic silver bullet traveling across the country to who knows where on some great adventure. 

Since we first bought it in 2017, we have gone on some great adventures. (Sidenote: I say “it” because we never named our Airstream. Many people do, and we tried, but no moniker ever stuck.) We traveled with two of our kids that first summer, hitting 8+ fabulous national parks and making memories over the course of a month. We’ve been everywhere from NH to SC, from NY to WA and many points in between. It took us to visit our kids — and they came to it to travel with us. It was THE way to travel during the pandemic — socially distant but still making the country accessible. We’ve made many improvements, had a couple of mishaps that we had to fix, but it saved us in many other ways.

So why would we sell it? How will we have all our adventures across the country?

It seems petty but there are some small liveability issues. Originally, we got the 25-foot model because it is the biggest size that some national parks allow. It worked for us, but now it doesn’t for one important reason: the bed is perpendicular to the length. In real terms, there is a narrow space around one side that a small child could feasibly walk around. As we age, and need to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, one of us has to climb over the other to make it to the loo. Not fun for either of us. 

We are also upgrading from a Flying Cloud model to a 27 foot Globetrotter.  Much like the houses and tents in Harry Potter, it’s much bigger on the inside. Two feet on the outside feels like 10 on the inside. I’m not going to bore you with too many details, but it has some amenities we’ve heretofore lived without, and may not require, but are certainly nice. The best part is that the bed faces parallel to the length and we don’t have to disturb each other all night.

Ordered in November, we fully expected that it would not arrive in January as the dealer predicted. The supply chain issues made us anticipate the delivery date to be something more like March. We were wrong. It’s in.  So, we are selling our old one. And it was snapped up today by the first couple that saw it. They responded quickly to our ad, knowing how fast these things go.  They may have worked quickly based on prior experiences. 

The hardest part is packing…again. Didn’t I just pack up a house? You wouldn’t think a 25 foot trailer would take the better part of 4 hours for us to pack and clean. Now we have another room filled with stuff, well mostly filled. At least we know it will be unloaded into the new trailer soon.

Tomorrow we are heading to Charleston for a family event, and wouldn’t you know our purchasers are only 90 minutes from our destination. We’re going to deliver it to them and if they have the promised cashier’s check, hand over the keys. I wish I could say, “Goodbye (fill in a name here)” but we’ll just have to give it a generic “so long” — or not long enough.

It’s sad, but exciting. We’ll miss NoName, but we are looking forward to the new Airstream. Maybe the next one will fill in the blank. So Long It.