Well, we arrived yesterday at our daughters house. We backed into their driveway, just like I describe in my article on HubPages. In the spot first try!

We hooked up to their utilities and sat back with a glass of Chardonnay, just to take that hyped up “we are on the road” attitude and crank it down.

Reflecting on the trip, our Retro-Winnebago did wonderfully. It handled well, the engine ran well, the transmission shifted properly, and it even pulled a couple of the really steep Virginia hills adequately.

In my opinion, if you want to know if a Motorhome has a reliable engine, you just need to take the beast up a long steep hill and make it climb. It will either demonstrate its good condition or you will see signs of serious problems, the most common being; SMOKE from your engines exhaust when it bogs down, or the transmission not shifting properly.

Our old girl performed great. Oh, it did not like the hill, but it did downshift properly and still climbed the hill. It did not maintain the speed limit, but none of them do on a real hill.

We did have one scare. We cut across on US-52 at Florence SC to get to Rockingham, NC. This shortcut takes about an hour and 50-miles from the overall trip and we always take it to save time. But, beware, if you want to try it, parts of the road are your typical 2-lane country roads interspersed with state upgraded dual highway, and a couple of old towns; specifically, Society Hill and Cheraw.

In Cheraw, we were turning right onto another town street, as directed by our Garmin when the road took a 6-inch drop on the right side. Now 6-inches isn’t much, but if you are turning, and it is on one side only, you get a real experience.

We seriously rocked side-to-side several time before the RV settled down, and just for a little more entertainment, that rocking was just strong enough to throw one of our cabinets open and toss half of our dishes across the Rv and onto the floor.

Ah, Camping!

Anyway, the rest of the trip was pretty smooth and I now have a lot more confidence in our old RETRO-WINNIE, especially after a 760-mile, 2-day trip through 5-states.

by Don Bobbitt, 2014