After 3+ years of looking at RVs, discussing what we thought were “requirements” and “nice to haves”, hemming and hawing over space and size and gas vs. diesel, we finally pulled the trigger.  We bought a cherry Winnebago Chieftain 33.

She has four Beds, 1 single above drivers chairs, Couch folds out for two people, dinette folds down for another bed and a rear master bedroom. It has always been covered, has an excellent Onan generator with low hours (~380hrs) and a 454 Chevy Engine on Chevy P30 Chassis.  She has an Air Ride rear suspension, 6000 lb tow hitch.  She also has a complete Solar System, 525watts worth of panels with a 3000 watt inverter. Basically we can run all of our small appliances without turning on the generator.   She has a brand new refrigerator, all new LED lighting throughout, a new toilet, with swirl flush  (I don’t know what that means…. but I understand it’s a good thing) as well as a new water pump, new awning (which accidentally fell off on Scott’s maiden voyage across the country), new back camera and a new RV cover.

The oil has been changed at least once a year regardless of mileage.  She has a new carburetor, new fan clutch and there were “recent upgrades to the transmission” (again, great but I’m clueless).  Knowing next to nothing about engines, I don’t know if any of that indicates that it does, in fact, take gas.  No idea what the mileage is on it…. Scott will know.

She was listed for $11k in California.  Scott was able to get a bit of a deal and he drove off the property at $9.5k.  That’s in part because the owner had bets with his friends on whether Scott was a real person.  Apparently during the initial conversation when Scott proudly said he lived in Bogota, Colombia, there was some concern that he was actually a Nigerian engaged in some sort of scam.  The owner won the bet with his buddies that Scott was real and was flying in to see it, so we got a discount. Thanks for one more thing Colombia!!

She has all the must have’s for us.  She has character (#1 priority for me) and she runs really well (#1 priority for Scott).  She’s got space for plenty of people to sleep.  She’s got big tanks so we can go boondocking more than staying in parks.  Finally, she didn’t break the budget (in fact, it’s less than half of the original budget {thank you Grammie Latlippe!!}).

This is happening!  *giddy*