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Our adventure really started in January of 2017. We had been talking about a great North American road trip for awhile and Beau had been researching different kinds of vehicles to do it in. Our options ranged from converting a bus, converting a step van, a class C RV or a class A RV. We knew we didn’t want anything too big but we also wanted something larger than a VW camper van (been there done that). We looked at several different options and settled on a 25′ Class A RV. She is a 1994 Safari Trek with an Isuzu diesel engine and only 50,000 miles. We named her Izzy.
We spent the next 16 months completely updating the inside taking her from dark wood, medical grade green, peeling sticky tile to sleek grey, new counters, and faux wood vinyl plank. We promise we will have many posts about all the work we did for now, just know a lot of love, blood, sweat, tears and swears (mostly Diane’s) went into making our rig our home.
We quit our engineering jobs at the end of April 2018 and spent the next 2 weeks tirelessly working to finish the RV, sell our worldly possessions and pack those that we were keeping into a 6’x10′ trailer, along with Beau’s motorcycle. Miraculously we did it. We were on a bit of a tight schedule as Diane needed to be in Ottawa, ON on May 23rd to catch a flight to BC for her grandmother’s 85th birthday. A special event Diane couldn’t miss.
We convoyed from Savannah, GA up to Ottawa, ON over 4 days and 1700 km; Izzy pulling the trailer, our little Corolla packed with our bikes on the back. We left late on May 17th and arrived the evening of May 20th. It was nerve wracking and slow to say the least. We were not without incident either, we lost the fridge panel off the side of the RV, the windshield wipers weren’t working and at some point Beau thought the RV was making a funny noise. We stayed at one rest stop (even though we weren’t suppose to) and a couple of campgrounds along the way.
We forgot to mention we are also doing this with our cat, Monty. He is a 10 year old, 15 lbs, male ginger tabby with plenty of attitude. He was never leash trained him and at this point its a bit of a lost cause. We’ve tried it again along our trip and he just flops over once outside or if he gets startled he is able to weasel out of it. In the end, we just started letting him out at the campgrounds in spite of their pets on leash policies.
After a week in BC, Diane met up with Beau again in Ottawa. He had spent his week finishing off a few things we didn’t get to and making any required repairs. We were then able to head north to Diane’s family cottage to in Huntsville, ON. We dropped off the trailer and were freed from our worldly possessions. This blog aims to capture our travels and experiences and share them with you.
We hope you enjoy what we have in store for you as we take our Life on Route!
