0001 Selling Winnie and buying Troopie

Following on from my Alaska blog, I have decided that while I am preparing Troopie the Amazing for her trip to the Americas in 2014, I will run an in-between blog as it is the simplest way to let anyone who for some stupid reason might be interested in what is going on with my plans, and also is the easiest way to post pics of everything so that people can go and see them instead of me having to email pics to everyone. So this is the in-between blog !
And what better name for it than the title of a good Moody Blues song - "Watching and Waiting" !! (One for you, John Scheidt, !!)

The update is that just before Christmas I had cleaned my Winnebago motorhome with a view to selling it, and it took me over a week !! So once I had done it, I wasn't keen to have to repeat the exercise.

                                                                    Clean Winnie !

Then I found a suitable Troop Carrier / Camper with a pop top, beds, and cooking / washing up facilities, so I decided to buy that and use that, and keep the Winnebago for sale hoping it would sell quickly. So far I am enjoying the Troopie, and Winnie is still sitting in the dealers lot !! ROFL. "But there are several people interested" - Now where have I heard that before ? !!

New Troopie, as purchased

Anyway, what I will do in this blog is just use it to document what I am doing to the Troopie, and if I go on any trips, will put the pics in here. I have just been down to Victoria for Christmas, through the magnificent Snowy Mountains (which I think is one of the most beautiful parts of Australia), I am going down to the National Lotus Meet in Canberra at the end of April, and maybe in about August or September, when it cools down a bit, I might go on a bit of a longer trip to make sure everything is working OK. So I will put those trips up on here, with the pics linked through to Picasa as usual.

The story with the Troop Carrier is that the conversion of the original Troop Carrier to a Camper is done by motorhome rental companies in Australia, so the only second hand ones available (for a reasonable price) are ex rental vehicles. So although this one is a 2008 model so only 4 years old, it has 250,000 kms on it ! But they say these vehicles are good for at least 4-500,000 kms before they need much attention, so I shall work out what needs doing to it in the coming year. Obviously it has quite a lot of tidying up to be done to it, and lots of small bits and pieces a fiddler like me wants to do to improve it, so I have plenty to keep me busy over the coming 12 months. The big advantage is that it is totally usable just as a normal vehicle around town, so once the Winnebago and Lotus have gone (yes, Elsie is going too !!), it will be my every day vehicle.

And then the long term plan is to ship the Troopie to Seattle in February 2014, meet it in Seattle at the end of April, and then go back up to Alaska, up through Vancouver Island and the Marine Highway this time, and be able to get all the way to Prudhoe, and even up the Dempster Highway to Inuvit.  After that - Head south - Central America, South America, with Tierra del Fuego being the target !!!

Anyway, plans are always made to be broken right ?   So lets see how we go.

Rest of the pics are here : https://picasaweb.google.com/117739775480775657932/0001TroopiePurchase?authkey=Gv1sRgCNDLzuL7l4SreQ#