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Dallas RV Show

This past weekend was the Dallas RV Show. We went for an hour or two on Sunday. To check it out. Not to buy anything.

The major takeaway is that there’s no other RV we want. Really.

Before we bought our RV, every dealer told us, “You’ll get one, and within a year, you’ll have something totally different. You don’t know what you want until you get on the road.” But we really can’t imagine driving something else around. I think we knew what we wanted, and got it. That’s a pretty lucky situation.

At the RV show, there were some interesting new updates – and some fantastically bad ones.

The Sales Game was lacking

First – usually I am not a huge fan of going to these types of places because I hate being sold to. Bombarded with sales guys. Yeah, that didn’t happen here. We passed so many salespeople and not one said hello. Not one. Now, if you know Jeremiah, you know he’s the most gregarious person in existence. He can talk to anyone.

So… he started selling the RVs. Lord, I wish I were joking.

“Look at this compartment,” he’d say to someone nearby, “I would love if ours had this, because…” and so on.

One couple was leaving a motorhome we were looking at, and Jeremiah hollered at them, “You gotta check the bedroom out! The central electronics is so cool!” I waited outside, while he gave a tour of a class A to another couple. They laughed when they passed me outside, “You gotta get him out of there,” they said. I shrugged. I’m used to him.

Then, he made about 10 different people laugh at pointing out funky flaws of the RVs. People love bonding over things they think are stupid, like having 4 TVs. “You need at least 3 TVs to spend time in the woods,” I overheard him say.

What the sales guys weren’t doing, Jeremiah was. At one point, we walked into one RV and I thought we were interrupting a salesguy football game party, not the Dallas RV show. Three men were sitting in blue shirts with nametags all watching a football game. Nobody acknowledged we were in there. They just moved their heads when we walked in front of the TV. I’m not exaggerating. No “hello,” let alone anything along the lines of “Got any questions?” I think our age often affects this – they don’t take us seriously. It has it’s benefits, but I also noticed they weren’t talking to any other potential customers. They were all in groups of 2’s and 3’s, chatting amongst themselves.

To sum it up: every single one of those sales guys were not sales guys. They should have been fired. Did I care? No. Should their bosses care? Yes.

An unexpected upside

However, we were approached by someone that we were very cool with: A dog shelter representative: one of the vendors at the show.

The highlight of our afternoon was spending time petting two dogs: Marco, and Callie. Jeremiah wanted Callie, and I wanted to take Marco home. I fell in love with his paws, speckled like an oreo blizzard from Dairy Queen.

The dogs are a part of the sanctuary known as Straydog.org. The shelter is a no-kill organization and holds 160 dogs at any given time! No dog is ever put down, and some will live the rest of their days there. I didn’t take any dog pictures; I was too busy petting them. Here are the pics of the two love bugs off their website though.

Should I get back to the whole point of visiting the Dallas RV show? I guess so.

Winnebago? More like Winne-no-no.

JC heard about a Winnebago that was one of the newer upscale models they were putting out, so we were pretty jazzed to go see it.

Turns out we hated it.

Want to know why?

It had the feel of a clinical spaceship, complete with a supervillian captain seat, and an eerie glow from the overhead lighting. The surfaces were all high gloss gray – everything.

Now, I love gray. I painted our entire sticks-and-bricks house gray and white save for 2 walls that Jeremiah claimed. (A highly irritating flourescent blue.) This winnebago though? Poor choice in the high gloss material. Fingerprints were everywhere – and I couldn’t image how filthy it’d look if I came in with grubby hands.

There’s a common complaint from RV customers: patterns, valences, and colors are outdated and grandparental, if that’s a word. Winnebago heard those complaints, and went to the extreme – but somehow missed the mark entirely. A strange home on wheels.

Other strange things: the interior of the cabinets were carpeted. Useful for noise reduction, not for living. The microwave was behind 2 cabinet doors, so that’s really useful. Not. It felt like a design sample, not a useable RV.

Things we liked

Things we continue to fancy from other models:

  • stairs with storage compartments (Why wasn’t this done earlier?!)
  • fewer switches and more centralized electronics/technology (turning out the lights from bed? Yes please.)
  • Outdoor kitchens – although one was so high, I’m not sure it was made for normal-height people. I’m not tall at 5’3″ but the grill was awkwardly chest level. Not sure the plan on that.
  • A little compartment where the electrical outlets were hidden. I chatted with a fellow RVer though, and they said theoretically it’s cute, but they have them and they’re not ever hidden – they just stay up.

The Takeaway

We came home to our house, marveling at the good quality of it. It’s 12 years old. It’s awesome. The lighting is great, we have real wood everything, the kitchen is perfect for us (more so after we installed a drawer dishwasher.) The whole damn bus is made so well.

I realized we can make a couple of updates – I’m going to update the drawers hardware to make it slightly more modern. (Not the cabinet hardware – we’d go bankrupt with how many we have.)

Also, we have the strangest wall lamps, so maybe those need some freshening up.

We’ve been wanting to replace the awkward lazy boy-style chair that I use as a dining chair when we eat together, and that’s still at the forefront of a mind, with a possible replacement of our couch, as well. Neither of them are awful. Neither of them are great.

The Dallas RV Show was fun to go to – it’s fun to exchange ideas with other RVers, but in the end, we’re glad we’ve got the one we do. We’re sticking with the HOW, for the foreseeable future.

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