Hannah Rose Goes

Almost exactly one year ago, I bought an RV. The plan was to make some aesthetic upgrades, turn her into my witchy cottage on wheels, and have some adventures. She was also going to be my full time house when I wasn’t traveling.

I picked out my RV – a lightly used 2018 Thor Chateau, who I named Chateau Shenanigans, or Annie for short. She had about 30,000 miles and was in fantastic condition – as long as you didn’t look too closely at the mattress. But that was easy to replace. In addition to replacing the mattress, I removed a bunch of the dated fabric accents, like curtains and valences, and painted the cabinets a lovely shade of millennial sage green. She was comfy, she was cozy… and then I took her on our first big adventure together.

Something you should know about me: I don’t do things half-assed. So our first trip was from outside of Seattle to northern California, where we would pick up my mom and then drive back home. I had my dog (Simmon) and her dog (Basil) with me for the 1800 mile journey. We survived. I learned a lot. I saw some pretty scenery. And that’s about all of the positives that I can say about that.

I didn’t mind driving the RV once I was on the road and the route was planned, but I hated having to figure out which gas stations I would fit into, if there were low bridges or narrow turns, or if the wind was going to pick up. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to fit to park in grocery store parking lots. And the amount I was spending on gas – holy crap! Getting set up for camping and then back on the road the next morning wasn’t terrible, but it ate up a significant amount of time. I think that it would have been better if I were to drive somewhere and set up to camp for a week, but moving every day was exhausting.

Plus, my dog absolutely hated the RV. He is fine in the car, so I thought he’d be okay in the RV, but he was so anxious and I felt terrible. But at least he got over it as soon as his house stopped moving.

So after that adventure, I decided that Annie would be my stationary home on wheels. And, when it worked, I loved living in the RV. I love living in a tiny space that’s easy to clean. I love having a space that is entirely mine (and Simmon’s, of course!). I like having to be really cognizant of what I’m buying and how to organize and how to cook.

But there has been something wrong with the RV basically since I parked it. And it’s always changing, and I’m always fixing it. My shower’s been leaking since last Fall, but that’s always been the third thing on my to-do list, so it’s never gotten fixed. I still don’t know how to turn on my oven. There were issues with the connection to the septic tank so I couldn’t empty my tanks for a while – and recently, my blackwater tank froze, which was a whole other issue. My toilet overfilled and flooded the RV. I had to install an after-market part to run a normal tank of propane instead of having to drive somewhere to fill my built-in tank every time it runs out. I had to insulate the windows so I wasn’t going through a tank of propane every 48 hours. I moved some stuff out of storage I haven’t had time to organize and put away. The list goes on.

And then I found the mold. I was looking for something in the front of my RV, and realized that the entire passenger wheel well was damp from condensation and covered in mold. I took apart what I could, cleaned it out, and started running a heavy duty dehumidifier along with leaving a couple buckets of DampRid out. I thought my problems were solved.

And then I went to change my sheets the other day, and where my mattress touches the wall of the RV was soaked. Not damp. Soaked. The sheets were wet. The mattress was wet. And that was with running the dehumidifier and heater and having the DampRid.

And that’s when I decided I was done.

It was taking far too many of my spoons keeping the RV habitable. And I don’t think there was anything else to do for it. So now I’m drying it out and not breathing in it, and I’ll make more decisions when I’m done with this semester of school. I’m fortunate that my mom has welcomed me and Simmon into her guest room, where we are staying warm and dry (and don’t have to walk across the yard to shower!). And maybe when it becomes Spring and things are a little dryer, Annie will be habitable again. But I’m not making any more decisions about it until things are a little calmer.

At this point, I’m just trying to chalk it up to a lot of lessons learned. Expensive lessons. But if that’s the worst that happened, I think I’m doing alright.