After years of dreaming about it, and being inspired by some new photography friends who own a beautiful class B Roadtrek Agile, we started looking for an RV in earnest in February.
I’d done tons of research, which Alan was more than happy to have me take charge of, watching YouTube reviews, tutorials, and vlogs, binge-listening to podcasts, and reading loads of articles. I learned what not to do, how to be safe, what mistakes to avoid, and general maintenance of an RV. After all that, we were sure we wanted a Roadtrek like our friends’, and we spied one about 35 miles north of us and went to investigate. We liked what we saw, and felt pretty good about our choice. Naturally we didn’t buy it right away, we still had some research to do.
I posted about our idea on a favorite Facebook page, RV Miles, and received some sad news… the parent company of Roadtrek was shutting down because of some shady bookkeeping and other issues. This broke our hearts, but we figured that maybe this could be a good bargaining chip for us at the dealership.
We went back and took a good hard look at the Agile and came away disappointed with the fit and finish. We left the dearship and drove up to Raleigh to see what might be on display at the RV show that weekend.
At the show we saw lots of beautiful class B and B+ RVs, but the one we really liked was a Coachmen CrossFit 22D. Alan wasn’t as keen on this one as he was on the Roadtrek because it was 2 feet longer, making harder to park in regular parking spots, but he did agree it was a close second. We talked to the salesman who worked at a dealership located in Wilmington. We had a nice low-pressure chat, and after the show we left to make some decisions.
The next day I emailed the salesman and asked if we might be able to take another look at the CrossFit, then possibly talk numbers. It was arranged that we would drive out by the weekend.
The short story is that we made a decent offer for the CrossFit, but the dealership would not come down to our price, by just $1,500. We stood firm and drove the 3 hours back home. Alan was sure the salesman would call back, but I wasn’t so sure, so when we got home I started looking around, nationally, for the same model.
I found one, a 22D-EB (EcoBoost – better mileage and power), in Phoenix. After showing it to Alan he agreed we should call the next day and see about a deal.
After a brief conversation with the first person I got on the phone, he accepted our offer, and we started down the rabbit hole of an over-the-phone, interstate sale. The dealership had a fly-and-buy program which would reimburse us for up to $500 for our plane ticket! That made the deal even sweeter.
We decided to fly out, buy the RV, then take it for a two-and-a-half month trip – getting home in time to register it with the NCDMV.
We packed enough clothes, and a few camping items to get started, and off we went.
The dealership, National Indoor RV Center, which has three other RV centers; Las Vegas, Texas, and Atlanta, made the process pretty easy, and before we knew it we were off on a brand new adventure out west!
