Six years ago we were not evening thinking in these terms. We had not owned an RV for 23 years, and our only camping experience during those 23 years was tent camping. When we travelled to our favorite vacation destinations we stayed in timeshares. We have owned a timeshare week in Palm Desert, CA for about 23 years that we have transferred that week to many other places such as Kau'ai, June Lake, Lake Tahoe, Washington, etc. In the Spring of 2002 my son and his wife had purchased their first travel trailer. He and I share an insurance brokerage office together, and he would come into the office every few weeks telling me about their latest weekend trip in their trailer. We owned a 26 foot Columbia sailboat at the time, and had owned it for 11 years at that point. That sailboat was our weekend getaway, but it was always in the same marina. The idea of being able to go anywhere we wished began to appeal to us more and more, and a year later Elaine and I purchased our first motorhome, a 1987 Fleetwood Tioga 26' Class C on a Ford E350 chassis. It needed a lot of work, but we bought it with that knowledge. Over the next 4 years we travelled all over California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington taking several 2-3 week trips per year. We just completely fell in love with the RV life. Ultimately we decided that the Tioga was not big enough to live in full time and began to talk about what our next motorhome would be.
About 3 years ago our son, who owned the travel trailer, bought a Fleetwood Expedition diesel pusher with 4 slides, which he still owns to this day. We love his motorhome, but buying something like that would require us to take out a loan, but we didn't want to add a monthly payment to our budget. We wanted to buy something for which we could pay cash. Based on our price range we felt we could afford a 10-12 year old diesel pusher, so we began to look in ernest for something in that price range.
We spent a day at the 2008 RV Show at the L.A. Fairgrounds in Pomona looking at the various manufacturers to get an idea of who was making the kind of coach we wanted. We liked Country Coach, Monaco, and Safarai, so we began looking at used coaches made by those manufacturers. These coaches look great new, but after about 10-12 years they begin to look pretty threadbare. In most cases the wood cabinets, flooring needed refinishing. The upholstery was worn out. Quite by accident I stumbled across a 1982 Newell on Craigslist in the Palm Springs area. It was way older than I wanted, but the pictures really caught our "eye". We were planning on attending a wedding that weekend in the Palm Springs area,(February 2008) so made an appointment with the owner to "just take a look". I had never heard of the Newell brand before, but found a few articles on the web about the founder, and an owners forum that impressed me.
Well, stopped by the storage facility where Fred Hornbacher, the "cu
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rrent owner" stored it, and he proceeded to give Elaine and I an hour and a half tour of the coach inside and out. Well, as I have written elsewhere on this blog, we bought that 1982 Newell 36' coach, and have never looked back. The picture at the right is the exact picture used in the Craigslist ad.We now spend time trying to divest ourselves of a lot of "stuff" that we don't need. I have been selling some of my bike "stuff" on Ebay, and have made some good money getting rid of the excess stuff. We will eventually tackle the stuff in the attic that has not seen the light of day for 10 years and get rid of "it". It's a long process, and even though I have made the adjustment in my mind to living in a smaller space, and living more simply, the actual execution of that will be a little more difficult, but we will get there. I am blessed being married to someone who is very flexible, and willing, no wanting to live more simply, so we will each have the other to cheer us on toward the finish line. Really, the finish line will the the starting line for our new mobile, simplified life on the road. I can hardly wait.
We decided to head for Rincon this past Thursday, October 9th, and spend 4 days enjoying the soothing sound of breaking waves, gentle breezes, spell binding views. We left home around 10am, and arrived, non-stop, at site #41 on Rincon Parkway around 12:30pm. There were no less than 2 dozen sites open, so we had our pick. After setting up we both settled down to do some work. This was the view I enjoyed as I worked on my computer the rest of the afternoon. In the following picture you can get a sense of how the sites stretch north, end to end, along the ocean. This section is almost 1 mile long. It is the only p
For the second year in a row we traveled in our Newell with other family members up to Ventura, CA to spend Memorial Day weekend at Ventura RV Park on the north side of the town of Ventura. This park is right next to Highway 101 on the east side of the highway. There is a lot of freeway noise, but the park is nice, and walking and/or biking distance from their "Old Town" area. We ended up with 5 families (my son Chris and his family, Chris' inlaws, Ed and Linda, Bea and Michael and kids (Chris' sister-in-law and brother-in-law) and Yvette and her kids (another sister-in-law). The Lakers were in the midst of their championship run at Denver, so a couple of evenings were spent around the outside TV watching with agony as the Lakers won once, and lost once. Elaine and I took a bike ride on the Ojai River Trail up to Ojai and back (around 24 miles round trip) one morning for breakfast. 
