We haven't had many rain days since we arrived in the United States in early April. And in fact, yesterday wasn't really too bad either, but it was a mixed bag, and so once we arrived in Missoula it became a bit of a lazy day.
It took us 15 minutes just to make our way back 2 miles back to the highway on the dirt road.
This bridge looks better in the photo than it did when we were driving over it!
Overcast.
The drizzle has begun.
This area reminded us of driving around Hope, British Columbia.
We arrived in Missoula and it was still spitting on and off. The forecast said it was going to do that all day. We were actually headed for the Walmart just to use the free WiFi, but there was a Lowes store before that with a nice empty lot beside it. We find that Lowes and Home Depot actually have better WiFi than Walmart, and in fact the Lowes WiFi was super fast.
We were going to try and get out to do something, but we were just enjoying having a lazy day. And with fast free internet, we had no problem passing the time.
I was doing some more research into buying a European motorhome.
Having done two months RVing southern Spain and Portugal, we have seen and experienced what European RV's are like and they are quite different than American motorhomes. First of all, they are typically much smaller. But the space is used more efficiently. And, they have smaller engines and usually manual transmissions. And they rarely have dual rear wheels. And they don't have a black water holding tank. They are all cassette toilets.
Another thing that is not that common is to have a full size gas oven. So that limits our choices quite a bit because having a full size gas oven is one of our priorities.
However, they are available, and in fact I found out that the Adria line of motorhomes almost always have a gas oven.
Here is a good example of what we are looking for...
This particular unit is a 2009 24' motorhome with 66,000 kms (41,000 miles) on it. The asking price is €36,900 ($56,600 CAD, $41,600 USD).
European motorhomes tend to hold their value better than American ones. It could be partly because they are so much better built to begin with.
Anyhow, the plan is still quite far off. We hope to have something by next April or May, but of course with us that could happen sooner ...or later! In the meantime, I will continue to keep my eyes open, and you never know what might come along.
Here in Missoula there is a big RV dealer that has propane at $0.99 a gallon. For that price, you buy some whether you need it or not! (Propane is normally between $2.00 and $3.50 a gallon).
Not only that, but the same dealer offers free overnight parking with electricity and water... and a free dump station.
It would have been rude not to stop in and take advantage of that.
But, the propane sales are only open Tuesday to Saturday! Sherman's tank is at about 1/3, so it makes sense to hang around another day. We wanted to go and do some bike riding today anyhow, and it's not supposed to rain again until after lunch.
Sherman's view last night!
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Decent deal on this General Purpose Mechanic Tool Set.
And in Canada...
Check out Wheeling It blog. Nina did a fantastic blog about various European RVs when they moved to France.
ReplyDeleteKevin has already checked out her blog, thank you for the suggestion though. And actually everything that she wrote about on the various European RVs he pretty much knew from from the research he had already done plus what we had learned about them when we traveled in that small RV back in January and February of 2017 when we did the motorhome exchange.
DeleteI'm very excited to read about your European adventure. I would love to do that someday, just gotta get these kids through highschool!!
ReplyDeleteWell hopefully Kevin will be able to shed some light on things for you when we do actually get over to Europe to RV. Looks like you will still have a few years to go if you have to wait for the kids to get through high school but it is always fun to start the planning process. :-)
DeleteThe header pic reminds us of our trip after leaving Lytton, B.C.
ReplyDeleteYep, that is exactly the road that Kevin was meaning when he mentioned Hope, British Columbia. That whole road pretty much from Lytton down to Hope was very similar to this one. It was a lovely drive. :-)
DeleteWave to my brother and his family in Anaconda :)
ReplyDelete-Ben
We have to wave from here in Missoula though as we won't be passing through Anaconda. :-)
DeleteFollowing these plans with interest. We are still at the very beginnings of investigating shipping our Sierra truck camper unit in a container to Europe. We think we can adjust to the compact living arrangements and the smaller size appeals to us to access different locations. Definitely wouldn’t have an oven but we are ok with that. What do you see as the major deterrent to this approach?
ReplyDeleteWe think that the things you would need to be aware of in doing that would be the height of the camper truck and especially the weight and what you will carry in it. They are very strict about not being overweight. The two other major things you would come up against would be electricty as everything in Europe works on 220 volt system, so our suggestion would be to make sure you are totally set up for solar or do something that would protect your electrical appliances, especially the refrigerator from being damaged. The other thing would be the toilet. The campgrounds there are not set up for our North American RV toilets/black tanks so they do not have the same type of "dump station" that we are use to. They use cassette toilets there and normally the black water dump is higher to make it easy for "pouring". Also the campgrounds there only have one or two dump stations for the whole campground, not one at each site.
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