House hunting RV style

We have owned our fifth wheel for 5 years now and have full timed in it for 2. When we bought it, it had everything we could have ever wanted in a fifth wheel. We spent a lot of money on it. A lot in our eyes any ways.

As you live in these RV's you start to find their short comings. You start to make lists in your head as to what the next one is going to have and have not so that if you ever change you change for the better. That is what we have been doing lately. There are not a lot of RV options in Moab Utah. So our searches have been on line. Our new list of options and improvements is long.

So to the World Wide Web we went. Looking at everything out there in a 600 mile radius of Moab. Narrowing down the options to certain brands and manufacturer's. After hours and hours of searching we had finally narrowed it down to one manufacturer that met our quality standards and options that we wanted. We set a budget of how much cash we were willing to part with (after spilling tears over the loss of our cash) and what we thought we could get for our fifth wheel (hopes really). We know we aren't going to buy new. New rigs that we are looking at can be anywhere from 60,000-150,000 dollars. Not in our budget.

But there is a thing called depreciation. So for our budget and the quality that we want the RV's where going to be in the 2010 to 2011 range. Our thinking is that these RV owner's have taken care of their rigs because they were upper quality and any issues that have arose in the last 4-5 years have surfaced and they have taken care of them. Win, win.

The brand we chose finally is Cameo. The Carriage line in fact. There where a couple of floor plans we liked.
Our web search found a few with in our area of operation. The first being in Grand Junction Colorado. So off we went. It was at a small RV dealer. We went over it with a fine tooth comb and a magnifying glass. The beauty of this is that we know so much more than we did starting out. You can see up grades quickly and minor cosmetic flaws easily. What to worry about and what not to. It was a good RV, bbbbuuuuttttttt, the price was considerably higher than any other of the same style and model around the country. Talking to the dealer we found out that it was on consignment and the owner wanted a lot for it. Good-bye.

We found some more in Phoenix and Tuscon at some very large mega dealers. Road trip!

The two in Phoenix weren't at the dealer yet because they had a show that weekend. So off to Tuscon we went. The one at the mega dealer there had just been sold. Damn! They tried to push us to something different but no. We know what we are looking for. So we went to the mega dealer across the street. No Cameo but they had a Redwood. 2013 in fact for $40.000. It was a beautiful RV. It had everything we wanted. We have seen those on the road and always felt they were nice rigs. Over $100,000 new.

This is not the actual rig but it is similar.

It was the end of the day so we said we would be back in the morning for another look. So we jumped on the information highway. More research. The RV was beautiful but there was one thing that kept gnawing at us. The price. Every 2013 Redwood we found on line was at least $60,000. Even NADA listed it at $54,000. Either we found the deal of the decade or there was something wrong with that one. We are not gamblers and our gut told us something was wrong. Good-bye. Back to Phoenix.

They had 2 Cameo's. One sold during their weekend show but the other was there and we went through it. They are built nicely and the price was much better. So we pulled the trigger and signed an offer.

The Cameo we looked at was similar to this.

Buying vehicles is very stressful for Lisa. You can actually see her loosing hair. She has no finger nails left. When all the smoke cleared from the negotiating table we walked away empty handed. They low balled us on ours  or maybe we just felt ours was worth much more than they did. I mean if they can sell one camper at $15,000 below book value couldn't they wheel and deal a little better with this one? 

So we still have our fifth wheel and we will make it work for as long as we have to. Who knows, the Tampa Super show is only 10 months away.

Time to do some stress drinking.