My parents had a couple of travel trailers when I was growing up, we mostly kept them at seasonal sites and never really pulled them anywhere. But that gave me my introduction to RV’s! Couple that with the annual road trips we’d take in the van and my love for RV Life was born!
My First RV (2000-2003)
The first RV I bought for myself was a 1981 Sunline, 16′ travel trailer. I had looked at popups, brand new they were fetching $10,000 USD! That wasn’t going to happen…way more than I had to spend at the time. This was 2000 and I had a new baby, living in Arizona at the time and just wanted something to allow us to get outdoors with him.
Found this little guy randomly on a small RV sales lot in Mesa. Sure it was almost 20 years old but it checked all the boxes and was actually quite nice and clean for the age. This made many trips to the lakes and mountains around Phoenix, and eventually making the move back to Illinois. It traveled once to Florida before selling it off in 2003 when I upgraded.
Doubled in Size (2003 - 2005)
The second RV was a 1995 Jayco bunkhouse model, purchased from Pontiac RV in Pontiac, IL in April 2003. This was 31′ long, with a queen bedroom in the front, sleeper sofa, dinette, and dual bunkbeds. It was quite the step up from the 16′ model, but of course required way more truck to pull it. Pulled it with a 3/4 Suburban with a 454 in it and straight pipes. Never made any long trips in this one, mostly local to Central Illinois.
Sold this one in the Summer of 2005.
Our First Class A (2014 - 2019)
On the Saturday before Father’s Day 2014 Karen said “let’s go look at RV’s!” Who am I to argue?!?! So we headed up to Pontiac RV, had the idea that we’d want a Class C to accomodate our family of 7. We looked at the Class C and it was super nice and had tons of room. The salesman suggested we look at the Class A parked next to it, we had walked in assuming it was out of price range, wouldn’t have the floorplan we needed, etc. WRONG! We were blown away with the space, and it was the same price as the Class C. Given this was the end of the model year we were able to negotiate really well on it.
We named our rig Large Marge, the license plates were LRGMARG and always got a smile from someone passing us by. This RV served us really well, very little trouble with it. We learned a lot about what we’d want “next time” in regards to features and functions, but at the price point, I’d buy this coach again.
We enjoyed this coach a ton! Florida beaches, Yellowstone, Tetons, Great Smoky Mountains, Wisconsin Dells, Mount Rushmore and beyond. We took it on tailgates to softball tournaments, football games, basketball games, and concerts. Sometimes we’d just take it for a drive with friends – it had such a great floorplan to entertaining.
We sold this coach in August 2019 to a really nice family in New Mexico, I certainly hope they got the same enjoyment out of it as we did!!
Class B Joins the Family (2019 - 2020)
After selling Large Marge I got antsy….I missed having an RV to get out and travel in. I had looked at smaller RVs and ultimately landed on a 2015 Winnebago Era 170X affectionately named VinoBago. We wanted something that could seat 7 comfortably so this floorplan fit the bill. We were the third owners, and while the previous owner certainly took great care of it, it needed a lot of TLC from an RV perspective – rattles that needed found and fixed, headliner support fixed, navigation was way out of date, components failing, and most expensively of all: the propane generator. I dumped so much money into that….ugh. But it was worthless to us if we couldn’t run the roof air with rear passengers.
Overall a fun van, I drove it like a car to run errands and go hiking. I loved how it drove, and it was soo comfortable. With the turbo diesel it got great fuel economy. We never took it on any major trips – drove it to Northern Wisconsin once. I only camped in it a few nights, it was super comfortable but definitely very different than Large Marge.
I was supposed to drive it out to Arizona, but then COVID-19 happened and the world turned upside down. Trips were canceled and offices closed. We were globally quarantined….boy did we miss Large Marge about then!! While so much was closed, what better way to quarantine than in an RV in the middle of nowhere.
We finally said “We need a new RV. A bigger one we actually want to spend time in. We traded VinoBago in on……
Meet 'Tessie' (2020 - ???)
You’ve heard the saying “Go BIG or go home!”? Welllll, that’s what we did. Karen was tired of VinoBago and we really regretted that we had sold Large Marge, so I said “If we’re getting a new RV then I want THIS!” You can read about our purchase story in another post.
I can’t say enough good things about this coach and our journey to get here. It’s a long way from a 20-year old 16′ travel trailer, but you have to start somewhere and we’re very fortunate that we’re able to have the RVs that we have had, and currently own.
Of course we have to name our rigs, and we struggled with this one a bit. Winnebago bought Newmar, so technically ‘VinoBago’ still fits (and we still have those plates on it) but we didn’t want to reuse a name. Somehow “2-Ton Tessie” came around, even though it’s more like 26-Ton Tessie – and it just stuck. So, Tessie it is then!
This was a fun trip down memory lane for me! My love for the RV life, while frustrating at times, just keeps growing. I hope we reach our goal of full-time RV life in the near future while we’re still mobile enough to enjoy it!
