Sunday, January 25, 2009

Shopping for RV and Starting Packing

Yesterday we drove almost 3 hours up to Sacramento, because there were a couple of new 2007 RVs that looked promising from the posted floor plans and pictures and we wanted to finally go looking for our home for our trip. I really enjoyed myself and it was also really educational. 

We learned RV manufacturers have mastered the art of making cheap materials look good for the pictures! Also, the high end units also have some of these "cheats" in their manufacture. And, by cheats, I mean they use woodgrain wallpaper/vinyl or whatever you call it. They use real wood cabinet doors but then paper over the cabinetry framework. My guess is that a unit, after living in it full-time for a year with that paper, won't look too good.

One of the RVs, a 2007 Holiday Rambler Presidential Suite, had a desk, nice shower, decent kitchen, and had only minimal woodgrain wallpaper (just on the least accessible/noticeable areas) and had most all the rest of the options I really wanted. In fact, we almost bought it, but we'd agreed not to buy anything on this trip. And it was still considered new, as it has been sitting around the dealer lot. The dealer was basically discounting it something like 40% from the retail price. However, when I got home and discovered we were going to have to pay something like $8,000 in sales tax and registration use fees if we buy the truck and fifth wheel in California, it quashed our plan to purchase this unit. Bummer, I forgot about the frigging 8.25% sales tax. That is too high a price to pay for basically two months of residency down here.

Luckily, in the evening, I was able to locate some similar units up in Oregon, so I guess we're going to go buy in Oregon. So, now I've decided I need to get hustling and start shuttling stuff up to Oregon. We have our SCA cargo trailer which Wendy and Ross have kindly agreed to store for us during the trip, so I think I'm going to try and get that loaded and bring it up to Portland later in the week, probably Wednesday or Thursday. Then while I'm up there, I'll go ahead and rent a room from somebody and start to reestablish our residency; I'll see what I need to get my Oregon drivers license back and reopen our credit union account. Then by the time we need to leave on our trip, we should be able to register these new vehicles up in Oregon. 


Jeff is off looking at trucks today. We need a Ford F-350 or the equivalent in another brand and he wants to test drive them. Though, since we don't know if GM is going to make it, we're slightly hesitant to buy their truck. We're not sure what we're going to do. It will probably depend on what we find the best deal on at the time we go shopping.

Today I am working on packing the SCA trailer. I'm packing up our SCA costumes and feast gear, except for what we're bringing on the trip. Though, now that we're going to Pennsic, I'm going to have to rethink how much clothing we bring. We were just going to bring one medieval cotehardie outfit and one T-tunic outfit but two weeks is a long time in two outfits; I may have to try and make more. I'll have to go see if they have laundry facilities on site.




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Since writing this earlier, I learned we can buy the RV and avoid paying sales tax by having it "shipped" up to Oregon for about $500. We'll have to think about how much we want that particular fifth wheel.

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