I’ve Been Busy; We’ve Moved

We decided to start full time in the trailer we had, to see if that would work and, if not, what we wanted. We found out we needed more space for visitors; if this is our only house, we’d like to be able to comfortably have company. And we found out we’d like as much insulation as we could get, to protect us from the cold and the heat. You can’t just drive away from either, and in the desert you can get both each day, with 50 degree swings daily. We also decided to stay with a trailer. Fifth wheels may feel more stable when you tow, but if you take any floor plan and make it a fifth wheel you add 3,000 pounds of weight and $10,000 to the price. We like the Tundra. Now that we’ve added a sway bar, air bags for the springs, heavy duty tires, new shocks and brakes, it’s a pretty good towing vehicle, but it won’t handle a fifth wheel.

We researched well insulated trailers and a few models kept coming up, Arctic Fox, Lance, and Reflection, by Grand Design. Lance doesn’t make a trailer as big as we wanted, but there were promising models in the other two. While we were at Cusick for two weeks we drove down to Spokane to look at some. The Arctic Fox dealer showed us a model made by the same people called Outdoors RV. We were impressed. It had a very heavy frame and axles, 16 inch wheels, shock absorbers (first time we’ve seen those on a trailer), the same insulation and thermal pane windows as the Arctic Fox, but less fancy, less weight, and a lower price. But the model he had didn’t have the floor plan we wanted.

We did more research and found the Outdoors RV Blackstone 280 RKS had pretty much everything we wanted. The only problem was there weren’t any for sale anywhere around. We saw a couple advertised in Fairfield, CA, and one in Round Rock, Texas. There were a couple of used ones, but living in our trailer and moving all the time it would be logistically almost impossible to buy used and then sell ours. We were resigned to waiting for the 2023’s to be built, which isn’t scheduled to happen until December.

Then I did a search and a unit came up in Missoula. I called, figuring it was probably still on line, but already sold (that happens a lot). They still had it. I told the salesman we’d be trading our KZ, he came back about an hour later with an offer we couldn’t refuse and I put a deposit on it. Then I called and cancelled our 8 day stay in British Columbia, got us a reservation from Saturday to Friday back in Missoula, and another for two nights back in St. Mary near Glacier so we could keep our reservations in Waterton, Alberta and beyond. We drove back down to Missoula and stayed right across the road from the place we’d stayed before. This turned out to be a nice place with huge fields for walking “well behaved and non-aggressive” dogs off leash.

We finalized the deal on Monday, they had already started prepping the trailer. They added the second air conditioner to the bedroom (the unit was pre-wired for it) and it was ready to go.

We parked the KZ next to the new one so the doors faced each other. By noon on Tuesday this was where we were with the move.

Tuesday evening we had it back in our spot at Granite Peak RV Resort,

looking good,

and put together enough to tow and live in. On the short tow back to the RV park we found that this unit did, indeed, have decent brakes!

That evening I enjoyed the light from our new electric fireplace and found that the added insulation makes it feel a bit more like a cozy cottage than a tin can. Nice.

By Thursday evening we had things organized enough that we were ready for the 224 mile trip through the mountains back to St Mary, MT.

And here we are, safe and comfortable,

in our fairly well-organized trailer.

The bed is ready for us.

Both the weather and the scenery are pretty dramatic!

And we are happy to look out at the rain from our snug new home.

So geographically we haven’t made it far, being right across the road from where we were a month ago, but we have worked very hard to get here! And now we’re ready for visitors!