From Germany to the Open Road
When the two of us met in Germany in 2017, we had no idea what adventures lay ahead of us—all we knew was that we wanted to share them! We were both working for a big technology company, and spent the limited spare time we had hiking and exploring the country.
A year later, we moved to the United States and found a lovely home in New Hampshire. Our boxer girl Winni joined the pack as a puppy and grew into being an avid hiker. Being in nature was food for our souls, and we started to spend part of our weekends and vacations tent camping. We loved being out there, having the birds wake us up and watching the wildlife come out at night—as long as the weather was good. Waking up in the pouring rain, packing a wet tent, and jumping into the car with damp clothes, then running the heating at full power to finally warm up again, wasn’t so much our thing.
In 2022, we both retired from IBM on the same day. We finally had more time for our hobbies, including hiking and photography, and started to wrap our heads around traveling and exploring the country, together with Winni, of course.
On a sunny weekend in March 2023, Dave mentioned a camping show nearby, and we spontaneously jumped in the car to get a sense of whether there were RVs out there that might work for us. We came home with a contract, and a few days later, we picked up our first class C. We loved the layout—full-size corner bed, shower, a dinette, and a nice kitchen—and plenty of space above the cab and outside to store everything we thought we needed for our trips.
Big Adventures, Bigger Lessons
In the first year, we did some short tours in the area, tested Harvest Hosts, and got to know our coach. In April 2024, we started an unforgettable cross-country trip from New Hampshire. We spent January and February planning the trip and quickly discovered that national park campgrounds were a bottleneck; if we wanted to stay there, we had to book in advance. National park campgrounds have limited inventory and sell out early. So we started booking our national park stays and the ones in between. We were planning to be on the road for seven months and explore 35 national parks across the country.
We learned a lot in those first months traveling, and while our RV had a wonderful layout, there were things we were painfully missing. Hours of trying to level our RV on “Lego blocks” made us dream of levelers. We wished we could run our microwave when not plugged into shore power, every time the milk boiled over on the stove while making breakfast. Most importantly, having to leave Winni behind for most of the hiking in the national parks always had us worried on warmer days. We started many of our hikes around 5:00 am, often before breakfast, to make sure we’d be back at the RV once the temperatures rose, and the driving! As we drove thousands of miles through the country and climbed mountains—the Million Dollar Highway in Colorado, the breathtaking Scenic Byway 12 between Capitol Reef and Escalante, and steep mountain passes in the Sierra Nevadas —we wished we had a vehicle that drove more easily. Driving our class C was like driving a U-Haul. We were in a wide (10’2″) vehicle, which was challenging on narrow roads or in construction zones.
When the Journey Took an Unexpected Turn
After two and a half months on the road, the nightmare hit. We were pulling back onto the Pacific Coast Highway after a hike along the coast when neither of us saw the Jeep flying around a blind corner; it hit the back of our RV. It tilted to the left, then to the right, and the back of the RV looked like a war zone. Shattered chinaware, food, and clothes were all over the floor, and our belongings from the outside storage were scattered all over the road. A big crack exposed the bathroom to the outside. We were in shock. Thank goodness no one got hurt, but the RV was totaled.
For the next week, we were stuck in a hotel room in the bohemian town of Occidental, California, with a lot of time to digest, grieve, and think about our plans, being 3000 miles from home. Both of us (I am not so sure about Winni) didn’t want to end our adventure right here and go home, so we decided to make our way back from California towards the East Coast in a large rental car stuffed to the gills with all our RV’s belongings.
Searching for the Right RV—This Time With Experience
After sticker shock at California hotel prices, we bought a tent and kept traveling and exploring. We instantly knew we wanted another RV—this time, we were approaching it less impulsively. We had a list of the things we wanted and didn’t want. A narrower RV, based on a Mercedes chassis, an inverter that allows us to run air conditioning and the microwave while not on shore power, automatic leveling, and a high-quality interior (another thing our former class C was lacking).
We were also clear that we wanted a comparable layout. We loved the corner bed, and a dinette was a necessity for us. We also figured that we didn’t need so much storage. We could travel much leaner. Things like a mosquito tent and a propane stove were only used when we started tent camping.
While slowly making our way back east, we planned our travels to arrive in Hershey, Pennsylvania, just in time for the biggest RV show in the country. Once there, we booked a dog sitter for Winni and a hotel for three nights. For the next two days, we looked at every single RV at the show.
Our size requirement quickly narrowed our choices down to a few. There were just a few RVs with the layout we wanted. When we entered the Unity, we were blown away. This was our dream come true, the perfect RV for our future adventures. On day two of the show, we signed the contract, and about a year later, we became proud owners of a 2025 Unity Corner Bed.
We couldn’t have dreamed of a better rig for our adventures. We named our new explorer Nauke (Now-KAH) – that’s an old-fashioned northern German slang word for a small boat. Nauke keeps Winni cool when we have to explore without her, and we can always take the scenic route without white knuckles.
We are back to our dream lifestyle, and this time with the perfect RV!
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://leisurevans.com/blog/myltvstory-susi-dave/