When I first started this site in 2008, my wife and I had three younger kids and a real desire to hit the road full-time. Well life did throw a few curve balls as it always does and now we are only part-time RVers. Along the way though, we’ve learnt a lot. We went from just having a dream to start living that dream.

Back in 2008, the posts on the site really focused on what type of RV should we consider? Should it be a motorhome, or something we pull behind a vehicle? At the time, all we had was lots of desire to go and a trusty tent. It served us well, but we could also see the glaring problems with that setup.

coachmen miradaWhen in 2012, after a terribly wet vacation the year before, we found a class a motor home that we loved and we could work into our budget! We found ourselves a well kept 2001 Coachmen Mirada for sale. After checking it out from top to bottom, we signed the bottom line. It was a very good start for us for a number of reasons. First, it was in good shape, for how much we paid for it. And we didn’t pay so much that we could have buyer’s remorse with the first issues that came out. You can read more about it here.

There were problems with the Mirada, because nobody sells something unless there are negative things on the go. The big things though, the engine, frame and water proofing were in tip top shape, so no big issues.

We’ve really enjoyed the Mirada and continue to enjoy it. One thing we wished that we would have afforded when we purchased was the ability to find a great used unit with slides. The Mirada, isn’t a slide unit. In retrospect though, the first few years of slide units were terribly troublesome, so maybe it’s better this way. Slides would have helped though.

It’s now 2015 that I write this article and an interesting thing has happened that is sad but good too. Our two older children have grown up on us! They still like to take vacations with us, but not as much as years past. That has left us as partial empty-nesters. We still have our youngest and it has made rving much easier. The Mirada has the ease of setting up a bed in front quickly. When we first used the motorhome, we had one child on the fold down couch, one on the fold down table and the youngest on a foam cushion on the floor between them. Needless to say, it made it a tight squeeze.

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We still loved it though, and the upgrade from tenting was incredible! One question that I’m asked often is, ‘Is it more expensive than just tenting?’. Sure it is more expensive but the experience is much, much better. A good example is we camped the may long weekend one year with our tent. We had a terrible time! It got really cool in the middle of the night because of a cool winter wind that came up and in the morning, I was packing to leave.

With the motorhome, the really big expenses are gas and monthly payments on it. If you consider the year before we purchased and we were still tenting though, we paid a premium to eat in restaurants and to take a hotel room for two nights, because of the foul weather. That took our vacation funds and reduced it from two weeks to just over 8 days.

One thing we made sure to do because we have a motorhome, is that we’ve got Good Sam’s Club roadside assistance. (I totally recommend Good Sam’s Club!) The bus is in good shape and the tires had great rubber on them, so all in all gas was the biggest issue. When a motorhome only gets 10mpg, it can go through gas pretty quickly.

Today, we still love to RV and have learnt a lot about RVing as a whole. it’s one thing to dream about it and another to do it. We still love our original Mirada and use it quite a bit. I actually wish we had the ability to use it more! I don’t regret getting it at all. I just wish it was paid off!

With that I felt it was important to make some big changes with ‘Best RV Living’. With the update it now is found under it’s new name, ‘Rv Dreams’. It better fits where we are and how we can best serve you, our viewers. I’m hoping to really increase the number of videos and tutorials on the site to better serve you as well. We continue to learn and we hope that we can help you out too.