S/V Deep Playa – Dawn and Patrick

Overall, we really enjoyed the Land Yacht and mostly I think we like the convenience of land. On the boat, when Dawn wants to go for run, she has to row the dinghy in, drag it up the beach, clean off her feet, put on her running shoes. A half-hour later the run begins. On the Land Yacht, you put your shoes on and you open the door and you run!

For me, I liked working on the RV. I liked crawling underneath it.  I liked not worrying it would sink if I did something wrong. It was awesome to have my older brother (and one time mechanic) help me work on the engine. I love me a project and our crappy motor home was definitely a project.

Shopping and dining was also a treat. That had to do with land, and also with being in the US. There’s just sooo much stuff in the US. It’s truly amazing how convenient the US is. Things which will take an entire day of busing  and walking to get in Mexico take 10 minutes in the US. You want something? Pull off the freeway and get it.

The only thing wrong with our gear\setup was not having a second vehicle. RV Parks are not located as close to things as you might have thought. They are frequently 20-30 miles away from the stuff you want to go to see. Our RV was small enough, we’d just drive it there and look for parking, but there were definitely times we sat tight at the RV Park because we didn’t want to unhook the RV. We had bikes, but again frequently we were too far away for our comfy beach cruiser bikes to make that kind of trip reasonable. Public transportation was also a failure in most places. A small car, motorcycle or scooter would have been great. A scooter would have been limiting though since it cannot go freeway speeds. If we RV again, we’ll have a second vehicle.

The route we went on was not ideal. We drove across the US SW in August. The A/C in the engine didn’t work. That sucked! Next US trip will be coastal or mountains for sure. I would also like to go back to the desert SW in the winter someday. From the Grand Canyon (loved!) to the Appalachians (Dollywood was fun) was mind numbing, tedious and devoid of things we found interesting. Don’t need to go back there!

It did teach us a few things about what we like and need in our personal space and our lifestyle. These will be things that we’ll use as we move forward with future adventures. As an adventure this was a good RV practice run.

When we left La Cruz de Huanacaxtle and headed to Seattle, our plan was simple: Get a cheap RV and tour America by land. Route TBD. We had hoped we could find something vintage and cool looking which we might want to keep and then renovate in the future, but the quality of those rigs was so poor and we didn’t want to do a renovation up-front. That lead us to expand our search to the ”less-cool”, but more modern rigs. In the end we found a 1991 Winnebago Chieftain 25RC with a diesel engine. We were drawn to the diesel since we are more familiar with the care of a diesel from owning sv Deep Playa. The layout has a dedicated bunk, stand-up shower and a dedicated dinette\sitting area. These match with the way we live on the boat and that works pretty well.

Right now the RV is getting some brake works, tune-up, fluids changed, etc. We’ll hopefully be able to pick her up on Monday, give a deep cleaning and start moving in.

More adventures to come !!