Thor Forums

[WD3D]

After lusting at the thought of having an RV at our disposal for some time, my wife and I got serious about looking some months ago (and it doesn't help that a Camping World is just down the road that we drive by all the time). She likes to camp (like in a tent), I consider roughing it to not having a coffee maker in my room... an RV seemed to be the perfect compromise! Plus, attending music festivals I can now stay onsite and get the full experience rather than running off to some hotel!

We initially focused on trailers... and spent months researching, looking at trailers, picking out the features that we thought important and narrowing down our search and thought... hey we should rent a trailer and do a test run. That trip alone convinced me to abandon the concept of a towable unit in favor of a driveable unit... so the search changed from trailer to Class C.

We went in with the thought it would really be us 2 plus a dog almost all of the time but would like the ability to sleep 4 should the need arise. I had kind of put 24' as a max length (which may, in retrospect, been more of something I determined when focusing on a towable trailer). So... we spent weekends perusing the lots of local RV dealers (some more local than others... some not very local at all), to get a chance to see the different options, layouts, etc... and, as luck would have it, went last weekend to our local Camping World who had a "almost new" 2019 Freedom Elite 30FE (3k on the odometer) with some mods the prior owner had so graciously done (loved the custom leather recliners they put in lieu of the couch). No matter what I did, I kept coming back to this unit even though it was way larger than planned, had more room/sleeping space than we were targeting and had a silly number of TVs and other amenities that weren't really high on the priority list... but what a tremendous value!

So, tomorrow I take delivery of said unit... all 32 ft of her. And we're off on our first adventure tomorrow night.

I want to thank everyone for the posts and insights we gained from these boards... while there are certainly a good deal of issues raised, there are far more nuggets of wisdom here that can only be gained by experience and I thank you all for sharing yours!

Looking forward to our RV experience and continuing to benefit from these boards and the collective experience of you all.

Bill and Lorraine