….AND we’re back!

When we decided to get serious about buying a Phaeton, we had to decide on a Tiffin dealer. We bought Rover through Lazydays in Tampa for a number of reasons, but we decided we would not buy from them again (great sales dept., terrible service dept.). Many folks have recommended Davis and Sherman dealers for...
Continue reading...

Too Much Southern Hospitality

It’s been a while since we’ve posted but it’s taken us some time to recover from our stay in Red Bay, AL before we could relive the experience. Then we got caught up in celebrating the holidays with our family and blogging went out the window. So now I’ve finally buckled down and I’m ready...
Continue reading...

Roughing It… Even More Smoothly

above: a completed 2018 Phaeton 40 IH waiting for final inspection In case you missed it, we’re upgrading to a new motorhome! In our last two blog posts we discussed what we’re doing and why, and how our new diesel chassis differs from Rover’s gas chassis. In this post we’ll talk about some of the...
Continue reading...

Welcome to Diesel Town

above: visiting the Tiffin factory is always a drool-worthy experience. If you read our last blog post, you know that we’re in the process of upgrading to a new motorhome! While our upcoming Tiffin Phaeton has DNA in common with our current Tiffin Allegro, there’s quite a lot that’s different. These differences fall into two...
Continue reading...

The Glamorous Life of a Full-timer

After Organ Pipe, we got back on track and headed to Yuma for my last dental appointments. One year after starting on this crazy Mexico dental journey, I now have two implants (hopefully) firmly stuck in my mouth. The implants cost me 1/3 of what the US dentists normally charge and I was extremely happy...
Continue reading...

Rover needs some attention

After our week at the beach we relocated to Sweetwater Summit Regional Park, about 30 minutes from Mission Bay. Apart from taking Opie back to various beaches every few days our original plan was to relax and catch up on some maintenance. Alas, that was not to be! Instead we dealt with multiple unexpected RV repairs, including...
Continue reading...

Solar Rover, Part 3: Inverter Upgrade

In late 2015 we installed 600 watts of solar panels on Rover’s roof. You can check out Part 1: Who Go Solar? and Part 2: The Install for more background on our solar setup. The solar panels are just one part of our “boondocking electricity equation”, letting us slowly recharge our batteries during the day (if it’s sunny), where in the...
Continue reading...

Solar Rover, Part 2: The Install

As discussed in Part 1, we decided to do our own solar install rather than paying someone else to do it. Apart from saving a good chunk of money, this gave us a much better understanding of how the system works, which hopefully means it’ll be easier for us to troubleshoot in the future if...
Continue reading...

Solar Rover, Part 1: Why Go Solar?

After thinking about it for over a year, we’ve finally decided to add solar panels to Rover’s roof. This was a big project for us, including months of planning and a month of on-and-off work on the installation. Because there’s so much to say (and show), I’m dividing the information into two blog posts. Part 1...
Continue reading...