We are retiring this year. I’m already “done”. Ellen will be soon. We had planned to buy an RV to tour the country a few months each year. A few months of research let me to the Winnebago or Itasca View 24J as the best for us. The interior of the 2015 View has a much more modern look than the 2014 and prior. It has a canvas wrap on the cabinets which gives the interior a light and airy appearance. Also the “kitchen” window is 50% larger. For these reasons alone, the 2015 was our choice.

I started looking at 2014 and 2015 pricing across the country and found that the best pricing on the 2014s came around September. There were a number of 2015s in inventory, we’re headed into winter, and dealers wanted to move the 2014s. So I figured I’d wait until September this year and grab a 2015 at a discount.

I kept checking pricing practically every day to see if there was new inventory or if prices were dropping. Then one day I saw a used 2015 with very low miles. I contacted the dealer and yes, the 24J was available. Would Ellen let me buy an RV now and not wait until September and would our financial planner OK the purchase seven months early? Both said OK and I made a deposit on the RV!

This was in the height of the heavy winter storms that slammed the mid west to the east coast. I booked flights to Connecticut and a week later, off we went to Crowley RV, Bristol CT.

There was a small window of fair weather between the storms that coincided with our trip east. Crowley picked us up at the airport and took us to their dealership and our “new” RV. The walkthrough with Mark was very complete and took two hours, but at the end we signed papers, a check changed hands, and we drove off in “The Beast”, a Winnebago View 24J builtl on a Mercedes Sprinter V6 turbo diesel chassis.

The temperature that first night fell to 3 degrees and even with the heater on, we froze. An electric mattress pad from bed bath and beyond solved that problem. We found that the only place we could stop for supplies in many of the towns was Wal-Mart. They apparently drive small business out of business. Want a local grocery?? Wal-Mart. Cleaning supplies? Wallmart. Camping Gear? Wal-Mart. We are not big supporters of Wal-Mart, but they did come in handy and prices are admittedly very low.

We watched the weather reports every evening and planned our next leg of the trip accordingly. Initially I thought we’d skirt the southern tip of the Appalachians then turn back toward 40 to head west. The snow and ice storms forced us further south toward 20. Then it became apparent that would not be far enough south and we took 10 through Texas. We hit some hail and snow briefly that forced us down toward 10 and the weather projections for Flagstaff were brutal and we wanted to avoid it.

We did discover two wonderful places to camp on the east coast: Oak Hollow Campground in High Point North Carolina and Roosevelt State Park Mississippi. I did not like the stretch of South Carolina we drove through, the coast is probably much different. We took some back roads in Louisianna that had nothing noteworthy and Texas was booooring.

I had wanted to drive the Natchez Trace Parkway, to see The Smokey Mountains, and/or visit Baton Rouge or New Orleans, but that did not happen. Both the weather and our schedule to get back home for whale watching in Loreto conspired to make this trip “too fast” for much sightseeing.

Somewhere along the way “The Beast” became “Little Beast” as we saw just how large some motor homes actually are. Many dwarfed “The Beast”. It looks like the name “li’l Beast” has stuck.

So now Li’l Beast sits waiting for our next adventure.

R