New - New - New

[Deryl-Rob]

New to the forum, New to RVing, and New to living full time in an RV.

Rob and wife Deryl have sold our house in Massachusetts, and been living in our "New to Us" 2018 Grand Design Reflection 337RLS, with our cats, Nettle and Tigger since May. Rob has been active on a different RV forum, and I am getting started here on the Grand Design forum. My goal is to learn more about our specific 5th wheel and how to keep it running smoothly as we move our house down the road.

We currently call the trailer, "The Condo", as it feels like a one bedroom apartment that we own, and pay condo/maintenance fees to the campgrounds. In turn the campground(s) provide water, sewer, and electric, as well as mowing the grass. We have spent since the beginning of June in New Hampshire, with a week up near Damariscotta, Maine.

The cats have adjusted well to life in The Condo. We have managed to become New Hampshire citizens, registering the truck, car, and trailer, drivers licenses, and health insurance. Rob and I are however, still working on fine tuning what we have onboard. This week we will be focusing on removing things we haven't used to lighten the trailer before we head south and west for the winter. Our goal is to spend time in Arizona and have signed up for the GDRV Quartzsite rally in February, so hopefully we will meet some of y'all there.

Deryl and Rob

[Steven@147]

New to the forum, New to RVing, and New to living full time in an RV.

Rob and wife Deryl have sold our house in Massachusetts, and been living in our "New to Us" 2018 Grand Design Reflection 337RLS, with our cats, Nettle and Tigger since May. Rob has been active on a different RV forum, and I am getting started here on the Grand Design forum. My goal is to learn more about our specific 5th wheel and how to keep it running smoothly as we move our house down the road.

We currently call the trailer, "The Condo", as it feels like a one bedroom apartment that we own, and pay condo/maintenance fees to the campgrounds. In turn the campground(s) provide water, sewer, and electric, as well as mowing the grass. We have spent since the beginning of June in New Hampshire, with a week up near Damariscotta, Maine.

The cats have adjusted well to life in The Condo. We have managed to become New Hampshire citizens, registering the truck, car, and trailer, drivers licenses, and health insurance. Rob and I are however, still working on fine tuning what we have onboard. This week we will be focusing on removing things we haven't used to lighten the trailer before we head south and west for the winter. Our goal is to spend time in Arizona and have signed up for the GDRV Quartzsite rally in February, so hopefully we will meet some of y'all there.

Deryl and Rob

Deryl / Rob, Welcome to the full timing ranks, and to the forum. The 337 is a fine unit to full time in, we almost went that way but found the Solitude 3350RL fit our needs a little better. I like your rig name "The Condo", that's what its like, our rig is about 375 sqft and it is just like a very small condo.
What helps us with maintaining the rig is an maintenance item spreadsheet. ITs here on the forum. If i can find it, I'll point you to it.
Fine tuning "stuff" onboard is a never ending task. When full timing, efficient utilization of storage space is important and we have found that when you dig something out of storage, put everything back where it came from, keeps clutter to a minimum. We went full time a year ago July and are still fine tuning, but almost have a handle on it. Then its just maintaining what we keep on board. We are loving the life!

If you're interested the maintenance spreadsheet is in this thread post #13 . Its an excel spreadsheet and is downloadable. https://www.mygrandrv.com/forum/show...w-Owners/page2

[Scott'n'Wendy]

Wow. New to RVing and going full time all at once. Nothing like jumping in head first! lol

[Deryl-Rob]

LOL! Yea Rob and I seem to dive in to things. The good news is that we research things beyond most people. So diving into RVing, wasn't as big a stretch as it might seem. I've been camping since i was a child. Started with National Outdoor Leadership school at age 13; full backpack survival camping. Then car and tent camping for years, including going to the SCA's Pensic Wars a number of times. Rob and I have tent camped to Sturgis SD, with our tent and gear in a small motorcycle trailer. Then we graduated to using our 14' utility trailer that we hauled the motorcycles in as an "RV" by putting a dorm fridge and cassette port-a-potty in, and when we "dock" take the bikes out, and set up a Queen sized air bed.

So graduating to a 5th wheel with plumbing and an indoor kitchen is Glamping! It also was part of the 5 year plan on how to sell the house and move from Massachusetts to New Hampshire. We knew that we wanted to see the USA, so renting an apartment while house hunting just seemed like pouring money down the drain. We had been looking at Toyhaulers as an upgrade to the utility trailer, but I suggested that we just buy a standard 5th wheel as we would not need a 450/4500 dually class truck which would be hard to park in the greater Boston area.

We studied 5th wheels, and what could be safely hauled by a 350/3500 class single rear wheel truck. I built excel workbooks to do the heavy lifting of figuring out the correct RV units. We went to RV shows, and kept coming back to the Reflection 337RLS as the best floorpan for our needs and wants. The universe listened and last November the right unit, at the right price, at a good location, appeared and we purchased it. In April we fetched it to the driveway and I fit it up with stuff.

In May we and the cats moved in and we have found it quite comfortable. So yea, the deep end of the pool, but it is a whole lot easier to cook up a gourmet dinner when you have a gas stove, oven, and convection oven to play with!

[Ynot4me2]

Haha congrats on all 3 and welcome to the group.

Sent from my SM-P610 using Tapatalk