Time For A Change

For the last few years we've been coming to Maine for the summer. We've enjoyed our time here but last year we began thinking that it might be time for a change. This summer cemented our thinking. The lousy weather we've had probably influenced our thinking but basically we've come to the conclusion that it's just time for a change for us.

So what's that mean? We spent a lot of time over the last year or so really thinking and talking about what we'd like to do next. We still love spending winters in Mesa, AZ but we have no desire to spend summers there. We miss seeing and exploring new places so by the middle of this summer we had decided to get a small camper and tow vehicle so we could spend summers traveling around. We could also use that rig to take some shorter trips during the winter too.

Once the decision to change had been made the rest was pretty easy. We started looking around for a tow vehicle and ended up with a new 2008 Nissan Xterra. It's tow rating is 5000 lbs. which is what we were looking for. Given that SUV's aren't very popular right now (now there's an understatement!) the pricing on the Xterra was great! There weren't exactly giving them away but we bought ours for less than 3 and 4 year old ones are being advertised for sale. And needless to say the dealer was very eager to get their hands on our Toyota Corolla so we got top dollar for that too. It wasn't exactly an even trade but it didn't cost us very much at all.

Once we had a tow vehicle the next step was to find a trailer. After a lot of research we decided that the right trailer for us was a Casita. You can check them out by clicking here. Our current trailer is a 25' 5th wheel and the Casita we wanted was a 17' trailer. We've made an art of living in small spaces over the years! We kept looking for a good used one and finally found a 2005 17' Spirit Deluxe model on eBay. We won the auction and took a trip to Long Island to see it and conclude the deal. The seller, Mike, turned out to be a really nice guy! It was a real pleasure to meet and get to know him. It didn't make any sense to drag the Casita all the way back to Maine and then just turn around and head back in a couple weeks so Mike graciously agreed to keep the trailer in his driveway for us until we came back to pick it up right after Labor Day.

So now we're getting things ready to leave Maine, get our 5th wheel sold and get things arranged to pick up our Casita. So many new things to learn about like sway bars, weight distribution hitches, etc. Stay tuned for more updates!

	Our new 2008 Nissan Xterra.
	Our new 2005 Casita 17' Spirit Deluxe.