The Beginnings.....

Each winter my wife Carol and I migrate south for most of the winter.  We live in Vancouver, WA and it gets cold and wet up here.  We own 3 shares of stock in Pismo Coast Village, a nice RV resort on the Central California Coast.  This allows us to stay there free for about 200 days or so.  We often have friends stay with us and they can stay free using some of our days.

We drive our 2010 Bounder 35E class A motorhome down there and really enjoy our time there.  It is almost like we have a different life for the time we are there.  In the winter of 2016-2017 we started thinking about getting a replacement motorhome with more features and space.  We came within an eyelash of buying a Ventana.  Actually started the negotiations to arrive at a price.  But when all was said and done, we just could not see spending so many dollars on a floorplan that was not ideal.  So we decided not to pursue it further.  We had looked at other RVs, including the new Bounders, but just didn't like their floorplans or use of space either.  

Fast forward to this winter.  On the way to Pismo Coast Village (PCV), we saw an RV show (I believe it was "Big Time RV") that featured the Tiffin Allegro in one of its segments.  We watch most of the RV shows, so this was nothing special.  But the Allegro caught our eye as having possibilities.  Carol did some research online and it looked real promising.  She even found a new 2017 on sale at a dealer that was not far off the path we were taking.

So we stopped in Patterson, CA for the night as we normally do on our migration.  Then we drove over to Happy Daze RV in Livermore to see the unit she found.  We loved the floorplan and features, but this unit didn't have everything we wanted.  But the price looked pretty good.  Over the next two weeks, via email, we worked with the salesman  to get most of what we wanted added and changed.  Then all of a sudden, no response from him.  

I emailed him 3-4 times and even called the dealership looking for him.  He was out with a customer on the lot and they took a message for him to call me.  He never did.  So after another week of waiting, we wrote him off.

Then I contacted a dealer just south of Portland, Oregon, very near where we live.  Had a great online discussion with him and tried to get the price I wanted, which was about 30% or so off of retail.  We were about $10k apart and he would go no further.

So contacted a dealer up in Fife, WA.  He too would not come down to my price after many emails going back and forth.

I began to wonder if my expectations were realistic or not.  So I called my niece, Cheryl, who sells Chevrolets at a dealership in Marysville, CA.  Asked her if she could find out the dealer pricing on what we wanted.  Turns out she did some checking and ended up getting us the price I was looking for (Actually, slightly better!).  She had contacted the General Manager at Happy Daze RV in Sacramento, which is the headquarters for the dealership in Livermore!  

Anyway, Ralp (the GM), was able to accommodate all our custom requests and we placed the order while we were at PCV.

We began looking around the PCV park for Allegro owners and asked them about their rigs and what they liked.  Two of these owners (John & Lillian) told us about the online forums and FaceBook pages relating to Tiffins and we began reading all the posts in depth.  

One thing stood out....folks like to make the trek to the factory in Red Bay, either for service work or to watch their unit being built.  The more we read, the more we wanted to go to Red Bay to watch our unit.

So the idea for this epic journey was planted.  We needed to know when to go and when we would go.....but that is the topic for the next post.  Stay tuned!

Please feel free to make comments or ask questions.  It lets me know someone is out there!