New toy!

Thursday June 23
We had ordered our new travel trailer/caravan back in March, and had been expecting it to come in before now, but we finally got word just before we left for South Dakota that it was finally in, so today was the day we drove up to the dealer in the Washington Courthouse area, to get the explanatory tour and pick it up. We hadn’t actually seen this exact model in person. We had seen two similar ones by the same manufacturer, but when we went home and were thinking about them, we saw this one in the catalog, with a slightly different lay out and decided to go with this one. It was mainly a question of the bed - one of the others was a “Murphy bed” which folds up against the front during the day, leaving a sofa for the day time, but that way you lose the front window. The other one had the bed going across, which for people of our age and above who sometimes need to go to the bathroom during the night, isn’t ideal, as it means one person has to climb over the other one. This was what our old pop-up camper was like, but then we were more flexible in those days and slept more soundly! There is a long thin table, freestanding, which goes in front of the sofa, but that is stored behind the sofa for travel, and at at that point we hadn’t taken it out. The rack in front of the front window is a bike rack. One feature which isn’t evident in these photos is the sofa is part of a slide out, which is retracted for travel. The drawback of this model is that you can’t access the bathroom ( unless you’re very slim!) with the slide out retracted, but since it opens at the touch of a button, it’s not a huge deal. Our old pop-up camper also had a slide out, and an awning, but both were manual - and rolling and unrolling the awning and getting it set up was a bit awkward. We will keep it at home for the next few days, then we plan to take it for a maiden trip early next week. In the meantime, we need to finalize a storage place to keep it. Some fun times ahead!
I’ve posted four blips tonight - please scroll back to check them out!