Winding Down...

The RV season ended with our final excursion to Door County where we stayed in Ellison Bay at the Wagon Trail Campground. However, that trip only solidified our satisfaction of the overall RV experience. What may have seemed like a quasi-impulse purchase in June reconciled to a full affirmation that we enjoyed the travel and adventure that fed our wanderlust. In fact, we had only scratched the surface and looked forward to future excursions.

We also ended the season with a few lessons-learned:

* Camping World sucks and we would never buy another RV from that place.

* We realized our camper was too small.

* Power tongue-lift is more than a luxury, it is an almost-necessity.

* Storage space reigns supreme --- there is no such thing as too little.

* Our Toyota Sequoia -- although a great vehicle, its 7100lb towing capacity lacked the power to safely pull anything larger than our 21' Jayco.

So, as we considered what we wanted our RV experience to entail, the reality was that we would likely need to replace both camper and vehicle -- a purchase even more expensive than we were comfortable making. Coming to terms with that reality afforded the luxury of researching everything-RVs in an effort to make an eventual purchase in a much more informed and deliberate manner than with the Jayco. Amy still calls the Jayco an "impulse buy," although it was more of a misinformed buy than anything else, I think. Of course, I put most of that onto newbie ignorance on our part and one part predatory salesmanship at Camping World. In all fairness to the Jayco, we didn't know what we didn't know at the time and that 21' camper allowed us to learn and make some wonderful memories during the Covid-19 summer. But we realized the finer elements of what would have made our summer trips more enjoyable, so we kept a running list of those in an effort to not compromise on some creature comforts and mechanical luxuries. But which RV should we consider?