Day 235: Previewing the Inevitable

Shabbos at Lake Meade was nice, but a bit crowded for our taste.  On Friday, we found out from one of the dealers that sells the Avalanche 360RB that another buyer in Las Vegas had just purchased one.  We contacted Steve, and set up an early Sunday viewing in North Las Vegas.  Rather than trundle out of Government Wash early Sunday morning and wake everyone around us up, we left Saturday night and drove to the Walmart of North Las Vegas to overnight there.

We awoke to a good view of our overnight neighbor, whose bus and truck were festooned with messages of repentance, some of which made more sense than others:

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Steve picked us up and took us on the tour of the Avalanche.  It confirmed that this was the RV we wanted, which was a relief as we had already put down a deposit on one!  We stopped at home depot where we saw evaporative coolers for sale which made me consider a daring RV modification that Tricia would never let me get away with:

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My brother David and his kids had flown in for our Death Valley adventure, so we drove back to my parents house where the cousins promptly began playing with fire, albeit in a controlled setting:

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Tonight we drove North from Las Vegas towards Death Valley and overnighted on BLM land along the way.  See the trip map for details.

Day 233: The Transition begins

Today I moved the RV hitch over to the new truck:

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We did the switch at my parent’s house, and their neighbor Ed was kind enough to lend us some tools to get it done:

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The truck’s receiver is ten inches higher than the Kia’s receiver, so I had to invert the hitch.  With the Kia, the hitch ball was twelve inches above the receiver, on the truck the ball is level with the receiver:

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We drove about half an hour out of town to Lake Mead.  The truck tows the RV with much more confidence than the Kia.  We’ll see how it is with a 6-ton fifth wheel behind it.

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Good Shabbos from Government Wash, Lake Mead, Nevada!

Day 232: Pulling the Trigger

After many days of researching, we found our truck at Martin Swanty Dodge in Kingman, AZ:

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It’s a Dodge Ram 3500 Diesel Crew Cab Long Bed 4×4.  We purchased the Tradesman trim level, so there aren’t a lot of bells and whistles, but it certainly kept the price down.  Our salesman, Bacon, and the rest of the folks at Martin Swanty were great.

Now we can focus on buying the new RV!