Our goal is to explore all 48 continental US states before re-settling in Seattle, unless we find another place that we just can’t live without. After selling our house, Humz’s parents were kind enough to let us park the van in their driveway and bum off their power/water/indoor plumbing/laundry/wifi/general hospitality as we eased into vanlife. They didn’t really have a choice; we just kind of showed up and wouldn’t leave until we were able to furnish the van and tie up the loose ends with the entire moving process. Our first night sleeping in the Travato was in their driveway, and a sleepless night it was.
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Travato Training Camp
Lets not get ahead of ourselves. You really think the RV dealer would let us just roll on out of their lot with Megatron McMegaVan? I think not! We first had Travato-Training-Camp (TTC) as I like to call it, a 2-hour training session at the dealer where they teach you what every nob, button, and sensor does, and of course what’s on everyone’s mind: how to dump your black water tank. I took extensive notes and video and the Travato-Training-Camp Teacher was kind enough to answer all of my questions, in which I had many.…."How likely is it that I will have to touch poop”…
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Out With the (S)Old
It goes like this when you’re downsizing, or at least this is how it went for us. We accepted an offer on our stationary house, and in-between that and the closing date we had a 60 day window to purchase the van since it is apparently difficult to get an RV loan if you’re using it as a primary residence. Loan companies like to see that you have a primary residence so they know where to find you if they have to come after you for their money. So its an ultimate catch-22 of needing the house to get the RV loan, but needing an RV loan because we still had the mortgage on the house.
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Van Demands
In order to figure out what we really wanted we made a priority list. My top 2 demands were that there must be a bathroom and a shower on board….and Humz basically said he would live out of a cardboard box on wheels. We did however both agree that it had to be safe for our beloved fur-child, Lucy, and we would also have to work out a decent wifi situation. (But that would have to come later.) I also refused to have a composting or cassette toilet, and Humz would of course have to deal with all of the dumping.
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