RV-Dreams Rally

Plantation River RV Resort
Sevierville, TN

This was our first rally and we had a blast!  Howard and Linda of RV-Dreams put on a fantastic rally full of seminars geared to fulltime RVing.  We learned so much and finally got to put faces to all the names of friends we have "met" over the past few months.  Great food too.  My favorite was the walk-thru in others RVs.  Nice to see how real, lived in trailers look like.  We got many good tips and ideas too.  Some were really decorated very nice!

Most of the Class of 2014 Full time Grads!


 

Before we made it to the rally, we had to drive through severe thunderstorms.  This was the week of horrible storms in TN & AR and surrounding states.  We just missed one really bad cell which was almost bad enough to make us pull over as the rain was so bad it was hard to see anything.  That's when I took this video below.

  

 

Crazy Thunderstorm between Tornados

 

 

This has been a very busy week.  We have had a great time at the week long rally, and now the real fun begins.  We leave for Illinois in the morning to pick up our new truck and then off to Michigan to pick up our new trailer!



Picking up our New Home!

There's a fresh coat of paint (snow) on the mountains by us from yesterdays storm.  Weather will be a very big part of the next 3 weeks for us and will make this quite an adventure.

Originally we had a week's vacation planned to fly from CA to TN for the RV-Dreams Spring Rally.  As it turns out, we found our new truck and 5er out this way so our 1 week vacation turns into 3 weeks.  We'd love to take our time getting home, but we have our sons college graduation on May 16 back in CA so we can't take too long to get back.

We will fly into Nashville on Monday the 28th and spend the next several days near Knoxville at the rally learning and meeting friends that we feel we've known for a long time already. 

Then on the 4th, we drive to IL to pick up our new truck and hopefully meet up with Curt & Glenda that we connected with through RVillage for dinner.  The next morning it's off to Muskegon, MI to pick up our new home!  Our Montana 3582. We are very excited!  We'll spend the next couple of days learning about our new home, how it works and practice driving.  We hope to meet up with another couple, Lonney & his wife, we also met through RV-Dreams.  It's always nice to meet with others that share the same passion and interests as you.  Even though you may have only had a chance to talk for a couple of hours, it's one of those times that you feel you've known each other much longer.  It's also nice to talk about RVs, hiking, fishing etc with someone else that loves it as much as you do.

Around the 8th we'll head back West for CA with hopefully a day or two to visit friends and family in AZ.  Much will depend on the weather.  Already, we're seeing severe thunderstorm & tornado warnings for Oklahoma and the plains.  We may have to switch our route north or south or hunker down depending on any predicted storms.  It will mean driving more hours in one day than we prefer, but that's how it goes.  More pictures as we go along!

Met some new RV Friends, Thanks RVillage

If you haven't heard about the new RV site called RVillage yet, you need to check it out!  It's kind of like facebook for RVers.  One of the really neat features is a real-time map that shows where everyone is.  You can narrow that down by searching just your "friends", "groups" or other options.  This way you can plan to meet up with someone that might be camped nearby or even in the same campground.  It's a great way to build camaraderie or find others with similar interests.  Maybe someone to go to a museum with, kayak, golf, try out that famous restaurant or just have a good time around the campfire.

http://www.rvillage.com/home/action/home


So tonight Steve and I met up with Ron & Rene of RnR.  They actually live about 45 minutes from us.  We met for dinner and had a really great time with them.  We are planning on heading out full time this summer and they are hoping to head out 2015/16.  We actually had quite a bit in common.  It's nice to be able to talk about RVs, truck, and such with others that are as excited about it all as you are.  Sorry that I did not get a picture of the four of us.  Next time!

Had to have something to pull the new rig with, right?

We'll be pulling our Montana with a 2013 Dodge 3500HD Laramie Longhorn Dually.  Should definitely do the job!  The truck is in Illinois, so we'll pick it up on the way to get the trailer the first week of May.  It gives us time to practice with each before we head back to California for our son's college graduation.  I hope I'm going to be able to handle that beast.  I've not driven a dually and really didn't want one.  We'll wait a few months and see how fulltiming goes.  Then we'll consider getting a moped or something to zip to the grocery store or around the back roads to sightsee.  I don't look forward to parking that thing.  I sometimes have a difficult time getting our current Megacab in and out of parking spots in our small town.



Aint she purty?!

Well now that we have the 5er and the truck, we can get back to purging the house to get it listed.  Looks like I'll be getting a storage locker to speed up the process.  Too many boxes of stuff stacked everywhere.  At least rooms, cabinets and closets are getting empty!  Now if we can just get my husband's 1930 truck sold!  - Edit: It's SOLD! - Once we get back from the rally we'll sell our current truck and the two cars.  Whoa!  Things are really moving quickly!!!

Home Sweet Home, We bought our trailer!

We are so excited!  We found our home.  It's a 2013 Montana 3582 5th Wheel.  Only it's in Michigan, and we're still in CA. 

It works out pretty well though.  We'll be in TN for the RV-Dreams Rally in 3 weeks, so we'll pick it up then.  While we'd rather have it before the rally, looks like we'll get it after, just in case there are any problems or bad weather, we don't want to get stuck.  Next up, is the new truck because we need it by the end of April!