RV Show

Good morning, my friends, and happy Saturday. It was a busy day here yesterday. I had a little time for slow-stitching in the morning. I stitched enough on this Red Barn piece to decide to move my hoop to the right.

Now I've encompassed what remains of this one. I did a little more work on it yesterday afternoon, and I expect to finish it this morning. 

From there, we dropped Mike's truck off for some service and had breakfast at a very luxurious breakfast spot. Maybe you've heard of it. Maybe you even have one where you live: McDonald's. Yes...our beloved Egg McMuffins. No better breakfast in the whole wide world.

After that, we headed off to the Portland Expo Center for the RV show. There was some pretty fall color at the Expo Center.

These are rosehips.

This next one is a low-growing ground cover. My phone tells me it's known as Cotoneaster. It's popular here in the Northwest.

There was nothing at the RV show that made us want to buy anything, but it's always fun to look at what's new in the industry. We've seen waves of changes over the years. At one time the floor plans were all pretty much the same. Now, there are about three different variations on a theme. Also, there was a period when all the new ones had dishwashers. Well. We really wanted that. When we bought our current fifth wheel, a dishwasher was listed as an option, but it was no longer available. Mike ended up installing ours. This year, we didn't see a single dishwasher in any of them, no matter the size of the rig.

So I took lots of pictures, and I'll tell you about what caught our eyes. First off, this brand is the new kid on the block. We've seen them in our travels, but we haven't been inside. They're pretty much like all the others except possibly a little more modern in appearance.

This swing-down patio configuration was only seen with toyhauler style rigs in the past. Now, we saw a lot of rigs with this outdoor patio. The one pictured here had a wet bar in the back. Some had huge televisions. This rig is intended for people who want to experience the great outdoors without ever actually going outdoors.

I liked some of the takes on dining configurations. We saw many where the seats were facing directly toward the window. I would like that. The better to keep tabs on and and pass judgment on your neighbors, doncha know. This configuration would make a good sewing space too.

There was a new style of refrigerator featured in some of them. And let me just say that a lot of these RV's were really intended to be driven to a spot and parked permanently. They're mobile, but they require hook-ups. This refrigerator is a residential style refrigerator, which means it only runs on electricity. If you want to keep your food cold driving down the road, they must be able to run on propane as well. And here's something else...see that little shelving unit there in the upper right-hand corner? We saw a lot of shelves like that. So, are you going to remove everything when you go down the road? You'd have to in order to avoid breakage.

The closets were interesting. We saw several rigs with walk-in closets. A lot of the manufacturers focused on adding shelving for shoes. 

Here's another one. There's lots of shelving there. Here's the problem I see with this. Those bars for clothing will be stuffed full, and those shelving units will be inconveniently inaccessible. I like the idea of shoe storage, but this is not a good solution.

Here's another one where the bar is directly in front of the shelves.

To the right, this one had a laundry hamper. I liked that.

We saw several "dressers" like this where the flat top raised up to reveal storage beneath.

This fifth wheel has one of the newer floor plans. We started seeing these a few years ago. In most fifth wheels (ours included), the door is located kind of in the middle of the rig. Coming through the door of ours, the kitchen is straight across, living room to the left, and bedroom and bathroom is up two steps and to the right. In this floor plan, the living room is up two steps and to the right.

The kitchen is to the left, and looking to the left of the image below, you can see two steps up leading to the bedroom at the back end of the rig.

When we purchased ours, we had to request a king-size bed. Now, I'd say the majority had the option of a king bed. And this rig had a nice bedroom. The bathroom was at the very back of the rig. Many of them had half baths located elsewhere. In such a small space, a second bath seems a waste of space to me, but I suppose if you have a larger family or do much entertaining, that would be nice.

The bathrooms have been upgraded from earlier years. We saw at least two with his and hers sinks.

And check out the shower in this one. And oh look! There's a woman photobombing her own photo.

Yeesh. I'd probably need to read the instructions for this before I could take the first shower. When I looked at it initially, I thought it had some sort of remote control device attached, but no. It has two shower heads. And square faucet handles. 

Here's another very large shower with a fold down bench. Nice. There's that woman again. 

 

New to the show this year were some rigs that RVers would call "park models." They're like tiny mobile homes, intended to be towed to a place and set up permanently. This one had two loft-style sleeping areas in addition to the regular bedroom.

We saw several rigs with spiral staircases like this. 

Wanna see what's up there?

Here's a different park model.

This was a huge rig...about ten feet longer than ours. But look at all that storage space underneath!

The "floor" pulls out for easy access.

A few of them now sport residential ovens. This is probably the bane of most RV cooks' kitchens. The ovens are terrible. I don't know if these residential ovens are an improvement, but they certainly wouldn't be any worse.

If we'd been in the market for an RV, this one would have had my heart. It had an "office" in the very back. Any RV quilter knows that this is a sewing room. And look at those windows. So much light! And storage to the right.

Even it's own back door!

This next photo is of the same room, but taken standing outside the door.

Be still, my beating heart.

This was a different rig, but it had a separate table that could have been used to set up a computer. It would make a good sewing space too.

Okay, and our eyes were getting full after several hours. We decided to head for home and have lunch and naps. We still had to pick up Mike's truck at the dealer. Fortunately there were leftovers for dinner because that was a full day.

Oh yes, and I told you I'd get back to you about these white Sharpie pens. Thanks to those of you who wrote to tell me about some of the Bohin mechanical pencils with white "lead" and the Chaco liner pens. I have those markers, and they're good markers for marking, say, quilting designs. The marks are not permanent, though, and that's what I was looking for with these Sharpie pens.

The question I wanted to answer after my last post was whether they would bleed if used on fabric. Could they be used to trace an embroidery design onto dark fabric? Well, as it turns out, no. They don't bleed, but they also don't show up. I could see the mark I made on fabric, but it quickly faded into the fibers. Same goes for the paper. The marks are only permanent on a non-porous surface. So, they'll work great for the grids I'm drawing on photo paper, but that's probably about the extent of their usefulness in my sewing room.

So today I've assigned myself a couple of small housekeeping chores. I was doing a better job of getting in some kind of workout earlier in the week. The past two days have been busy, and so I missed my workouts. I'll get back to that today too. But first...slow-stitching. My life depends on it.