Well the day finally arrived for us to pick up our own RV from Cruise America

in Phoenix 🙂  But first how did we get to that position?

Having dreamed about reducing the work load  from our holiday rental business in Andalucia Spain, we had decided to shorten our rental period in order to have some serious relaxation and time for ourselves as we were getting older.

We then found that if we wanted to travel to the US it started to have implications on travel insurance once we reached 65, so the US it was to be at first! Then loving the outdoors away from it all ( we lived in a valley that only had a goat farm below and a rare occasion to even see a car during a week period!) the idea of the freedom of travel in a RV appealed to us so we could have wanderlust and the freedom to travel for long periods.

Starting the search for an RV and all that this entails being a European caused a lot of research, but enjoyable at the same time! As we could only get away during he Winter months at first this narrowed down where we would go to the South due to the weather. A lot of time was also spent checking monthly weather patterns for the last 10 years! In the end we decided that an ex-rental model was going to be ideal for us and a family size of 6-7 people would be ideal for the 2 of us!

Cruise America had lots of 4 year rentals all the time available and these were generally 145,000 + miles, but refurbishment had been carried out for selling. They also offered a refund on the price of a rental and your flights in the US if you had to travel to pick up your unit. We had thought that we would rent to make sure we were happy and then pick up a refurbished RV direct off their forecourt as they always had so many on sale, at the end of the rental period with just the paperwork to sort.

We contacted the office and checked that all the offers were available and asked lots of questions about the refurbishment about a year before our intended rental. Whilst watching the prices online from their web site we then went ahead and booked a 28A RV fro rental from their Orlando office and booked our flight tickets. Whilst the plan had been to start in Florida and then drive across the panhandle to Louisiana we kept our options open by checking other locations of sale.

Then came the unexpected! We found out that RV’s are not available direct off the forecourt, but you select your RV on the forecourt and then they refurbish it taking about 6 weeks! So all our plans to continue our holiday were scuppered! However from Dave in their Phoenix office we were offered a 27G (not on their web site with lots of info for sale as only new a few years before and they had not started selling them) Having received photos, layout etc of the model we decided that this was the one for us as it had the newer design curved front roof, slightly narrower and what we though was a better layout for 2 – it was rental for 6 people. On top of that the mileage was a lot lower at only 95000 miles. 🙂  It was however ready for collection a month before we arrived in the US.  In order to proceed it meant that we had to buy unseen – we used a surveyor to check for us. It was also confirmed that we could have the rental cost of of Florida 2 week rental discounted from the price and the cost of our 2 flight tickets from Orlando to Phoenix as they just came within the offer allowance. So 2 happy people had their wonderful Florida holiday and then flew to Phoenix. There was a lot of paperwork to sort of course and information on this is on another page.

As we were going to pick up our own RV we did not rent from Cruise America Orlando all the extras you need – bedding, cutlery etc but purchased in Orland to take with us. What a pleasant surprise we had found that Southwest Airlines allowed 2 suitcases per person in the ticket, and boy were they full! We had also spent a lot of time deciding what we would need to kit out our RV and ordered it online for delivery to Cruise America Phoenix. We can not say how helpful Dave there was in receiving this and and many other things as well. We think in the end they were rather amused at the amount of stuff that turned up and he kept in his office for safe keeping!

We flew into Phoenix the evening before and arrived at the Cruise America office the next morning full of enthusiasm and desperate to be away on our travels. Dave showed us the RV and allowed us to check over it to see if we had any problems and told us to come back again if there was. The only thing that needed sorting was the side door lock alignment and we were told to go and buy a water pressure reducer for shore water as some places had too high a pressure.

Even after our parcel deliveries we still had lots to buy, including picking up our 150 cc Rowdy and rack for the back of the RV. This meant a long day driving around the Phoenix area in heavy traffic which was not the best way to drive a newer bigger vehicle for the first time. That night we ended up at Thousand Island place in Phoenix with a free night from Cruise America (not our sort of place and unimpressed), then the next night at a milking farm before finally finishing all that shopping! The first weekend was the out at Desert Park which was wonderful and a quick return to Cruise America on the Monday to fix the radio before going off on our dreams.