It’s Fall We Are Thinking

We’ve been having some gorgeous fall like days and as tomorrow is September 1, it could well be fall up here in Montana at 5200 feet.  Blue sky sunny days with temps in the seventies–what’s not to like about that!!

Well our next RV search is over.  We sold our Country Coach last summer and have often regretted that sale.  We thought we wanted to go small.  The two of us made a list of must haves–

1.  Horsepower matters–400hp or more.  If the coach was 30 feet or less, the Cowboy would consider 350hp.
2.  Our Country Coach had window awnings over most of the windows and I used them extensively to control the   heat–so I wanted window awnings.
3.  The Cowboy wouldn’t look at any diesel pusher without a side radiator.
4.  A larger refrigerator than what we had in that toyhauler–might as well not have had one at all!
5.  We both wanted another nice looking coach.

We looked at and drove gas Class A’s and Class C’s and found the noise of the engine very annoying.  Class C’s are very short on storage too.  We searched high and low even making a 950 mile round trip to Spokane to look for short diesel pushers.  Short diesel pushers with powerful engines (400hp or more) are seemingly non existent.  You can find 36 feet diesel pushers with 400hp engines but then the Cowboy would say, “might as well get a forty footer, four feet shorter isn’t enough to matter.”

So, we had just about decided to shelve our search–neither one of us was willing to travel again with hopes of finding a decent rig–we were going to try and be patient hoping something would pop up in our area.  Monday night I gave Craigslist one last search and up popped a new ad for a 2001 Beaver Marquis–42 feet long with a tag axle with only 55,000 miles in Livingston–56 miles away!!  But the feature which made the Cowboy salivate–500hp.  The ad noted the coach was without its generator–HUH???  And because the generator was missing they were negotiable on price. We ran the coach through NADA.com and when I saw the book price I told the Cowboy this particular coach was out of our league.  But, we decided to contact the owner sending him a text requesting a price.  When the text came back immediately, we were shocked at how “little” they were asking compared to the book price.  We made an appointment to see the rig and drove it this past Tuesday.

Yes, it’s long but the Cowboy said it drove very nicely, lots of power, easy steering.  We went home and spent time doing the back and forth dance.  It has some issues as it’s seventeen years old–no generator for one thing and that’s a big ticket item.  It has cosmetic issues inside and out, the curtains/shades will all need to be replaced, there is no dining table–what happened to that???–no stove or sink covers, etc.  It has two slides, one in the living room and one in the bedroom.  And of course it’s dirty.

We picked up the coach today after coming to a price agreement over the phone.  We couldn’t be more pleased.

Hey John Brown–it’s NOT pink!!

I told the Cowboy those curtains made it look like a bordello!  The shades and curtains are electric operated–now what engineer dreamed up that one???  As I said, the curtains will have to go and we will get day/night shades.  Most Beaver coaches come with stand alone ice makers–Beaver must have thought all RVers were party animals???  This coach has of all things TWO bathrooms–two toilets and three sinks in the bathroom!  They could have made a smaller bathroom (the one in our Country Coach was nice sized) and used some of that extra room in the living area.

But as I said, we couldn’t be more pleased–It will take us days to figure out all the gadgets and we can’t wait to get out on the road.