Off to High Adventure!
We loaded our '73 coach on June 1st, with Va and I and our two big poodles, and headed to Big Pines RV Resort in Park Rapids, Minnesota, (north-central Minnesota) from our home in Lincoln, Nebraska, 500 miles. We played with the canoe/sail kit, bicycles and friends from June 1st to September 1st, then rolled over to Rollag, MN for the Western Minnesota Threshers Reunion, and after the reunion, picked up our car in Park Rapids and returned to our home in Lincoln. We lived in the coach all summer, using its bathroom, shower and Kitchen exclusively and put about 1200 miles on the coach.
After a week at home in Lincoln, we repacked the coach and drove east across Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana and north to Niles, Michigan, 690 miles each way. We spent a week looking for property, getting a mortgage, reconnecting with old friends and neighbors and generally making a nuisance of ourselves and left on our return trip to Lincoln. With all our running around in Michiana, another 1600 miles on the coach.
I had decided to replace the original toilet in our '73 coach and did so early in our stay in MN. But that, gas and oil, greasing the running gear, and a top-off of the power steering fluid was the only maintenance, repair, fussing with, or whatever, that I had in about 3000 miles with the coach. This is the kind of performance we have come to expect from our coach. We're both 76 years old and we won't tolerate fussiness or travel insecurity anymore. We cruise at 60-65 with occasional bumps up to 70 or 75. We've made our $30K investment in our GMC (includes storage rent) and we're perfectly delighted with it. We love to drive in it (fancy word is Tour) and we love to sit in it (Fancy word is Camp). And we are acutely aware of the compromises that enable both to be a success in a single vehicle.
We have had our GMC for nearly 30 years and have diligently looked for that long to find a new RV that performed the same tasks as well as ours. NADA. CRICKETS. Just this summer, new friends in a $125K, 26 foot class C toured our GMC separately and both independently cried out "How do you have so much more room and storage than we do?" We know some of the secrets. Credit the windows for validating "It's bigger inside!", and the drivers position above the engine (just about where school bus drivers sit) for making it so much fun to drive and sightsee in.
It makes no sense for me to be smug about driving a 50 year old motorhome and I get that, lots of my coach looks tacky. But to me, if the tool fits the hand and does the job well, nothing else matters, or at least, isn't as important. So, take this missive at face value and understand that, through 30 or so years of friendship, the GMC motorhome is an important part of our lives.
Safe Journeys!
We loaded our '73 coach on June 1st, with Va and I and our two big poodles, and headed to Big Pines RV Resort in Park Rapids, Minnesota, (north-central Minnesota) from our home in Lincoln, Nebraska, 500 miles. We played with the canoe/sail kit, bicycles and friends from June 1st to September 1st, then rolled over to Rollag, MN for the Western Minnesota Threshers Reunion, and after the reunion, picked up our car in Park Rapids and returned to our home in Lincoln. We lived in the coach all summer, using its bathroom, shower and Kitchen exclusively and put about 1200 miles on the coach.
After a week at home in Lincoln, we repacked the coach and drove east across Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana and north to Niles, Michigan, 690 miles each way. We spent a week looking for property, getting a mortgage, reconnecting with old friends and neighbors and generally making a nuisance of ourselves and left on our return trip to Lincoln. With all our running around in Michiana, another 1600 miles on the coach.
I had decided to replace the original toilet in our '73 coach and did so early in our stay in MN. But that, gas and oil, greasing the running gear, and a top-off of the power steering fluid was the only maintenance, repair, fussing with, or whatever, that I had in about 3000 miles with the coach. This is the kind of performance we have come to expect from our coach. We're both 76 years old and we won't tolerate fussiness or travel insecurity anymore. We cruise at 60-65 with occasional bumps up to 70 or 75. We've made our $30K investment in our GMC (includes storage rent) and we're perfectly delighted with it. We love to drive in it (fancy word is Tour) and we love to sit in it (Fancy word is Camp). And we are acutely aware of the compromises that enable both to be a success in a single vehicle.
We have had our GMC for nearly 30 years and have diligently looked for that long to find a new RV that performed the same tasks as well as ours. NADA. CRICKETS. Just this summer, new friends in a $125K, 26 foot class C toured our GMC separately and both independently cried out "How do you have so much more room and storage than we do?" We know some of the secrets. Credit the windows for validating "It's bigger inside!", and the drivers position above the engine (just about where school bus drivers sit) for making it so much fun to drive and sightsee in.
It makes no sense for me to be smug about driving a 50 year old motorhome and I get that, lots of my coach looks tacky. But to me, if the tool fits the hand and does the job well, nothing else matters, or at least, isn't as important. So, take this missive at face value and understand that, through 30 or so years of friendship, the GMC motorhome is an important part of our lives.
Safe Journeys!
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