Our Motorhome Experience
We pull our toad (many RVers call towed vehicles “Toads”) using a tow dolly. The tow dolly has running and brake lights but they sit forward near the front wheels. At night, it can be difficult to spot the rear of the toad because the tow dolly running lights forward of the rear of the toad.
We went to the Grand Rapids RV show in (surprise) Grand Rapids, Michigan. Our goal was to see a Newmar Ventana 3412, similar to the one we ordered. Back in November we looked at 5 or 6 different Newmar coaches, but until today, we never actually saw the 3412 model. Preferring not to wait some indeterminate time for one to appear at a show or dealer lot, we went ahead and ordered one. It’s not as risky as it sounds given the number of images and video walk-throughs available. Still, it was nice to finally sit in “our” coach. It was all we hoped it would be.
After much research and endless second guessing, I bought a tow dolly from Acme Tow Dolly. So far it’s been a great experience. In this post I’ll talk about delivery and setup. Next time I’ll discuss actual use.
Recently, my wife and I went to the Newmar factory tour. Not nearly as sophisticated as I expected. It’s basically a big building with lots of skilled people assembling stuff with mostly hand tools. Kind of reminds me of those old pictures you see of Henry Ford’s early assembly lines. Nothing wrong with this, just not what I was expecting.
I found the easiest way to secure long hoses and heavy power cords is to coil them and then tie them up with a used bicycle inner tube. I cut the portion with the value stem out.
This post serves as collection of resources about RV maintenance, travel and accessories that I have found useful.
I’ll talk a bit more about why we chose Newmar in another post. For now, here’s a collection of videos that communicates the build quality of these coaches.
Many motorhome brochures contain a specs page. A table with numbers and abbreviations can usually be found there. Here’s an example:
RV shows are something of a puzzle. On one hand, you get to see a lot in a short period of time. And yes there are some good deals to be had and you’ll see things you might not of heard read about before hand.