RV Adventures

Yeah, we did “a thing.” Something we have been thinking about for a while. As much as we have loved the Blue Flame (and still do), the thought of taking a 20 year old RV to Alaska wasn’t sitting well with us.

So what did we do? We bought this.

Meet The Sandpiper or Sandy for short. It’s a 2019 Showhauler that we located in San Diego. It checked most of the boxes for us, including being only 40 feet long. Most Showhaulers out there are 45 feet long. We considered buying new, but it would be twice as much money and there was a one year lead time to get a new one built. We aren’t getting any younger.

Why Sandpiper? The paint job on the back of the RV looks like a bird. We tried a few other names, but The Sandpiper seems to be sticking.

We bought the RV from a car dealership group that used to also be a Showhauler dealer. The dealership owner belonged to a Porsche racing club. So Sandy was both the demo vehicle for the dealership and the racing club “post-race lounge.” It only has 15,000 miles on it and was never slept in. Based on the stickers inside the microwave, I don’t think anything was ever cooked in it!

Sandy has three slide-outs. One in the main living area and two in the bedroom. It has a convection microwave, so I have a semblance of an oven now. The refrigerator is a residential model (ice cream will now stay frozen!). And it still has an over-the-cab bunk (aka the kid’s room).

Getting the RV to New Mexico involved some logistics. If you take delivery of a vehicle in California, you have to pay 9.25% sales tax to California. But if you take delivery elsewhere, you pay your home state sales tax, 4% in New Mexico. So, we had to hire a transport driver to fly to San Diego, pick up Sandy, and then drive it to the driver’s home base in Phoenix. That is where we took delivery and saved a bucket full of money.

While in Phoenix, we contacted a solar installer. He is going to get us quote on solar panels and lithium batteries. This rig has a residential refrigerator, so it requires 110 volts all the time. We need the extra solar and batteries if we want to boondock the way we like to. There is currently 2 solar panels on the roof, but that is not nearly enough.

We had from the dealer the paperwork to get the Sandpiper home (one way only, don’t pass GO, don’t stop at the Grand Canyon). So we made a beeline to get back to Las Cruces. Along the way, we had a window “incident.” The windows in Sandy are called “frameless”. They look something like this:

They are hinged along a horizontal edge at the top and there is a crank mechanism attached to the bottom edge of the window to open it. That mechanism is adhered to the glass with glue. Well, the glue gave out on three of the windows. Yikes! This was not a surprise, we knew they had issues and we thought we had them secured for the trip home. But apparently not. Having a glass windows flapping in the breeze while going 65 miles per hour is not fun.

We made an emergency stop at a truck stop and scrounged around their store to find “stuff” to keep the big window closed as we made our way home. This is the result. We used an orange flag because it had a sturdy dowel handle, a ratchet strap, duct tape, an old t-shirt we ripped up, and some stretch wrap. This kept the window closed the rest of the way home. MacGyver has nothing on us! This is now on the top of our to-do list.

So, what about our plans for Alaska this summer. Alas, that trip is once again postponed. We have a lot to do to get the Sandpiper outfitted the way we would like. We hate the couch, but that’s easy to replace. The TV needs a new mounting bracket that can enable it to be pulled down lower. I have already stripped out all the electronics for the DirectTV satellite dish and replaced it with my media PC and Roku. The satellite dish on the roof needs to be removed. And we have already mentioned wanting solar. The end result is we will shoot for Alaska next summer (maybe I shouldn’t say that out loud, we seem to jinx ourselves every year). This summer we will probably head to the Northeast once we get Sandy all set.

Not to mention, we also need to sell the Blue Flame. It will be missed, we have put 140,000 miles on it in the 10 years we have been traveling in it. It’s been good to us.