Over several years we had looked at many RV’s, thought about our required and desired amenities, watched countless videos. We wanted more amenities than a trailer would provide. We did not own a truck or have need of a truck in our daily life, so we ruled out a fifth wheel. Countless videos talked about renting an RV first before buying, so we rented a gas motorhome via Outdoorsy. The rental motorhome was a 29 foot Jayco. After living in that for a few days and driving the gas coach on a mountain road with a rivers edge, that was it; we were getting a diesel with an exhaust/jake brake.
RV Trader is a great resource and setting up a narrow search you can get emails as new rigs come up for sale. Another trick, is to look at what rigs are priced at when they sell which provides a rough idea of the market. We reviewed pricing across dealers and private parties and decided that a private party was more desirable. We also felt that we had a better chance of getting complete and more honest view of a rig. We found a 4 year old rig locally but before we could have serious discussion with the owners, it sold. Next, we found a 3 year old rig a couple states over that seemed reasonable, we got an NRVIA inspection that revealed some issues, none really major, but negotiations fell apart and we had to move on. We then found a rig that was perfect, a bit over 1 year old with extremely low use and miles, the price was definitely more than we had planned on spending. The coach is a 21 Red 33AA all electric. Since we had already done an inspection on another coach we used that as a guide to do a virtual inspection ourselves over FaceTime with Gail and Sandy. The coach even had a 6 year transferable warranty. There is always a catch though, it was clear across the country near Asheville North Carolina.
We bought our Tiffin 33AA coach from Gail and Sandy, veteran RVers who were retired nurses and great people.
They were of course interested in a certain price but; they also wanted to pass the coach to people who wanted to make their dreams come true. They surprised us with this handmade custom plaque which hangs proudly in the rig today. Back to the cross country purchase; Gail and Sandy suggested they could meet us halfway, we took them up on their offer, flew into St Louis, and met them outside St. Louis at the 370 Lakeside RV Park campground.
We stayed at a hotel the first night, had dinner together. The next morning we met up to go over the coach and to our surprise, Gail spent an hour giving us driving a driving class. After that we parted ways and headed towards home back in Idaho. Since we really had nothing with us, first stop Walmart. We did pack sheets in our luggage. They left us many items with the coach, SurgeGuard, hoses, some dishes, coffee maker.
Our cattle dog Emma was scheduled for surgery on her cruciate ligament, think ACL on human, so we did not have any spare time along the way home. We drove 1620 miles over 5 nights.
We have kept in contact with Gail and Sandy who now live in Florida. We still hope to connect with them again if we get down that way.
Since we have had the coach we have done some upgrades which we will discuss in a sperate post.
