Whilst I traveled around the country in my Teeny Haven trailer, my family at home (well, my beloved step-mom, Betty) worried about my safety (and sanity) being in this frail, little box behind my car. She began to encourage me to look at something more substantial. Safer. Bigger.
Although I never had a safety issue, traveling in cold weather was Not Fun, and even though I had a small honda generator to run my CPAP and a heater, it was just uncomfortable. One problem is that I don’t stop driving until either I’ve reached my destination or I’m extremely tired. I have a tendency to drive to exhaustion, because I don’t mind driving. But I found myself sleeping in the car, because adding gas to the generator in sub-freezing temps, the dead of the night and climbing into an ice-cold bed in the camper was more trouble than cranking the heat in the car for a few minutes, reclining the seat, then shutting everything down and napping. Either way, it was not restorative sleep.
This is not the way to travel. I was always safe as no-one was going to come after me with 65 and 35 pound DOGS guarding me.
So I began to look at my options. Any larger trailer would require a different vehicle. A class B camper van would be ideal. A class C would also be do-able. Used, of course. In 2018, I started looking around and learned that the class B was unbelievable expensive and awfully cramped. I started looking at the smallest of the class C motorhomes. Financially they made more sense, there is more room, and a real, honest-to-goodness bathroom! Just pull over and go! (More than once I’d had to pull over and use the side of the road, ugh!) Heat and air conditioning, WOW, spoil me some more.
After a considerable amount of research, I went up to New Hampshire and purchased a 2006 Winnebago Outlook. 26 feet long, 11 feet 2 inches high, on a Ford dually chassis with a Triton V-10 gas motor.
It felt a little squirrely driving home, but I put that off to the size of it and the awful highways in Massachusetts. (little did I know…)
My friends gave me “new home” presents and we laughed over coming up with a name for it. We settled on “Rigbee” - a bastardization of “Big Rig.” Formally known as Tiny Haven, Rigbee is wonderful.
As you see, I’ve parked him in the same place as Teeny was parked, but getting this big rig up under the trees, next to the dog’s yard has been an adventure. After catching the slide-out’s awning on the silver maple last fall ($1000 to fix this spring), I decided that a more appropriate parking place was required.
Saturday (Oct. 10, 2020), a parking pad was created at the south-east corner of my lot. It only took me two years to properly park Rigbee. When we’re not traveling, this is where he’ll be. Happily esconced, safe and sound.
They promised that the trap-rock will not get washed away. Since we haven’t had any rain in forever, it’s not my biggest concern right now anyway. I do wish the rock was tamped down better, though.
It’s much closer to level than I thought it would be.
After closer examination, it looked a bit unfinished. I've purchased landscape timbers and will add them just inside the curb, to dress it up and make it look - better. Since we're actually getting rain, (YAY) they are waiting for me at the Bloomfield Lowe's. I'll just hook up my little utility trailer (another story for another day) and fetch them home in sunshine.
Happily, I put down straw as we're getting the remnants of a hurricane. We desperately need the rain.
Now I just have to winterize him and secure the landscape timbers. Oh, happy day. Seriously.
Another home improvement project. YAY!
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