Day: February 28, 2009

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No Slide-Out For Me

I was speaking with a neighbour as we shared the hot tub tonight and she mentioned that I had no slide out, seeming very puzzled by the fact.

Miranda being a slide-out free RV was a deliberate choice on my part. One of the very first things I knew when I was searching for a motorhome was that it would not have slide-outs, which pretty much knocked class As out of the running. There were several reasons for this:

Weight

Slide-outs dramatically reduce an RV’s carrying capacity, and this is especially evident with class Cs. One of my readers, Croft, has a rig that is very comparable to Miranda–same engine, same chassis, same length. But he has a slide-out and fully half Miranda’s carrying capacity! I’m full-timing so having as much carrying capacity as possible is much more important than having more floor space.

Mechanics

Slide-outs are just one more thing to maintain, one more thing that can leak or break, and they weaken the overall chassis. Again, a few more feet of floor space isn’t worth the potential hassle.

Weather

Slide-outs are the least insulated part of an RV. Since I knew there was a chance I’d be using my RV in extremely inclement (read very wintery) weather, not having a slide-out meant that there was one less drafty place in the rig. I was also concerned that if I parked somewhere for the winter, the weather would damage the slide-out.

Convenience

I didn’t want for every stop to be cause for the interminable debate: “Slide-out in or out tonight?” I wanted to be able to park at a Walmart and have full access to my home. In a park, I didn’t want my slide-out window to be two inches from my neighbour’s slide-out window.

Having visited a lot of RVs with slide-outs, the only real advantage they seem to provide is floor space. That’s useful if you’re two or more people sharing a rig since it would be easier to contour each other, but as a sole RVer they just don’t seem to be worth the potential headache.

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Adopting a New Grocery Chain

One of the things I found very difficult in my cross-country RV journey was figuring out which grocery stores to frequent. Grocery prices out here are a lot higher than they were in Gatineau/Ottawa and every grocery store I visited left me feeling rather ill with sticker shock. I learned very quickly that Safeway, a major chain out west, is the worst price offender and I now avoid it at all costs.

Oliver had two supermarkets, Supervalu which was neither super nor offered any value for the dollar, and Buy-Low, a discount store with decent prices (for a small town), if poor selection. It was in my infrequent trips to Penticton that I discovered Save-on-Foods. Their prices were also very high, but if you join their (free) discount club and shop wisely, you can get very, very good deals. Since I moved to south Surrey, I’ve been alternating between the nearest S-o-F and the Super Walmart, which has a huge grocery section. Walmart is the place to go to get basic groceries, but it’s at Save-on-Foods that I find the little luxury items that make grocery shopping so much fun:

Two of my favourite food groups in one (Guinness cheddar!!!)

Two of my favourite food groups in one (Guinness cheddar!!!)

On a recent shopping trip, the cashier took a moment to better explain the rewards program to me and let me know that there is a scanner near the door that prints out personalized coupons. The more you use your card and shop at Save-on-Foods, the better the coupon selector becomes at offering you bonuses you will use. Today, I got a handful of coupons for products I buy almost every week and which were on sale, offering me a double discount!

I like that the discount card can be used at other businesses, like Chevron gas.

Some RVers have written in their own blogs that one of the things they dislike about RVing is having to relearn how to grocery shop at every new town, but I find that half the fun of traveling is scoping out the local grocery store for products you don’t have ‘back home.’