Clairification of Terms

Ok, so apparently there's been some confusion about how many trailers and RVs we're sporting.  In my mind, it all makes sense, but then again, it's my life.  So, for those of you living outside my mind, here goes:

The original "RV", the one we remodeled is a motor home. We no longer live in it, and we left it in CA.  Here's a picture of that:

 

We moved into a 27' Travel Trailer (also technically an "RV"), and bought a diesel truck to pull it. We chose to do this so we could run on veggie oil, and avoid paying $5/ gallon of fuel our entire way across the country. Here's a picture of that:

We have that big black truck.  The Hot Contractor converted it to run on vegetable oil.  We get used oil from restaurants for free, and run on it.  It's wonderful.  We had a hard time finding it while we were still in CA (evidently lots of people in CA do the veggie oil thing, and all the restaurants seem to have "their guy" who comes and picks up their oil.  But now that we're in Podunk Nowhere, we're not having a hard time AT ALL!). We sold all our other vehicles. Here's a picture of the truck:

Then there's another trailer. I think this might be where the confusion comes in.  That flatbed that The Hot Contractor converted to a cargo trailer (it once was a travel trailer in it's past life, but we won't talk about that because that's just confusing!) is the other one.  We left it in CA with all our stuff, and The Hot Contractor will drive out to pick it up in July.  We did this because 1) we wanted to keep the trailer for The Hot Contractor's business, and 2) it was the most cost-efficient way to get all our stuff across the country....running on free fuel and not renting a vehicle to transport our stuff.  It will mean being away from my darling husband for two.whole.weeks (sniff, sniff).  Let's not talk about that.

Here's a picture of the flatbed-turned-cargo-trailer:

Before:

After:

OK, make sense?  I hope so.

New Plans!

For the last few weeks, The Hot Contractor and I have been watching gas prices rise, listening to some economists we follow predict that gas will reach $5/ gallon in the next few months, and crunching the numbers on our trip budget. It didn't all add up.

We decided to buy a travel trailer and a diesel truck which we can convert to veggie oil, and sell our motor home. I know, sad to say goodbye to her. After remodeling her, birthing my son in her, and enjoying her cute coziness, it is hard. But we will be ok. ;-)

So last weekend we got a travel trailer and moved into it. And this week we decided on a truck to buy, and are currently in Bakersfield, CA (AKA "the armpit" of California), picking up our new truck. The new travel trailer is not so cute, but it "has good bones" (as my Hot Contractor likes to say), and we are loving the layout (like the dining room table we can all sit down at). We may paint it and fix up a little at some point, but there's no time to do it now.

The Hot Contractor has been researching biodiesel conversion, and learning a ton. We're super excited about using vegetable oil from restaurants to fuel our vehicle.

This plan should allow us to not be held back by the rising fuel costs, and to have a little more play, and a lot less work while on the road. We always like that!

And for an added bonus, this truck holds all five of us (plus our dog Sugar), and will be a great work truck for The Hot Contractor once we get to our destination. We know someone who traveled the country in a converted motor home for months, and spent less than $200 on fuel. I think the fuel cost savings we are going to experience will be amazing.

Our current plan is to leave Santa Cruz in four weeks, go back to Oroville and pack up our belongings for a week, then head out. We will head to Idaho for a couple weeks, after visiting some friends in Southern California.

Can't wait!