Friday, July 25, 2014

First Camping Trip

So after rushing it home on Tuesday/Wednesday, our Camping trip got postponed to Friday. I had some time to go through everything and get some stuff swapped out and fixed. Overall, the trip went down without any major hitches. The cupboard doors fell off and hit my nephew as he was sitting on the rear bed... but other than THAT and the awning hitting me in the head... we were good. :)








Monday, July 21, 2014

Going to get it.

Okay, so I sold my 69 Cortez and Now it's time to go get the new one. After Packing for the trip home (tools, supplies, what I might need along the way) I started quickly taking every last bit of stuff out of the 69 and packing it into boxes (in my tiny garage) for the new owner to pick up Sunday at 7:00pm.

Bye bye 69, you will be missed old friend!


So Emerson started out on our Epic journey at 3:30am on Monday July 21, with a 3 hour stop in San Francisco for breakfast. It was Emerson's first plane ride he can remember (just a Baby when we went to Florida) But other than having a hard time clearing his ears, he was a trooper!





Landed in San Diego at 12:30 and the Seller picked us up at the airport. You don't get picked up in a 1972 Gold RV every day, right? Packed up our stuff which all fit into 2 rollers and 2 backpacks and took off to check this baby out down by the Marina.

A bit more "rough" then I thought it would be. Bit more rust, bit more saggy ceiling tiles. Bit more weather cracking on the "3 year old tires"then was conveyed to me on the phone when I was deciding if I was going to buy it... oh well.. it would have cost me $1500 when it was all said and done to NOT buy it with 4 last minute plane tickets, and 3 days in San Diego... no flights until that Thursday... I haggled as much as I could, the dude was not going any lower than $2500, even when we went to Discount Tire to see about warranty replacements on the now 5 year old tires (not 3).

Paid the man, and he couldn't jump out the door and run down the street to meet his wife nearby any quicker... SOB. We went to the nearest Von's to buy Groceries for the trip... and SERIOUS buyer's remorse kicked in... almost felt like I wanted to cry knowing what I let go to buy this one. Damnit.

We Gassed up and started out on our 1297 mile journey north. Here was our route with all of the gas stops along the way.



Only made it one tank the first day, which got me a tad bit north of LA near Lebec, CA. Parked on the side of the road near a couple of other RVs and Semi trucks at 10:30 PM, up at 5:30am to start our day. Drove the rest of the way home that day only stopping for gas and sometimes popsicles. Had a bit of a screwup in Canyonville, OR when I stopped to buy new wipers.. never try to turn a rusted bolt when you don't have a replacement and the Napa just closed! I had to zip-tie the wiper arm back on as I couldn't seem to get the arm off.

Finally got us all home safe and sound at 12:30am Wednesday morning.


Sunday, July 20, 2014

Introduction

Alright, so to start things off, how about we start with the pictures from the Craigslist post in San Diego. No, not the first post, but the one after that one expired while waiting for the seller to get back to me. So I was told everything works inside, all the appliances, generator, Roof AC, everything works fine. Runs great and super dependable, it was driven from SD to LA for 12,000 miles over the 5 years he owned it. PO was in the movie business, so he would take this up to LA to live in for the week.

I was told there was very little rust, just a bit of surface rust around the marker lights. Okay, it's in SoCal, I can believe that. Also I was told the tires were in great shape with great tread depth and only 3 year old. Missing the spare, but the tires are in "great shape". Okay, I gotcha there. He said it was more dependable than his ford ranger pickup.  Okay, cool story, I'll sell mine and buy it, consider it sold!