West Coast to East Coast and back again

Hi and thank you for reading my blog, first I should start off with I have a severe learning disability and can only spell phonetically. I spell how I pronounced the word and the worst I pronounce it the worse I spell it, so I mostly write by talking to text. So please forgive me if there is a word that is the right word but obviously the wrong spelling. I do not have the ability to know the difference between a properly spelled miss-used word.
This blog is going to be about our adventures going across the United States down to the 10 and then back across the United States on the 40, making some good zigs and zags. Just having a great time along the way.

My son is a type 1 diabetic he is 100% dependent on insulin, he's a very active young man and we are going to have one heck of an adventure showing other diabetic kids that they can play it just like any other kid, they don't have to sit at home and stay close to their meds. They can be like a normal kid and we are going to show them just because they have diabetes they can do everything any other kid can. We will be doing double black diamond runs on some pretty extreme downhill mountain biking backwoods tree skiing, giant tuna fishing, hiking in some pretty remote places all the while managing his Type 1 diabetes and keeping him safe.

My wife, who still works can't afford to take 6 weeks off of work, so why Mikey and I are driving across the United States. Making our stops, having our little adventures. She will be flying in on the weekends for our big stops, like Mardi Gras New Orleans, North Carolina to see Kitty Hawk, the location of the first fight, all of Washington, The Monuments the capital, and so on, then making our way to Boston for st. Patrick's Day.
after that, it will be time for mom to go back home. way Mikey and I will start the exstrem part of our adventure. this adventure will be primarily downhill mountain biking, some trail riding, snow skiing, and snowboarding, hope you like our adventure.


First, I have to give you a little back story, this trip started off as we wanted to go somewhere exciting for Saint Patrick's Day, so we looked up the number one spot in the nation for Saint Patrick's day and it turns out, that would be in Boston. Living in Southern California, we knew that that is a long run and we were just going to fly to visit some friends on the east coast and my daughter who is in the Navy in Norfolk Virginia.
Looking at all of the travel that we would have to do, We thought it would be best to rent an RV. This way we can move about as we pleased and stay as long or move on as fast as we wanted. The trip was going to be planned for 10 days, then after looking into the expense and comparing what it was going to cost to staying in hotels and eating most of all of our meals out and flights vs renting an RV was definitely a better choice for us. Which led me to look into the difference in the cost of renting an RV vs buying one.

sorry got a little ahead of myself.

We also had another big trip planned in the summertime that we were thinking of renting an RV for as well. This would be a 6-week trip and after evaluating the price of renting another RV, we could afford to buy a used 5th wheel for the same money as these two 6 week rentals.
Now we need to start shopping for an RV and we have not been in the market for a long time.
We have had motorhomes and we have had trailers, so we are experienced and traveling and camping in RVs. over the years I was a sportsman guide, so I know the outdoors.

What could be a long story I'll make it short,
we settled in on a 31-foot Stellar Eclipse this would be our first fifth wheel as we have never owned a fifth wheel, we have had bumper pull trailers and motorhomes.
If you're looking to get a fifth wheel you should know this first, the total length of a 5th wheel trailer is bigger than what they say it is. for instance, if you put a tape measure from the nose to the back it will measure 34 ft but registration says its 31, apparently in the manufacturing of fifth wheels they only count the towable size, the part that hangs over the bed of your truck does not count... this is good to know when you have storage on the side of your house and the trailer is 6 in longer than your available space.

My wife and I both have very different ideas on what kind of layout that we wanted the only thing we really agreed on is that we both wanted a fifth-wheel and we both wanted a toy hauler, so one of the things that we did is we made a list of the new units that we considered with the layouts that we really liked. After coming to the conclusion that the new ones were no better than buying a used one, (seeing how the majority of them were having problems with the manufacturing and A LOT OF warranty issue,.........)

So we started looking at new used units at about 1/3 of the price of a new one, we already knew the layouts that we liked, so we started looking and made a list of all the ones that fit our criteria. (side note we made that list on Google Docs, so as I found something I would just copy and past it, and as my wife found them she could post them as well so we both could see what the other was found in real-time) Each time we did this we will use a star system, one out of five, whenever we had a five the other person would look at it and see how they ranked it. Only the ones that ranked as a five are the ones we would consider looking at together, As I stated above we ended up settling on a 2010 Stellar Eclipse as they were one of the most well-built trailers and all the walls and roof had 1.5" of styrofoam, so well insulated. From what I could find on the Forum world they had the least amount of manufacturer's warranty issues, (one of the reasons we looked at older ones were we figured by that time any of the issues that they may have had would have already have been fixed) The person who had this one took very good care of it. Almost looks brand-new and in fact, a lot of our friends couldn't believe that it was not a brand new unit. When we told him it was 10 years old it blew their mind, so be patient don't settle, and don't be in a hurry if it is not exsatiley what you were looking for, don't settle move on. That's where people make mistakes, hope this helps in your decision about finding the trailer that is perfect for you.


This trip is a great adventure, My wife will be flying into the destination and meeting us for weekends and 10 days on the East Coast.

The way we look at it is, I'm driving our hotel to the places she would like to Vacation at. My My driving buddy is my 15-year-old son, we get to spend the time together on the road, just me and him…… well and Aliyah our Australian shepherd, that we are training to be a type 1 diabetic service dog for my son.
Mikey and I will be on the road for 6 weeks, driving, fishing, mountain bike, and many educational adventures… and plenty of fun side adventures.


The first stop is Vegas, pulling in Friday and leaving Sunday after dropping Kim off at the airport.

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