Mainuh

Don,

 

I try to think more long term on the market or I will go crazy. What a mess!

 

Even if your not buying a big show like Tampa is really a lot of fun. You really get to see what is out there and you can get a lot of ideas of what you might want. It really made us think. Plus they have an unbelievable amount of other vendors that have all kind of neat acessories for your RV and literature on campgrounds and sites all over the country. It's the Disney World of RV'ng.

 

We pick up the coach two weeks from today and needless to say we are excited. Thanks for asking. We took our TT to the dealer last week and closed the deal so the garrage is full of stuff from the trailer and other gear we have purchased to haul to Nappanee and put in the new coach. The factory delivery process is five days so we will be camped at the factory until the 17th and then we are taking a week to visit my mother in Illinois and then two more weeks to work our way back to GA.

 

I attached a pic of the new RV. I am going to look into the 2016 Rally. My wife is from MA so it might be a great time to go to New England.

 

Steve

Hi Steve,

You two must be pumped on taking delivery! It looks awesome! Hope you decide to come to the rally. We're doing the boot camp as well, but it would be great to meet you both there. Let us know here when you get the rig and look forward to more pics. New signature line looks pretty awesome BTW! Congrats again.

Don,

You should go to the Tampa Super Show in January. It's as big as Hershey or close to it and it would be a nice break from the cold. It's a manufacturers sponsored event so there is a chance for some decent pricing. We went last year and learned what was available and approximate prices. Actually there is so much stuff there it is overwhelming. If you did find something you could probably work it so you didn't take delivery till the snow melts.

Just a thought.

Stevehttp://events.frvta.org/florida-rv-supershow/

Hi Steve,

Will look into it. We're not going new with a dp. Especially with what the market is doing this month! Show would be fun and interesting but we'll be looking at 08-10 DPs and I'm sure we won't see those at the show.

Have you picked up your new rig yet? Pics?

So any of you in the class of 2016 planning to go to the Escapees Rally in VT July 2016? Anyone already signed up? Kind of excited as we registered this past weekend including the Boot Camp. Timing is perfect... We're hoping to have the house sold or under contract with a closing date by then. Interested to hear if others are planning on boot camp and the VT rally.

Welcome Rhonda!

I've posted our story and timetable earlier in this thread so I won't bore everyone with it again! What's your thoughts on timing? I'd love to go to the PA show next weekend and make a deal, but we'd just have to store it for our Maine winter so I plan to wait till feb/mar and make a trip south (likely Fla) with a shortlist and see what dealer really wants our business. Stay in touch here and let us know how you're progressing.

Welcome to Escapees Terry (& Don). Sounds like you've got a plan. Piano looks good in the rig! Escapees is offering mail forwarding out of Fla now... I'll be opening an account for that in January or so to give it time and test prior to needing it next fall. Good luck with your plans and make sure to check in here in the class of 2016 often and let us know how it's going.

Hi,

 

My wife and I are aiming for mid-2016 to go fulltime. We are both under 65, but hey life is too short!

We just purchased a 2007 Tiffin Alegro Open Road 32BA and a 2013 Honda CR-V for our toad, so we have the MH/TOAD part

We are working on fixing up the house to sell and getting rid of our 'stuff'.

We are in Oklahoma and will domicile in Texas.

Since I've responded to one post, I should probably introduce myself. I am a 100% disabled vet and hubby is partially disabled. We thought we would have to wait another 5 years to retire, but he retires next fall, early, and we plan on putting our house on the market in early summer. We'll move into our 38 ft Coachmen Encounter with our three fur babies and sell the house (we hope) while waiting on hubby to finish work. We live in East Tennessee and we'll be spending our first winter in Milton, FL, outside Pensacola, just in case we need to be close by home for any last minute stuff. After that, we have no plans at all. We love the planning in jello method. We also want to chase 70 - degrees.

 

Hope to see many of you on the road!

Welcome depeller & oursimplelife!

We hope to have the house on the market late spring 2016 and be FT on the road by Thanksgiving! No lack of things to do in the meanwhile. Retiring at year end 2015 to devote full time to prepping the house and acquiring a nice gently used Tiffin Bus. A few yard sales, trips to Goodwill and other miscellaneous fun sprinkled in between! Keep in touch and let us know what you're up to as things get closer.

Steve,

Looking good! Thanks for sharing the pics. Looks awesome! Congrats... Now the wait for delivery!

Getting a Little Closer!

 

 

 

Finally, we jsut retrned from a three week trip in our TT that included a factory stop to watch part of the build process. It takes 28 days from chasis prep to final paint to complete a unit, but the purchasing customer can watch the four days when they are putting the house on top of the chasis. It was really exciting to watch them actually build what we had helped design and to see it all come together. I've attached a link with pics from the build and a few others that were sent to us once they finished painting it. They are doing the pre delivery inspections now and we were scheduled for pickup on Sept. 14th but because of family obligations we can't get there till Oct. 12th. :-(

 

We are going to have trouble staying out of this thing once we get it.

 

Hello to all!

My wife and I are going to be fulltimers on February 1, 2016.

We have purchased the rig and are waiting on a few items to be completed before they are all mated together. Herrin is building our bed on the back of our Volvo so we can haul our Smart around.

The DRV 44Houston is being completed at the dealer with a few punch list items to repair.

The house sold in 1 day last April for full list price so we are now in an apartment trying to get all of our photo's scanned into our hard drive! whew!

We are excited and will be in Hutchinson, KS for the HDT rally in October as our first major trip with our set up.

 

Hope to see many of the Class of 2016 on the road.

David

Hi David,

That is an impressive setup in your signature! Hope you can post some photos... Would love to see them! Can't talk my wife into considering the HDT setup. I did exchange a few emails with Greg at RV Haulers. Who is doing the smart conversion on the 780? Hope we can run into you somewhere when we hit the road next fall. Best of luck with the new DRV and keep us updated in here as things come together!

Don,

 

Sorry I haven't been active here much lately. Always great to meet another LEO and a photographer to boot. Please give me your photo website so I can check it out. Photography has taken a little bit of a back seat lately. Hopefully it will pick up as we get along in the process here.

 

We have been slowly working at getting stuff done, but there is no sense of real urgency yet (Our plan is to put the house on the market in the spring of 2016). I have sold my boats and our 2014 VW convertible goes today. I've also sold a few bigger items from the garage but, unfortunately, I have accumulated a lot of stuff - all of which was important at the time. The kids still have to come by with their "I want" list and then we will have to decide how we want to handle what's left. I'm for just turning it over to an auctioneer and letting it go and what doesn't go they can haul it off. My problem is that once I'm ready to move on I have little patience in dealing with all the details of selling the stuff. We will see what the realtor says we should keep for showing the house. I guess furnished is better than not. I certainly hope our house goes as quick as the ones by you. It has been a slow market here in Southeast Georgia. We were spoiled as we used to live in the DC area and all our homes there sold in a few days.

 

We have been mixing travel in our TT along with getting the house ready. I won't go into that as I try to post our trips on our blog, but traveling helps remind us of what we are working towards. We ordered our new coach, a 2016 Newmar 4041 DP all electric. Since we special ordered it, we were able to spec it out like we wanted. Newmar allows a lot of individualization in the order. We are adding a few things that aren't even on their option list. We are headed to Nappanee, IN at the end of the month to watch them build it and we will be taking delivery at the factory in early October. We have a five day orientation and shake down run with one of Newmar's techs assigned to educate us and address any problems that might show up. We are obviously excited about that.

 

Once we get the new coach, I will really have to discipline myself as i'm sure I will want to travel even more. So I guess we will focus on getting the house in good condition to sell and slowly work on the mundane tasks of ridding ourselves of 40 years of accumulated things until October.

 

And so it goes....

 

fulltimingit.com

Steve,

WOW! That's exciting news! That looks like a fantastic floorplan. I would love to do the new coach experience, but we're retiring at 57/58 and paying ourselves completely the first 4+ years, so the wife is very nervous about dipping too far into the till before SS kicks in at all. We're also looking to sell our house in spring of 16... pretty funny how similar our plans are. Lots of baby boomers getting into the RV market. Was just listening to a podcast the other day and the industry as a whole is having it's best year ever I believe. We've had many of the same discussions here about what to sell and when to sell it and the house selling better looking lived in. We just went out to dinner with my brother and his wife and they close on selling their house in 6 days. Hope we can sell ours as fast as they did (1 day).

My photo site is here. I mostly do landscape and nature. Did a lot of sports when daughter was 3 season athlete in HS then on D1 track in college, but that has faded away now. I have a couple Nikon DSLRs and a bunch of glass.

So when we sell the house we won't spend it all on a coach, but hope to find a nice 09-10 Tiffin Bus or Newmar Dutchstar. We will hit the road debt free. Was really close on an 07 bus, but the cost of storing it for winter and buying it for only a few weeks use this year was going to cost thousands in registration, storage fees, and others costs. I'm retiring by Jan 2016, so, I'll look much harder in late Feb to March 2016 on the east coast. Hope to purchase by Mar/Apr and have it a month or two before the house sells. We'll hope to hit the road by October 2016 headed for warmer climate. Unfortunately, neither car can be towed 4 down, so I'm looking at a Tandem Tow trailer dolly or fully enclosed car hauler (either of which could take my bike too). Wife's car is a lease to boot through fall 2017 (what were we thinking?), but we'll likely leave that at her brother's to have something here in case the need to fly home arises, we'll have wheels back here. My car can go on a dolly.

I keep looking in the basement and garage and wonder where the hell all this stuff came from! We had a house fire in 2002 and started "new" after that. Seems like we have more in the past 13 years than the 20 prior! Anyway... checked your website. Really like that floorplan All electric seems the way to go now. I will looking into 5-700 watts solar on the roof of ours. I had been looking at surge protectors, but also saw this RVGeeks video today and will likely investigate the Hughes Autoformer as well. Pricey, but fry an AC or fridge and you just bought one and then some! Looks like a great product and many parks aren't giving you 120vac!

Anyway, congrats on the new rig order... very very exciting! Will you go to Napanee when it's under construction?

BTW, Looked at some of your photo gallery. Awesome!!! Looks like you're doing some HDR ? Love your barn shots. Some really great stuff there Steve!

 

Thanks Don! Well, things are moving quicker than we anticipated! lol. We put our house on the net for sale today and we've already had one couple tell us they want it and are going tomorrow to get their bank loan. We shall see! If it sells, they want us out of here in 30 days! We already have a 2014 Keystone Passport 3320bh travel trailer but we really want a Heartland Gateway 3650bh. However, I have to stay within a few hour radius because I'm in the middle of a legal situation in which I am the plaintiff soooo..... until that is settled, we won't be sure what we're going to do RV wise. Anyway, we're completely ok with putting some things in storage and then selling/giving away the rest in a short time :-) It should prove to be an interesting wild ride! Thanks again for the welcome! We may end up being in the Class of late 2015!

 

 

Sherri, Guessing you and Robbie may be "homeless" by now? How's it going? Class or 2015 or 2016? :-)

My brother lives only a couple miles away, just put his house on the market and sold it for asking price in 1 day and moving from ME to NC. Amazing how fast it all happened for them (no RV, just retire/relocate). Another house ( a cape like ours) just went on the market and sold at full asking price, also in a day. Hope the market is that hot when we sell next spring.

Hope your legal situation is resolved.

A big Hello to everyone planning to full time in 2016. This is Steve of Steve and Liz. I spent 35 years in law enforcement before retiring in 2009. Liz and I ended up in Brunswick, GA on the coast and we really like it here. We started Rving in October of last year when we purchased a 27' TT that we have put about 5000 miles on traveling in the Southeast and up into the Midwest. We are really having trouble staying out of it and have another trip planned in April that will take us through 10 states and over 2000 miles. In January of this year, for a multitude of reasons, we decided to work towards traveling full time starting in 2016. So we are just getting started, and we look forward to sharing our adventure and learning from all of you who have gone before us.

 

I jsut started a blog to chronicle our trials and tribulations, mainly for family and friends, but would welcome you all visiting it. You can learn more than you want to about us. This is my first attempt at a blog and am just learning the software so all I ask is for you to keep that in mind when viewing it. I also do amateur photography and I will attach a link to that too. You can just check out the slide show for a sample.

http://fulltimingit.com

 

http://sbahrnsphoto.com

 

I know I am going to enjoy beeing an Escapeee. We have already camped at Sumter Oaks in Florida so we are getting excited.

 

Thanks

Steve,

How are the plans progressing? Also former LEO and retiring early 2016 and hope to be on road FT by fall 2016. Also into photography and have a website for that! This 2016 group needs a shot in the arm. Pretty dead for for only months away. Let us know how your plans are progressing.

Hello All! My husband and I just want to introduce ourselves! We're Sherri and Robbie from Southwestern VA. Currently, I'm an RN and he's a mail carrier. We have five children, three of whom still live at home, ages 3, 5, & 7. It is our dream to live full time on the road! We've been planning this off and on for the past two years and almost took the plunge last year about this time. We backed out though after I couldn't make the decision to sell our home . Now, we're ready to take the plunge into preparing for our journey. We've done a ton of work on our home and we're working out the details on what we need to do to sell. After that, we're working on getting rid of most/all of our debt before we head out. We currently have a 2014 Keystone Passport 3320BH which we love, but we really want a 5th wheel before we head out. Our kiddos are excited about heading out, but we haven't really shared much with the extended family. We're still working out the details on what we're going to do for income, etcetera. With kiddos, we know we have to have some sort of guarantees before we uproot them. I'm currently searching for an online nursing teacher position. The hubby isn't really sure what he's going to do, but honestly, he's very talented with his hands and building/fixing things so, I think he'll be just fine.

Anyway, sorry for my long winded hello! Its nice to meet all of you and I'm really looking forward to sharing our experiences!

 

~Sherri

Welcome Sherri! It's been a little quiet here in the class of 2016 of late. But sounds like you're in for some adventure. What a great experience that would be for your kids. We hope to be on the road in late fall 2016, theoretically after our only child gets married. They'll take off on their honeymoon, and we'll take off full timing it!

Keep in touch in here and let us know how you're making out. We've been looking at rigs and come close on a couple, but got tons of time so we're being pretty picky right now. If we could score a great deal this year, we'd have more time to try some shorter trips and get it setup the way we want while I still have my workshop and garage before the house sells next spring. We'll see.

Congrats Kaybee and Ramblin Reck. Feels good to have a date to look forward to, eh? We're getting the task list of things to do before selling the house thinned out and slowly but surely things are coming together. We hope to be on the road to warmer places before the snow flies. Expect the house will sell quickly given that one like it just sold in 1 day in this fairly sought after neighborhood. I guess my bigger concern is having a rig here and ready to move into when the house sells out from under us and what we'll do with the "must keep" stuff. We expect to FT for 3-5 years (but who really knows) and settle into a small retirement house after that... maybe keeping the rig or possibly downsizing to a smaller rig at that point. The bigger concerns for us is good health care coverage and we're paying full freight on that for a few years since we'll be retiring at 57/58. I plan to retire 1/15/16 and the wife will work until maybe the end of June, but my full time job starting Mid January 2016 will be finalizing getting the house ready for the market by late May 2016 and finding a rig somewhere and getting it home to prep for fall departure. Good luck and keep us posted how it's going!

 

I agree Don.....I've been on another forum, and seems to have a lot more excitement about leaving in 2016. We're also prepping house for listing March 2016 already, and honestly it's hard to believe we're almost half way through 2015. It will come before we're ready! I'm excited about pulling out, and we're planning yard sale etc like you. Good luck with yours!

Thanks... I've got a countdown of days on the calendar at work. They are ticking down for sure. Been working hard on the "honey do" list and already have so many things knocked off, the wife said next march/April time frame I'd probably need to think about a road trip to find our new home". It was great to hear that from her as it seems like she's really (finally) getting on board with the plan. Not sure I'll list the house as early as March 2016, but by May for sure. Closing after 7/1 when the wife retires and hopefully we can be in the MH by then. She still wants to put some stuff in storage and not really ready to hear the logic of why that's not a good idea so may be some concessions there. I've got to get on the stick and do some more research on the health insurance stuff. Have looked some during last fall's open enroll on ACA, but we'll be 57/58 when we hit the road so paying our own freight on insurance and spending money for a few years.

Good luck with your plans and keep us updated!

We hope to be in the 2016 class. I plan to retire by 2/1/16 and hopefully a few months behind will be my better half. I'll be organizing yard sales, ebay and craigslist sales, painting, cleaning and fixing and preparing the house for the market in later spring with the hopes of getting on the road before the snow flies. Can't wait. This class seems pretty dead for only a year or less away!