Steph and Dud B's RV Screed

Our Oliver delivery date is approaching fast. We've sold our fifth wheel to a very nice couple (who named it Garfunkel) and we're just about ready to head to Tennessee to get our Legacy Elite 2. We've purchased a few more convenience items for the new trailer. First, we bought a pair of backpacking chairs. We wanted to have a couple of chairs for guests, but they had to be compact for storage. These Cascade Mountain high back camp chairs collapse to about 1/2 the size of a regular camp chair but seem sturdy and comfortable. There is some assembly required to set them up, though. We bought them on sale on Amazon but we've since seen them much cheaper (and a better color) at Costco. C'est la vie. Next, we bought a tiny little Keurig-type machine. We didn't want to give up the cabinet space for a regular Keurig. This little Chulux coffee maker also came from Amazon. As you can see, it's much smaller than the Keuirig, but it seems to work fine, if a bit slower t...

One of the traditions of the Oliver Travel Trailer company is that they refer to their trailer bodies as "hulls." I assume this has to do with the fiberglass construction, similar to many sailboats, and the fact that a Catamaran designer helped the company design their first trailer. Another tradition is that they assign each trailer its own "hull number," starting with Hull #1 for the first trailer they built in 2007. Owners are very proud of their trailer's hull number since it tells others a little about its history and lineage. We have just passed an important step on the road to getting our new Oliver Elite 2 in June: we've learned our hull number. Our trailer will be hull number 1150. We also followed another owners' tradition. We named our trailer. Hull number 1150 will be named Eggcelsior,  a play on excelsior, which means "ever upward" and is often used as an exclamation upon the completion of a major challenge or accomplishment. We th...

Last week we sent Oliver Travel Trailers our second deposit payment and our build sheet, which specifies our option choices for our new trailer. Some of the options we chose were a large lithium battery bank and rooftop solar panels, cellular signal booster, and an additional awning on the driver's side of the trailer. These are all to increase our boondocking/drycamping capabilities with an eye toward more varied and less expensive campsite options and future trips back to the Southwest. We still have a few more items to purchase before we take delivery. Other than that, we're basically in a holding pattern. Oliver will start making our trailer in early May. For now, we wait and anxiously watch the financial situation. It's going to be an expensive summer for RVing, but the trips we have booked are relatively close to home and we're hoping the Oliver's lighter weight and aerodynamic shape will give us better gas mileage than we currently get with our fifth wheel.

Now that we were seriously considering buying an Oliver, the next step was to reach out to the company to learn more about them. There are no Oliver dealers, they are sold factory-direct, so if you don't live near the factory in Hohenwald, Tennessee you need to visit a privately-owned trailer if you want to see one. An email to Oliver was quickly answered and our sales rep helped us make arrangements to visit Jeff and Katie's brand-new Oliver Elite 2 at their house.  There were a couple of things in particular we wanted to look at: the beds and the bathroom. The Elite 2 comes in two floorplans, one with a dinette/king bed conversion in the back, the other with fixed twin beds. Steph was leaning towards the twin bed floor plan for easier access to overhead storage and not needing to convert the bed at night, but I had my doubts. I'm 6 feet tall and was worried the bed would be uncomfortably small for me. This is not a standard twin mattress. It is only 30" wide and tape...