Let's Buy a Bus

Now back to the house and all that was inside. I must tell you, Jackie did a fantastic job of sorting out what we would need in our new home and what had to be disposed of.  And I'm thankful she started early, even though we lived in the house over a month with nothing but a bed .... hahaha .... During this time, we sold a couple of cars, purchased the 20'ft car hauler.  My brother, quite surprised by all of this asked .... nice trailer ... but what are you going to pull it with ????   Good question Tom 

(Jackie) ... Phew!  Thinking about this part makes me as tired as I was when we worked on that part! Can you say "Garage Sale"? times 6!! One of the garage sales was a complete mad house to the tenth degree!  Thanks to family, Don & Linda, and Danielle & Corey for the assistance that day.  Words cannot express how you saved us from insanity. Did you know that people are ruthless at an all open house garage sale? 

(Hal) .... And all the while, we were narrowing our choices for the coach.  Well actually, we fell in love with one particular coach.  It was priced a bit above our target purchase price, but the thought was, we could negotiate it down.  This slowed our search considerably, believing this was the 'one'.  Located in Wisconsin, it was going to be difficult to really check it out, but thanks to our son JJ who lives 30 minutes or so away from the coach, we were able to get some assurances that the coach was as advertised.  We got to know the owners pretty well, by phone and email and discovered we had also found new friends.  Discussion continued for nearly 3 months and finally they agreed to at least get the cost a little closer to where it needed to be.  Jackie & I flew to Wisconsin.

Seeing what would be our new home for the first time was amazing to say the least.  This thing was enormous in our eyes, even though we had looked at many similar buses, this one just seemed pretty amazing.

The test drive was very exciting .... it is certainly a whole lot of 'bus' going down the road .... It rode and drove like a dream.  The owners took us through all the systems and were very cordial .... so enjoyed spending time with them.  Jackie & I were both crazy excited as we flew back to Phoenix ... it's all we could talk about.

 After getting back to Arizona, discussions with the owner didn't go well, our offer didn't get us a deal.  And even tho we had begun thanking God daily for our "WI Bus", it seemed at times it wasn't going to happen.  We did have a couple more coaches to look at, and while in Texas ready to make an offer on one of them, I shot off a text message to the owner of the "WI Bus" to let him know we were moving on. Within minutes I had a phone call.  We were able to finalize the deal, what Jackie & I  both consider to be only God's hand.  Thank God for our "WI Bus"! 

A few weeks later we were on our way to pick up our new home.  What a wonderful time.  The first day in Wisconsin was with the owners, again going over systems and how things worked.  We spent that evening in the coach outside the owner's shop/garage.  Woke up to cold snowy weather and headed for our son JJ's house, where we spent the nite, in the bus, in the driveway, with no hook ups at all.  Still can't believe how much there is to learn.

The next day, we were on the 4 day trip back to Arizona .... and what an adventure.  Lots of winds the first couple of days turned into quite a workout ... especially driving for more hours then we should have.  Big lesson learned here.  We will now limit our time for driving to about 6 hours a day ...  The coach did amazingly well.  Cruise set between 70 & 75 most of the way, and cruised nicely.

Once back in Arizona, we actually moved in and so begins our Adventure!