2015 Plans & Two New Purchases for the RV

We’ve been hanging around the Florida panhandle for the past few months, and as much as we love it, we’re getting the itch to roll. We’ve got some great stuff planned for the next several months and I’m really excited about it! The past two summers, we traveled west and had an amazing time. We visited 17 states and in particular really fell in love with Oregon, Montana, and Colorado. We love the west, but this summer we decided to do something different. Our good friends Nancy & Betsy of RVaGoGo have spent several summers in Maine, and they invited us to tag along with them this year. So we are heading to the northeast!

We’ll be starting out with a visit to the ever popular Cedar Key, which we’ve heard alot about from our friends Chris & Cherie of Technomadia, among others, who have spent a lot of time there. From there we’ll head east, and slowly start working our way up the coast towards Maine. We’ve got stops planned in Jekyll Island, Beaufort, Charleston, DC, Delaware, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. We’ll also head inland a bit for a Freightliner check-up in Gaffney, SC and to visit Deas’s brother and family in Virginia. We’ll spend several weeks in Maine, and we’re also planning a few weeks in Nova Scotia. I’m so excited about all of this and also that we’ll be hanging out with good friends for a good portion of the summer.

Over the past couple of months we made a couple of new purchases for the RV. One was a new mattress. We have a king-side bed, and we were still using the two twin mattresses that came with the RV, and they weren’t the best quality. Deas felt like his back was starting to hurt, and so I started searching for a new one. Since I knew a new mattress would need to come in through our front door, I assumed our best option would be to buy two more twin mattresses. Well, as most RVers know, RV beds are sized slightly differently from stand size mattress. I searched and searched online, but I couldn’t find two twin mattresses that were the same exact size as the ones we had on the RV. In frustration, I turned to my old trusty standby for online shopping – Amazon.com. I didn’t really expect to find anything, but since I’d run out of options, I typed in “RV King mattress.” And lo and behold, once again Amazon came through. The very first option listed was the DynastyMattress Cool Breeze 12-Inch Gel Memory Foam Mattress. We needed a 76×80 mattress, and the one described as “RV King” was those exact dimensions. It was available on Amazon Prime, which meant 2-day free delivery, and the price was reasonable – $580. I was still skeptical, but since there were over 700 positive reviews, we decided to give it a try.

We were staying at Grayton Beach State Park at the time, and we warned the rangers that we would be receiving a very, large 80 pound package in the next couple of days. When it was delivered, Deas picked it up at the ranger office, and they were nice enough to help him load it into the car. It’s delivered shrink-wrapped so it was small enough to get through the RV door pretty easily. We brought it into the bedroom, removed the packaging, and sure enough it was a perfect fit! The reviews had warned us that it would have a fairly strong odor for a few days, and they were right. We were prepared for this and had kept the two twin mattresses, so we decided to just sleep on the twin mattress in the living room for the first few days. Of course, RV living rooms aren’t exactly spacious, and as it turned out we couldn’t fit both mattresses on the floor side by side. So we lowered the dinette table, put one of the mattresses there, and, well, I slept on the dining room table for a couple of nights. I’m not gonna lie – it kind of sucked. But the dogs didn’t seem to mind at all.

Finally after a few nights the smell had dissipated, we donated the twin mattresses to a thrift store, and we spent the first night on our new mattresses. And we LOVE it! It is absolutely the most comfortable mattress we’ve ever had. We’ve had it for 4 months, and we still love it. So if you’re in the market for a new RV mattress (or any mattress for that matter), I would highly recommend it! (Side note: as of right now Amazon does not have the exact size mattress that we got listed on their site. But their inventory does fluctuate, so if that’s the size you want, just keep checking back.)

The other new thing we purchased (also from Amazon) is the Dyson Rechargeable Vacuum. With 3 dogs, I do a LOT of vacuuming. We had a Dyson vacuum cleaner in our house before we RVed, and I loved it. But it was way too big to bring on the RV. At first I didn’t want to shell out the bucks for the Dyson Rechargeable, so I got a Eureka canister vacuum. It worked okay, but it didn’t have a beater bar. So it was basically worthless on the carpets. Then I got a Eureka hand-held, which did much better on the carpet, but I still had to use the canister for the non-carpeted floors. Both vacuums stored easily enough under the bed, but it was kind of a pain to have to switch back and forth between the two. Also, neither one had the awesome suction power of the Dyson. So when Black Thursday deals came out in November and Amazon had the Dyson Rechargeable for half-off, I bit the bullet and ordered it. And I’m so glad I did! It works awesome on both the carpet and the hard floors. It tucks neatly under the mattress overhang of the bed (and there’s a plug right there), so I don’t have to lift up the bed each time I want to use it. I use the “high power” setting every time I use it, which supposedly means it only has 9 minutes of run time. However, RVs aren’t big so I’m able to get all the vacuuming done and so far, I’ve never run out of power.

Right now we’re in Georgia visiting my family for a couple of weeks, and then the wheels will start rolling east in mid-March! See you on the road!