To RV or to not RV? A Follow Up
A little while ago I put in a post called ‘To RV or to not RV?’ the essence of which was that I actually remembered to ask God what he reckoned would be the best way for us to do this travel thing around Australia. The following is a condensed excerpt from the first post -
So I asked God, “What would be the best vehicle for us to have - an RV or a caravan we could tow with our “new” car? I got this picture in my head of a big red 4 wheel drive towing one of those big off road caravans - it was big, on a rocky outcrop somewhere and it looked good! I also thought, ‘if we are in a Bus-RV, or even in our car and a caravan, we will NOT be able to go to some of the wild, out of the way, hard to get to places we’d like really like to go to - like being able to drive along the beach.’
The idea of having the 4 wheel drive (although not a Ford Territory as I mentioned in the linked post) towing an off-road caravan really appealed to me. It resonated. I loved it. And I was really excited about it. That is until reality kicked in when we went and had a look. Mind you, we only looked at one!! Checking this kinda thing out is always tricksy with Tim in tow - we only have a limited amount of time to check things out as much as we can before the CFS makes its presence felt and we have to hightail it out of there before Tim collapses in a heap!
We checked out some Supreme Caravans at a local dealer as they offered a range of vans - regular, semi off-road, off-road & complete indulgence - and the only one they had in stock that would suit our needs was a Supreme Territory semi off-road, which is kinda what I thought too after checking out their website. My initial impression was like, “on the outside this is really big and I’m gonna have to be towing it! On the inside this is really nice, but boy is it small! I reckon it would be good for a couple of months away, but six months to a year!?”
It was really nice inside, simple and stylish - it even had bunks, which the boys loved, but still, sleeping five would be interesting! Everything is just small and compact, smaller and compacter than I was envisioning! And in my humble opinion, the Supreme Territory was rather lacking in storage space. The other major downside to it was the fact that it was a double bed! Tim is 6 foot and his feet just hang over the edge of anything smaller than a queen! When we questioned the sales rep he told us it was a queen!! Hmmm. Perhaps they have smaller queens for caravans?!
One thing’s for certain, whatever we have has to have a queen size bed - we’ve done holidays in doubles and Tim just can’t sleep in them which just isn’t a good thing - and for him to sleep in a double for six months to a year? Agh…no! And the boys didn’t like it not having its own toilet and shower - although it did have facility for an outdoor shower, and I can honestly say, that would be fun, but I could see the novelty quite possibly wearing off not too long into the trip. However, we’ve been ‘picking the brains’ of others and they have said that there are many, many places we can stop as we travel to take showers. I know that if we went in something as “small” as the Territory (it’s about 18 foot!), then we’d have to be really, really selective about the stuff we take - you know, 1 pot instead of 2, less clothes, less games, less art supplies, less books…and that’s gonna be hard, but, I did think and still do think, we can do this, it’s all just a part of the adventure, it’s just gonna be harder than in something bigger like one of those converted coach RV’s. But then again, I’ve just got in contact with another family who are doing the same thing for similar reasons and they have five kids in a caravan!! It’s a 24 footer, but still, it’s gonna get mighty cozy at times 
The other thing that kinda put me off was the sales rep who wasn’t all that helpful; I mean he was helpful, but he’d assessed us as ‘tyre kickers’ with their heads in the clouds, and so wasn’t too interested in being overly helpful. Like I said, he was helpful, he just didn’t go that extra mile, so I don’t know if I’d go back to his yard, even if we did decide to go the Supreme Territory Caravan. He also said that Supreme don’t make many caravans with bunks - but if we do the caravan thing it has to sleep five. I’ve been told that three bunk caravans are hard to find, something about the ‘grey army’???
Recently some other friends of ours bought themselves a caravan - they’re moving up to Queensland for work and apparently the housing prices up there are just ridiculous. Another friend who’s recently moved to Townsville (also in Queensland) was looking at houses up there - for $300,000 you could get yourself a hovel with a bathroom and shower open to the world! She said they’re already fighting off the snakes with a stick, if you lived in that you’d be showering with toads and snakes and all sorts of things! $300,000 down here in Vic can buy you a pretty decent box if you look in the right areas! Anyway, that was a bit of an aside, she said, avoid the Jayco, they are known as “Junko” - the bit that tows the van doesn’t go all the way down to the axle, so it isn’t strong enough. Anyway, that’s just here-say as far as we are concerned as we haven’t even looked at Jayco caravans.
At this stage we still don’t know what we are going in and if our current financial status does not change then…well…who knows!!! We are going though, we’ve talked about it as a couple, as a family and most importantly with God and we know that whatever our situation we need to take that step of faith and go. God has called us out to take this journey and rediscover him and the life he has for us and do what he has called us to do. So, we are going on this great adventure, even if all we have is a trailer and a tent! Living by faith - awesome, scary, mindblowing, character building and all the time bringing us closer and closer to our God.
So what do we do now? We work out what we need and want in an RV; we work out what we need and want in a 4 wheel drive (LandCruiser is what people are recommending) & off road van; we work out what we need and want in a tent. I want a tent anyway regardless of how we are travelling because I want the option of having extra space if we need/want it AND I want to be able to go camping in places we can’t get to with an RV or caravan. This means going to Ray’s Outdoors and other camping supply places, checking out more caravan websites and showrooms, checking out more RV websites and showrooms and going to LeisureFest again, this time in Bendigo.
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