So, you want to buy an RV, in late Summer 2020?!

 So, the first step to a months long trek across the country is to figure out the transportation. Now that the decision was made, what kind of RV?  Having barely paid attention to them other than when passing them on the road, we knew next to nothing about them.

Typically I spend months researching a new car, weeks researching a new set of speakers. We had booked a canoe trip in the boundary waters of Wisconsin (last of the season) with Wilderness Inquiry a company that we had gone on a very successful trip to Yellowstone a few years before, so we had about a month to get there. 

There is nothing like a deadline to speed up the decision making process. So it was off to the internet to find out what our options were and what was available. The primary criteria quickly boiled down to a decent kitchen and separate spaces for the two children and us, since we were going to be spending months at a time in the RV.

The second thing we discovered is that if we wanted a tow-able, (cheaper and generally available) we would need a new vehicle. 5,000 lbs was the limit on our best towing car, and that was going to be a months long camping trip, not an RV trip.

A quick check on the RV sales sites told us if we wanted a self-driving RV, and we wanted to get one within a reasonable distance from home, say 250 miles... there were about 15. If we wanted one that did not include "needs some work" in the description, there were about 8.  If we wanted one that had a bedroom and two sleeping areas for the children, there were 6. If we didn't want the bathroom in our bedroom, there were four.  Two new, two (lightly) used..

There are basically four kinds of RVs.

Class-A - the RVs that look like they might be a Greyhound Bus.
Class-B - basically a van or Sprinter with fancy insides.
Class-C  -a F350 or F450 pickup up truck that mostly looks like a big U-Haul with windows.
A Fifth Wheel - a trailer that either attaches to a hitch (smaller) or to a special giant hitch in the bed of a pickup truck (big-giant)

(details here -- as with all links, I'm picking them because the website has good information, no endorsement or warrantee of correctness is implied)

The next day we drove to Reno to look at the four RVs (conveniently at two locations near each other). And check out the 5th wheel (tow-able options) just to make sure.

All four of the available Class-C RV's were similar, 32 feet long, based on a F450 pickup truck frame (most Class-C's are, some years Chevy makes some RV frames, some years not, I was told).

There was one used Winnebago and three Foresters (one used, two new).

At first we liked the Winnebago, possibility better construction and it had a kitchen that you didn't need to open the slide out to use, which seemed nice.  (Slide outs are part of the RV that pushes out to give you more space. It is amazing what making the RV 3 feet wider will do for you).

But, the Forester (the first one we looked at) had two clearly divided spaces for the children and would not require making and unmaking a bed everyday. And there was a door on the bedroom.

The new Foresters were the same, except they didn't have a gas oven and they had a second table rather than a bunk bed and couch as the second sleeping area. We actually really liked this, but not $12,000 worth.

While we were pondering our options (and after we did a test drive of the used Forester, pretty much exactly like driving a big U-Haul but with even more rattling and banging), we looked at the 5th wheels. Three things quickly dissuaded us from going that route. The layout wasn't as good, we would have to buy and later get rid of another large vehicle, and we'd have to spend all the time in the road in the car, and not lounging on the couches or at the dinning table (doing school or work) whilst on the road.

So, as there were a whole bunch of people circling the available Class-C's like vultures, we put down the deposit the next day. A couple of days later the number of 32 foot RVs available in the Western US was back to zero.

A week later the dealer finished doing whatever they needed to do to give it to us.