The Beast and the Toad

                                     Home is where you park it.
                                                Foster Huntington

For now, until we decide on a better name, we call our RV "The Beast" because it's big and impressive.  In the RV world, owners like to name their RV similar to naming a boat. We plan on naming the coach and have a short list of possibilities but would love to hear some of your suggestions; so feel free to comment with some names.

Our coach is a 2006 Newmar Essex, 45 foot diesel with 2 slides on the passenger side and 2 slides on the driver side. She’s an all electric coach which means we don’t use any propane. The floor of the coach is tiled up to the bedroom, which is more desirable. Many older coaches are all carpeted making it difficult to keep clean, especially when traveling with pets. There is carpet in the bedroom which has a king size bed. We have one bathroom with a sink and a second sink outside the bathroom for convenience. The coach has a spacious walk-in shower, a kitchen with a residential refrigerator and dishwasher, and a full-size washer and dryer. The furniture is all leather and we have 2 sofas, both of which have sleepers. I love the colors and cabinetry, it looks brighter and more feminine. Many of the RVs we looked at had darker toned wood and felt, masculine and cave like. I got rid of most of the previous owner’s stuff that they left, and did a little decorating with new rugs, pillows and blankets. When the slides are out we have all the space we need for our condo on wheels.   

Then there's the tow vehicle, the RV term is "the toad". It will be our way of getting around when the coach is parked at our RV site and hooked up; we will also name the toad. We learned not all vehicles can be towed 4 wheels down, which is our intention. We own 3 vehicles: the corvette, the Lexus and an old Durango we leave in Utah. The plan is to sell the Durango and the Corvette, Mike shed a few tears when the Corvette sold, we will keep the Lexus and buy a vehicle that we will us as our tow and go to vehicle for skiing. After extensive research on suitable tow vehicles we bought a 4 x 4 Jeep Grand Cherokee. Doing the math, the coach at 45 feet plus the 20 foot Jeep we are towing, brings our total length to 65 feet. We are now driving a coach that went from the size of a bus to the size of a Semi truck; that will be challenging. Mike will be the designated driver and is relaxed and confident with this role; I get nervous every time I think about driving the beast with the toad. My role will be navigator and trip planner and I should only have to do straight freeway driving, not much of the turning corners and parking which is more difficult. I will get out soon practicing driving the coach, if the coach and I survive, I will post and let everyone know how it went.

  

Our fur kids: Bowie and Cooper