Our New Home

We're in the new trailer and somewhat settled. It has been an exciting and exhausting week. We love our new home on wheels and we are glad we survived the week.

Our living room

Our kitchen

Our dining room

Our bedroom

On Monday morning Alpine Recreation called and said the 5^th wheel had arrived. We immediately drove out there to look at it. We found it had everything we wanted except a second air conditioner. We ordered that and were told it would arrive late Tuesday or Wednesday. They needed 24 hours to prep the trailer, so we set our pre-delivery inspection for 12:30 on Tuesday.

At the same time we learned that, since we weren't paying California sales tax on the trailer, it is considered an out-of-state delivery. That means we couldn't hook it up to our truck till it was towed out of state. The closest place to do that was Boomtown, Nevada, just west of Reno. Since we wanted to stay in the trailer for a couple of days to be sure everything worked, we arranged to stay in a full hook-up site at the Alpine sales lot.

Tuesday we took our inspection walk-through and learned how most things work. Then they towed the new trailer to where we would be staying and parked our old trailer facing it so we could move our belongings from one space to the other. It wasn't till about 3:30 Tuesday afternoon that we could begin the move. So we took a few of the essentials and then went out to dinner.

On Wednesday we spent about seven hours moving and putting away "stuff." We live in our trailer seven to eight months of the year, so there is a lot of that. We would pick up a load, go down three steps, cross the three feet between the two trailers, walk up three steps, put the armload away, then down three steps, up three steps, pick up a load, down three steps, up three steps. You get the picture. By the end of the day we were exhausted, our legs were killing us. And almost everything had been moved. About 3 pm we learned the air conditioner had arrived, so we scheduled that installation for 8:30 am Thursday.

Thursday we mainly rested, hanging out in the old trailer with the cats, reading, surfing the internet, napping. We were so tired we found it hard to sleep the night before. PC really enjoyed the time we spent in the old trailer. He isn't the least bit sure he likes our new home and he had spent much of Wednesday meowing and trying to go outside and back to his old home.

We got acquainted with the employees at the sales lot. One fellow was trimming the trees and bushes near our trailers and trying to find a chicken that is hiding out there. Another man drives the forklift they use to move RVs. They are both busy all day.

After our home was returned to our hook-up site, we learned that Rafael, the driver who would take us to Boomtown, would arrive at 5 am. That meant we would have to be up by 4.

We had another short, poor night's sleep, followed by five hours of driving. John and I and our cats traveled in our truck; Rafael pulled the RV with his truck. When we met up in Boomtown, we all drove to the UPS store to have notarized the paper work asserting we were buying the trailer for out-of-state delivery and we wouldn't return to California with it for 365 days.

Rafael with his truck and our new trailer. Our truck is parked beside them.

We are spending two nights here at Boomtown, getting more things properly put away. Tomorrow we head south to Hawthorne, then on to Las Vegas.