In 2012 someone I work with purchased a Class A RV and began to discuss the travel options now available to him. To hear him speak of the destinations he was going to travel to, and the ability to essentially have his house with him this really sounded appealing to me. After hearing about his RV I began researching the various different types of RV, from Travel trailer to Class A.Researching RV’s is a very difficult and time consuming task, as there are what seems like thousands of different options. My goal was to narrow down our choices to the particular class of RV, and then narrow it down to the model of RV. I was able to eliminate travel trailers and 5th wheels just do to the fact I didn’t own a truck and really wanted to be able to use the RV while traveling. This lead me to the Class A, B, and C rv’s. While I like the easy of navigation with the Class B’s, they really are too small for our needs. The Class C’s are appealing but I always found they were too small in the bathroom areas. The showers are almost always smaller than what I required. This lead me to the Class A’s, which seemed to fit our needs well.
Now that I have narrowed it down to Class A RV’s I could begin looking for the specific model for us. With two kids who are really adults and my wife and I, we had to find something that would sleep four people comfortably and provide us with ample entertainment space. This proved to be rather difficult, and I spent several years casually looking for the “One”.
Through these years of looking our needs changed slightly. We still needed to sleep four adults, but now my wife requires the use of a wheelchair. Finding an RV that provides enough space for the wheelchair to navigate is quite difficult. There are specific RV’s for handicap people but they are all very expensive. These options can add twenty thousand dollars on to any RV. While it would be nice to have a handicap RV it wasn’t financially responsible to pay so much more than the non handicap version.
Finally I came across a model that I thought would work well for us, it is a Fleetwood Bounder 38V. This model comes with a full wall slide on the drivers side which really opens the floor up, providing a four to five foot walk path down the entire RV. This really seemed like it would work for us, so I found one relatively close to home and we set out to view the RV. The RV definitely met our expectations, as far as room and comfort. It is a used RV so some of the used aspects of it weren’t really appealing but overall we liked the RV. After some negotiations, where the dealer stated he would take care of the issues we had with the RV, we agreed to purchase it.
We are now the proud owners of a 2007 Fleetwood Bounder 38V, and couldn’t be more excited. I hope the reality of owning an RV meets the expectations I have. Only time will tell.