I started working on the shower modification today and took pictures of what it looked like before I started, for post modification comparison. The original shower “door” was actually a fancy rollup, very heavy duty plastic sheet. It operated like old-fashioned rollup window shades except it was mounted vertically. That is entirely removed with only a couple of scratches. It was mounted using induxtrial strength double sticky back tape or something very like it. I still have a bit of the residue to get cleaned off. I will be installing a Recreational Vehicle Offset Shower Rod which was delivered on Saturday in the mail. I’ll have to do some fabricating to make it fit, but it will give me an additional 12 inches — plus we’ll be using a shower current that is a lot more flexible than the original heavy duty plastic rollup screen that, with the top and bottom tracks, was pretty rigid when in place. The bathroom is inside the door on the left of the picture shown here.

Dogwood Tree Berries/Fruit

From our yard

November 2, 2007 at 2.07pm CDT
Camera: Pentax K10D
Exposure: 0.006 sec (1/180)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 300 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Museum of Automobiles
Composite of two images

Petit Jean State Park and Petit Jean Mountain

July 3, 2005
Camera: Kodak DX4530 Zoom

Arches National Park

September 24, 2007; 9:49 MDT
Camera: Pentax K10D
Exposure: 0.003 sec (1/350)
Aperture: f/8
Focal Length: 18 mm
ISO Speed: 100

March 4, 2008

11:49 AM CST

Camera: Pentax K10D
Exposure: 0.006 sec (1/180)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 300 mm
ISO Speed: 100

We took our new camper out for its first camping trip over the weekend. Overall it was quite a success.

We had reservations for the campground at  Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas. (see my Petit Jean State Park and Petit Jean Mountain page.)  We have camped there several times in the past.  It is a good place for setting up and checking everything out.  There is also a decent climb with curves on the way up from the west, which allowed us to see how it handled climbing as well as a curving descent on the east for checking out how it handles going down hill.

The western approach to Petit Jean was via Dardanelle and Arkansas Highways 155 and 154. This goes through flat bottom lands from the west until just before you get to the mountain. We were at the visitors center by a little after 7 PM on Friday evening and set up on our campsite by 7:30.

We knew that the weekend was going to be very hot and that most of the time we would either be sitting inside our little motorhome in the air conditioning or sitting outside sweltering. We did take several walks, but it was before air temperatures rose into the high 90s or after they had started dropping for the evening.

Our intention was to do this weekend without an additional vehicle. For most trips, we plan to tow a small car. If we were traveling day to day and stopping in a new place almost every day, we might be willing to do without the small car. However, our style of RVing is to travel to some point and then park the camper for several days while we do things in that area. With a small car, we can leave the camper at the campground while we explore.

One of the tasks to be accomplished this week or next is to get the car set up so that we can tow it. Unfortunately, it looks like that will be a bit more expensive than I thought it would be.

One thing that I did get done while we were there was to re-read a book that I thought I had left unread last summer. It had been long enough, though, since I read it, that it was still a good read. We also managed to watch two movies that we had taken along. We don’t watch television very much.

I don’t know what the outside temperature got up to on Saturday, but it got up to the high 80s in the front of the camper before I figured out that I could improve the airflow at the front by shutting off some of the airflow at the back. In our last RV, the registers at the end of the ducting couldn’t be closed to allow that, but they can be closed in this one.

Other than a speaker wire, we didn’t find any real problems with the camper, which is actually pretty unusual. Even though this is much smaller than our fifth wheel, we are finding that there are many RV features that we like better in this camper than the equivalent in the old one.

One thing that isn’t better than the old camper is shower space. I’m a big guy and the shower space as it stands now is inadequate, but I have a modification in the works that should alleviate that problem.

One of the things we really liked about the floor plan is that the driver and passenger seats pivot so that they can be used for seating in the “lounge” area of the camper.  The Navion IQ doesn’t have a slide, but the seats rotating really opens up the space making up for the additional space created by a slide.

There are plenty of cabinets in our IQ floor plan.  The manufacturer touts the curved design as European in style.  I guess I don’t really know what that means, but I like it.  The galley sink and cooktop both have hinged glass covers over them that increase the available counter space when they’re not in use.  The galley faucet is hinged and is raised for use when the sink cover is open.

The dinette at the back of the coach folds down into a what seems to be a fairly comfortable bed, though we have yet to try it for a night of camping.  The dinette table slides to either side and is lifted out of the way and stored under neath when the dinnette is made up for a bed.

There is a nice entertainment system.  The TV can be oriented to face to the rear or to the front.

More images of the inside can be seen in in my Navion IQ set on Flickr.

I’m sure that we will be using this RV a lot more than our old one.

Yesterday, we picked up our new Navion IQ.

The IQ is a class C motorhome, built by Itasca, a division of Winnebago.  It’s built on a Dodge Sprinter chassis and has a Mercedes-Benz diesel engine.

This is quite a a change from our previous camper.  We traded in a 31′6″ high profile fifth wheel.  We had found that the fifth wheel was just not suited for the kind of camping that we are interested in and that it would not fit in many of the campgrounds we would like to go to.

It will certainly require some adjustments. We carried a lot of stuff in the fifth wheel that we really didn’t need because we had the room and we had adequate margin to our weight limit.  In our new camper, we’ve got a lot of margin to the weight limits, too, but there is a lot less room for storing things.  There will be much more of a focus in only taking the things along that we really will be using or that we need,

Our first shake-down trip will likely be this next weekend.  We’re going to go for a night or two at a nearby state park.  We’d like to go for longer, but my schedule doesn’t allow it for the next few weeks.  However, the contract job I am working on will be over in about 6 weeks and then I’ll be back to the retired life again.

Our first relatively long distance trip will be to Wisconsin, where our youngest daughter and her family lives.  We’ll probably take a few days to get there, stay a week or so, and then take a few tays to meander back home.

We still have a few things to get in order before we take off on that trip.  We need to get our CRV set up for towing.  I’m going to have to come up with some sort of modified shower curtain so I’ll be able to use the shower — I’m a big guy and the shower is not quite big enough with the installed “door.”

Buffalo National River, Arkansas

Composite of images taken on November 7, 2005, with a Kodak DX4530 Zoom

Henry’s Fork of the Snake River, Idaho

Mesa Falls Recreation Area

September 16, 2007 at 10.31am MDT