 Hey everybody it's Robin with Creativity RV and this is not a rant. Now if I filmed this a couple of days ago it may have sounded a little bit sharper maybe something like a rant because after I released my tour video on Sunday I was taken a little off guard by some of the comments. I had already filmed this video but I'm redoing it today because I wanted to make sure I addressed all the questions that you had including why I switched to a fifth wheel exactly how the money worked out I'm going to give you the specifics and I'm going to answer a lot of the other common questions like am I still single am I quitting YouTube am I just parked somewhere am I still going to boondock how the slides work how the cat's doing and more and then at the end I might have a word for the haters first of all I'm going to tell you guys why I switched from a class seat to a fifth wheel and by the way if you're wondering why the blinds are closed it's because it's um 4 20 in the morning it's still dark outside the reason I switched to a fifth wheel is because my camping style just evolved and I started out in a b-plus and then I went to a c and then I decided on a fifth wheel and here's why I was spending a lot more time actually camping than I was driving and one time my friend badge said to me and I'll link his channel below he's great he said well do you want to live or do you want to travel I didn't know what he meant but I was like yeah sure live travel and then I thought about it and I got what he was saying if your camping style is to move on frequently or you know let's say you want to travel the whole country in a short amount of time then a smaller rig is great for me I had a smaller rig but I was spending 10 days or two weeks at a campsite and I'm full time I have a cat sometimes I have somebody with me and I'm working long hours at a computer inside my rig and it just wasn't working for me if you are new to my channel you might notice that on my logo it says why how and where because I am not trying to promote one style of camping I'm trying to help anybody who just wants to get on the road and change their life for the better you know I like to say that living full-time in an RV is just another housing option and like all other housing options there's going to be all kinds of different styles and budgets and people out there if you've been following me for a while then you've heard me say Camp Like You I actually did a video last year called Camp Like You where I talked about all the clicks in the nomadic community especially on YouTube it's like the van people don't like the RV people and the RV people don't like the schooly people and so on and I don't get it I think that your rig changes with your life I interviewed a group of women from RV women last year and I talked to a lady there that had been full-time on the road for 30 years and she told me she'd been in every conceivable type of rig and I was like wow really she said yeah truck camper bumper pole van class A class C class B she had done it all because she had different needs in her life and that's what happened with me I'm not saying I'm going to be in a fifth wheel forever I don't know if all of a sudden I got the urge to travel more then I might go back to a van or a sprinter van or build something out or I might build out a school year something like that someday when I have the time to actually do it this time I needed a rig I needed a house I needed a place to live and this fit my needs and my budget I'll get to that so if you want to be in a class C or a van or whatever it is that's good for you I support your choice I think that one of the benefits of this life is that you can have the widest range of available options to get you where you want to go towards your own personal happiness or whatever it is and then you can look at all of those options with you know confidence and wisdom and try and choose the right ones for you and in a year you know reevaluate because life changes life just changes and it changed for me so that's what happened that's why I chose a fifth wheel now really quick let me tell you the evolution of this because when I first got on the road as some of you know I had never driven an RV in my life until I flew out to pick the one up that I bought in South Dakota and so the idea of towing something to me was like terrifying I had never towed anything I'd never driven anything even remotely as big as a 25 foot RV so I didn't consider getting like a bumper pull trailer or a fifth wheel at that point but when I realized that the rig that I had wasn't working for me and I did have problems with the rig I'll tell you about that in a second around that time I was camping at a harvest house location in Oregon and this fifth wheel pulled it next to me now I didn't know at the time that that was their second trip and I'm sorry guys I don't remember your names if you see this hey you changed everything for me but I saw this guy back in the solitude he had and he literally went and the thing went up and he unhitched his truck and it went and then the leveling jacks came out and that was it if that was it I convinced myself that it was really hard to unhook and hook up a fifth wheel now I'm still new at it and I'm still learning I'll tell you about that in a minute too but it kind of opened my eyes and then I saw the inside and I was like what come on then it just so happens that a friend of mine wrecked his fifth wheel and it's somebody that I trust and admire and he got a solitude he didn't tell me until after I made my choice because he wanted me to make my own choice but um that seemed like serendipity to me so some of you had comments about the fifth wheel like I can't stealth camp anymore I'm gonna have worse gas mileage I can't fit into the same campsites true all true and I took it all into consideration so I only stealth camped in my first rig my second rig the classy I couldn't stealth camp in really I did it a couple times but I didn't feel um as stealthy in that one but I only was doing that a few days and somebody else said oh you can't camp at the golden gate bridge anymore because I did that and um that's true but those things were like 10 days out of my year most of the time I'm driving out into beautiful natural places down some dirt road and staying there for a couple of weeks so the trade-off for me was that I lose those things and I get worse gas mileage but I have a better living space for me and hey I camp for you know 10 days two weeks and then maybe I drive three hours five hours seven hours and I camp again so the gas mileage is definitely going to be worse but to me it was worth it I know some of you have questions about what happened with my Tiffin and um I had problems now every rig is going to have problems my issue in my Tiffin couldn't be fixed at a local dealership and it had to be sent back to the factory in Alabama so some of you asked about my garden I had to get rid of the garden so that Tiffin could take my rig and I didn't know how long they were going to have it and they certainly weren't going to water my plants right and at that point you know I had to give up something like that and I was really sick of having to give up my whole life my house and my car and my office every time I had a problem like this so that was already wearing on me but then when I got it back I decided that um that was not the right rig for me and I'm just going to leave it at that I will say however since I know a lot of you guys listen to you know my channel and other channels while you're trying to decide what kind of a rig to get I will say that I liked my first sprinter mercedes sprinter I've had the mercedes sprinter twice once on my b plus and once on my c and um I've heard other people complain about the sprinter they're expensive to fix but they get great gas mileage and if I had um the desire to build out a van I would absolutely consider a sprinter for the chassis but for me personally as a consumer I would not get like a b or a c on a mercedes sprinter again only because they don't carry a lot of weight and the manufacturers of course want to make them attractive with bathrooms and big tanks and nice kitchens and tv's and all that stuff but since they don't carry a lot of weight my feeling is that weight has to come from somewhere and I wonder you know behind all the bills and whistles um where that weight is coming from and I can tell you that when the guy pulled up next to me in that berry farm one of the problems I was having was with a slide and he pulled out his slide next to my slide and my slide looked like um a go kart slide I had the difference in the thickness of the materials and the thickness of the rubber and the seal and all that stuff I was like what it was just astounding okay the next question I got a lot was about the truck what do I need to pull this thing now I'll tell you we actually fell in love with a 41 foot fifth wheel but I wasn't going to go that big 35 was about the smallest that I saw that had a floor plan that worked for me to safely pull this rig I really needed uh like a 350 so I got a Ford f350 I could have gotten away with a 250 which would have been less expensive but I would have been at the max for the weight limit and I'm telling you guys after having the b in the c I wanted to be heavy I'm just going to be honest um those rigs were tall and light and so in the wind they were not fun to drive and I did a lot of research about either a trailer or a fifth wheel I liked how the fifth wheel maneuvered better and that the weight went into the back of the truck and um how it hitched up and unhitched I had to get the truck that went with that and I went with an f350 dually which I'm telling you when I go down the road people are like what's that little gray hair an old lady doing in the f350 dually again you guys I'm going to tell you in just a second how the money worked out but I needed to get a truck that I felt safe with that was the thing and that if I wanted to switch out my rig later again and get a different trailer or a different fifth wheel I could easily do that with the same truck and before I hit the money part I'm going to address one quick question that I got a few times in the comments which is that maybe I'm not safe because I'm inside my rig and I'd have to go outside my rig to get my truck to drive away I think a lady actually said and I quote I thought solo women weren't supposed to do that so look when I first got my first two rigs absolutely that was a consideration for me it was also a consideration in my choice but I have not had a problem when I get to a spot if I feel like it's sketchy at all I leave and if you guys have watched any of my past videos like no fear here I've said that my rig and now my rig in my truck are like home alone 2.0 I'm not naive I'm not dumb about the dangers out there but somebody would have a problem with me that's all I'm going to say I decided that this was a good choice for me I'll tell you I did consider this in my last rigs you know you have to unlevel you have to put in the slides you have to start the car you have to get away with this if I can make it to the truck I can peel out I don't have to worry about bringing up the leveling jacks or bringing on the slides so you never know what could happen but I just wanted to address that question okay let's talk about the elephant in the room let's talk about the money now most of the comments that I was surprised by were the ones that were kind of clicky you know like that's not an okay kind of a rig those kind of comments but the other ones were that I must be rich and that this was too glamorous of a vehicle and I must be a one percenter I you know I'll tell you I'm either really bad at math or I'm not a one percenter so I'm going to tell you guys exactly how the money worked out and here's the fact this rig my new fifth wheel was way less expensive than my last rig was I bought the class C it was a 2019 I knew exactly what I could get it for and by the way I did a video called cruise don't lose which was three months of research on how to determine if you're buying or selling at the best rate if you need that information go back and look at that because I knew what I could get that rig for I got a great deal on the tiffin when I went to trade in the tiffin I got for my trade $5,000 less than what I paid for it so I guess you can look at that as if I took a $5,000 loss but it wasn't 30% it was like 4% that was the loss that I took and for me that's a lot less than I would have paid to live in a house so I paid $5,000 to use that tiffin for a year and then the tiffin cost so much more than this new rig that I got essentially 24 grand back so I carefully considered the budget the lifestyle everything I did have to pay for some stuff that I didn't want to like taxes and insurance and registration on two vehicles now instead of one but when I took everything into consideration that was okay because I knew it was the right thing for me so essentially I traded in my tiffin and got a big check back which I used for the truck so you guys it was pretty much a wash except that one of the reasons that I wanted to get a fifth wheel was because I wanted to get a massive amount of solar Doug and I were walking around the RTR last year and we passed this guy with a remote control on his hand and he was pointing it at his fifth wheel and this just bank of solar panels came up on a tilt and we had to go over and talk to him and he gave us a tour of his fifth wheel and I was like wow I could only fit 400 watts of solar on my last rig and there was only room for two batteries underneath the steps and they couldn't be lithium so I am getting a whopper solar system put on because I'm a boondocker in the long run it does save me money because I don't pay to be in campgrounds very often that answers the next question which is are you still going to boondock some people thought that I wasn't going to be able to boondock in this rig look you guys this thing is going to be a boondocking champ I know lots of friends who have similar vehicles I've interviewed a lot of nomads that boondock just fine and I went through all of my favorite boondocking camping spots that I've been to I would say there are two that I wouldn't go to in this rig and frankly those two I had no business going to in my other rigs because the roads were too rough all of my favorite places no problem I can go in this rig the next question I got is are you just parked did you just buy a house to park why didn't you just buy a house well I've always said this is my house and no I have not gone off the road I'm not full timing in an RV park I have been in one space for about six weeks now I'll explain that to you guys later but it was just because of logistics and travel and the TED Talk and family over the holidays but pretty soon I'm heading back out to boondock in this thing and I cannot wait no I'm not quitting YouTube I'm not going off the road and yes I'm still solo when I decided to get this rig I had to make sure it was good for me alone and it would be good if I was with another person on the road Doug is not with me on the road Doug is my boyfriend if you guys are new to my channel he's invited and if he does this is a great rig for us because we're not hitting each other in the face with our elbows in here we can both stand in the kitchen at the same time and another really common question was how is it to drive like I said I was intimidated to tow anything and this was a big decision for me because you can't test drive a fifth wheel I had to come to terms with my fear because one motto that I've lived by for years is what one man can do another can do or what one woman can do another can do or whatever I know a lot of people and a lot of solo people that drive fifth wheels no problem hook up unhook no problem if they can do it I can do it so I think it's going to be okay but I am taking lessons because I don't want to hurt my new baby and I don't want to hurt my other new baby oh and by the way a couple of you asked me what the name of my RV is and the RV in the truck are Punxatani Fill which is a reference to grand talk day because Punxatani was the town that Bill Murray went to where every day he woke up and he could reinvent his life in the same space but every day he could create something new that's how I feel about this RV and now a word for the haters never mind I don't have time for the haters I wish them and everybody else the happiness and freedom that I found on the road and I'll see you guys on Sunday for the view queue if you have any other questions for me please do put them down below as always everybody have happy travels and be free