RV Origin Story

Before there was a Ciaowagen, there was another Smith family RV, one with no name. Our experience in the RV-With-No-Name led, years later, to our decision to purchase the Ciaowagen and spend time traveling around North America. Some of you have heard this story before. For those of you who haven't...

It was early summer 2002. Doug had been laid off from the company where he'd worked for 24 years. He'd gotten enough severance pay that he did not need to go back to work immediately. "Hey," he said to Jeannette, "we've never done the family road trip across America, and now is the time!"

We looked into renting RVs, but even back in 2002 that was an expensive proposition - $100/day plus mileage. We quickly decided that was not going to work for a planned two-month excursion. On a lark, we decided to consult the Classified section in our paper copy of the Washington Post (this tells you how long ago this was). We found an RV for sale for $8,500. It was 17 years old, and had 137,000 miles on it. We contacted the sellers, went to see it, said "Hey, looks OK to us" (we had done no research on RVs), bought it, and brought it home.

It was a 1985 Fleetwood Rallye, about 24 feet long (the Ciaowagen is 31 feet). It got five miles per gallon (the Ciaowagen gets eight).

This type of RV, built on a pickup chassis, is called a Class C the Ciaowagen is a Class A with a bus shape.) Class C's are characterized by that bed area above the cab. Our younger sons, Mace and Sawyer, slept up there.

Our oldest son, Tory, slept on the dining room table, which lowered down to bench level to form a bed. We had seat belts installed on the dinette benches so the boys would have somewhere to sit while we drove down the road.

Mom and Dad slept in the back. There was a bathroom in the back also. We did use the toilet, but the shower area was repurposed as a hanging closet, so we would shower in campground bath houses.

We took off at the beginning of July 2002 with a general idea of heading west, but no preplanned route. We decided we would just decide day-to-day on where to head next.

Here is what turned out to be our route, traveled over roughly a two-month period (ignore the letters - they're just waypoints to allow us to draw the map).

Here are some images from along the way. [NOTE: We were all younger at the time. In addition, both Doug and Jeannette were heavier than they are today, and Jeannette had not yet had LASIK eye surgery, so be kind in your evaluations.]

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, Ohio

Bicycling on Mackinac Island, Michigan

Lake Superior near Pictured Rocks National Lakeshores, Upper Peninsula, Michigan

Jolly Green Giant and friend, Blue Earth, Minnesota

The RV was so old that it had a carburetor rather than fuel injection. As our travels west took us to higher and higher elevations, we had to take the RV to a service shop to have the carburetor adjusted for the lower air pressure.

Wall Drug, Wall, South Dakota

Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Modeling ourselves after our favorite Presidents, Mount Rushmore, South Dakota

Devils Tower, Wyoming

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Yellowstone was our farthest destination west. School was coming up in 2-3 weeks, so we headed south and east for our return home.

Hot Springs, Themopolis, Wyoming

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Sears Tower, Chicago, Illinois

Fallingwater, Mill Run, Pennsylvania

We arrived back in Virginia the night before school started.

"That was a lot of fun," we told ourselves, "and we should try this again sometime." [like 2019]. However, we didn't think the RV-With-No-Name was something to hold onto (given its high age and low mileage). So we listed the RV in the Post classifieds the next weekend, and sold it for $8,000 to a couple who wanted to use it for tailgating at football games.

Our net investment: $500. Plus tons of money for gasoline...

Roll forward to 2018. We still remembered that 2002 trip fondly, and decided for certain that we would buy another RV (not so old, and much better researched) and take off as we retired for more travels around the country. And we would apply one of our key lessons from 2002 - start with some general direction, but make the route up as you go along. It's the journey, not the destination.

And the new journey, so far, has been a blast (COVID be damned)!