Not Quite #Vanlife

Well, we made a decision about housing (which is good, since we close on our house in T-minus 3 weeks)!

We'd like you to meet our new home!

(We haven't named her yet...Justin's vote is for Ethel, but I'm still not sure I'm totally on board yet)

A few things about her:

• She's a never-owned 2016 Whitewater Retro 176s by Riverside
• She's just shy of 18' long and 7'7" wide and has almost exactly 100 square feet of living space when the slider's out
• She features a slide-out dinette area (so I actually have enough floor space to roll out my yoga mat when the weather isn't cooperative for an outdoor practice! Getting' fancy!)

We looked at only a few trailers...it would seem that the only trailers New Englanders seem to buy are bigger than our current house, so finding some small ones (that weren't pop-ups) took a little doing. We are planning to pull the trailer with our 1999 V6 Toyota Tacoma, so in this case, size does indeed matter.

We found the Retro online and had to travel to look at a few. We'd originally decided on the 166, but ultimately decided to splurge on the space afforded by the 176S's slide-out given that this will be our full-time home (and my office once we hit the road in January) for the next several years.

I have some plans to renovate, but I thought I'd share a few quick snapshots I took as we were preparing to paint...

The plans include a ton of bright white, high-gloss paint, immediately disposing of the super-crappy weird bedding that came with it, and maybe turning the fridge into a magnetic chalkboard. Some of my big plans were immediately dashed when we got in and realized just how "lightweight" the building materials are...ummm...we're sort of crossing our fingers that this thing can stand up to a strong breeze...bookshelves are totally out.

I will do my best to keep you posted over these next few weeks as we whirlwind renovate/pack/sell everything we own/ figure out where we'll park this thing for the next few months!