t was supposed to be a trip destined to make memories. Granted, all journeys oftentimes lend themselves to creating stories for one’s personal memoirs, but this one was special: It was to celebrate not only the 50th anniversary of Bob and Lynne Livingston’s marriage but also Bob’s 50th year in the RV industry.
To say it hasn’t worked out quite the way it was envisioned would be something of an understatement.
Let me preface this by saying that Bob is easily one of the most technically knowledgeable journalists on the planet. For decades he oversaw the nuts-and-bolts story lines that appeared in both Trailer Life and MotorHome magazines and authored Trailer Life’s RV Repair & Maintenance Manual which, when printed and for years afterward, was considered the authority on RV repair for the do-it-yourself crowd. He’s also one of four experienced RV journalists who came together to create RV Enthusiast magazine. Suffice to say, he knows his stuff.
And he and Lynne are avid campers. During their years together, they have owned and traveled in everything from an old Skyline Aljo travel trailer to a Wilderness travel trailer, Winnebago motorhome, Monaco travel trailer — even an old Airstream that Bob renovated. Along the way, they also owned an S & S truck camper and a Lance truck camper. If you can survive for weeks on end with your spouse inside either a truck cab or the confines of a truck camper, you are truly soul mates.
In 2015, the Livingstons purchased a 34-foot Grand Design Reflection fifth wheel, the biggest towable they had ever owned. Two years later, they sold their home and embraced the full-timer lifestyle.
This isn’t just “any” Grand Design, however. Grand Design is known for the quality of its products, but, well, Bob’s a tinkerer. True to form, he set about creating an amazing home on wheels. He changed the suspension, axles, upgraded to disc brakes, added a solar system and upgraded appliances and fixtures. “It’s easier to list what he hasn’t changed,” laughs Lynne when Bob is queried on the alterations.
Along the way, they have put more than 50,000 miles on the rig. This was to be their fourth cross-country trip in five years — and the damage from the constant pounding of a questionable road system is taking its toll. What’s just a minor irritant in a car — leveled to great extent by modern suspension systems — takes on a whole new persona when traversed by about 12,000 pounds of fifth wheel and RAM 3500 4×4 pickup.
The first problem the Livingstons encountered happened in early May, just a week into their trip: A short developed in the unit’s electrical system. At the time, they were traveling through Texas and Louisiana at the same time the area was hit by a monsoon. Unable to crawl around the unit outside, the rig’s interior was draped with electrical cords to power essential things like the refrigerator. Once the rain stopped, Bob spent the better part of a day chasing after possible electric gremlins through receptacles and the subpanel before finding the problem: a burnt wire laying in the belly pan.
Ahh, said the storyteller, but we’ve just gotten started.
“We were in Cedar Key, Florida, preparing to leave the campground, when I heard a big ‘bang’ while retracting the curbside slideout,” Bob recalled. “That was the end of the slide-out operation.” Knowing he couldn’t fix it there — few parks will allow onsite repairs by anyone but a mobile technician — they headed to their next destination with the slideout 99% retracted. And the one after that. Without a park’s permission to pull the rig apart to make repairs to the slideout system, he’s had to use a wrench to extend and retract the room extension.
Then, of course, the black dump valve failed.
Fortunately, this is one irritant that’s occurred before, and Bob previously modified the fifth wheel’s belly pan to gain access to operate the valves manually. Still, it required laying in the dirt to make it happen.
In late May, the Livingstons headed north to spend the Memorial Day weekend in Tennessee with RVE‘s Advertising Director, Sue Siedlitz. Unfortunately, the travelling goblins weren’t quite done with Bob and Lynne. In Georgia, the fifth wheel’s tire-pressure-monitoring system alerted Bob to a problem, and he managed to pull over before suffering major damage to the RV. Having dealt with multiple failures of “China bomb” tires previously, Bob fitted the fifth wheel with one of the premier trailer tires available, the Goodyear Endurance. Illustrating, perhaps, that nothing is infallible, one of the Goodyears suffered a rare blowout of the sidewall just above the bead. Without the TPMS, this tale might have had a different ending.
The moral of this long story?
Stuff happens, especially if you put a lot of miles on your RV. Bob and Lynne’s fifth wheel is better prepped for travel than probably 95% of the rigs on the road today, and frankly, it’s in amazingly good condition considering they live in it full time. But those preparations were no match for the sorry state of America’s roads. “We’ve got to do something about them,” Bob noted. “In some places, they are no better than the roads you’d see in a third-world country.”
As I write this, the Livingstons are headed my way, to Elkhart, Indiana, where they will stay for the next two months as Bob, Chris Dougherty, Chris Hemer and myself all come together to produce the kind of magazine you want to see.
“Through everything that’s happened, we still haven’t missed a beat,” Bob noted. “We’ve made detours, but we haven’t been sidelined. We’ve stayed patched up well enough to remain on the road until I could make the needed repairs — and we were still able to enjoy the places on our bucket list.”