“Siesta” – noun, an afternoon rest or nap, especially one taken during the hottest hours of the day in a hot climate.

She’s a fine steed, capable and efficient

Our current choice of conveyance and abode. “Siesta” is a 2017 Thor Siesta class C motorhome. Built on a Mercedes Sprinter (how’s that for ironic, “Siesta” is a “Sprinter”) chassis and powered by a 3.0 liter diesel. 25 feet of compact comfort. She sports 200 watts of solar, over 200ah of lithium battery power, and a 2000 watt inverter. Fitting that there’s a lot of “twos” to be found, since she carries the two of us comfortably. More than that would be “close” at best and uncomfortable to embarrassing at worst. We like that she’s named Siesta, because we agree with naps. And if she was named “Marathon” or “Extreme” anything, that wouldn’t really be as good a fit. For example, instead of kayak racks and kite surfing storage, we have three tv’s.

Dutifully following along in a towed fashion, “SexAy”. Named for her model, xA, as well as her model good looks, she’s a 2006 Scion with a skosh over 100k miles. Just lookit her. With that hail dimpled hood, buck teeth and cables sticking out. Truly, a vision to behold. Four doors and relatively roomy for her size, while still having space for groceries and my inflatable SUP in the trunk. She gets as close to 40 mpg as makes no difference and tires for her were $37 a piece. Our relationship is smoothing out after I handled her pretty roughly initially. Tore out the steering column to disable the steering wheel lock, ripped off the front end to install the towing base plate, ran all sorts of wires through all sorts of orifices for towing lighting, slapped a hitch on her rear for the bike rack, and more. Somehow she still digs me and we get along great. Vicki’s fine with her. Tolerates her. I get it, it’s tough sharing my attentions.

So this contraption is what we’ve chosen as our method for bringing SexAy along. It’s a ReadyBrute tow bar by the fine folks at ReadyBrake. In any RV flat towing situation, there’s the need for a tow bar and some kind of braking system. This bar is clever in that it has a built in mechanical way of providing braking in the “toad”. Basically a cable pulls on the brake pedal in the car whenever you significantly brake in the RV. I like it, pretty clever. We pull the car up behind the rig, attach the two bars, then two safety cables, two braking cables, and the electrical connection for the brake lights on the car. If it sounds complicated, or the bar in it’s “resting” state above looks complicated, it’s really not. Actually, so far this trip we’ve only unhooked once we got to Florida. Our first two stops in SC and GA were pull through sites and we didn’t need to go anywhere, so SexAy stayed attached. Double check everything. Problems can still happen, as a couple of our pack members can attest, but it’s been a pretty good system for us so far.

So this setup was V’s idea. We had the bikes on this double carrier behind the little car, but she thought, why not use the extra unused space between them? There’s an over/under hitch extension where the tow bar goes in the bottom hole and the rack goes in the top hole. To our mind, better than other options because it makes our whole operation shorter and maybe provides some protection to the bikes. As an unintended bonus, the covered bikes provide shelter to the tow bar when it’s stowed.

So, in addition to the above pictured TV, we have two others. How gauche. We collect stickers and put them on the door. We hang keys here.

These recliners are great, but I’m gonna do a “first world problems” thing here. I would rather have a couch or the dinette option. These are pretty great for napping and we do have a table we can put in front of them, but you can’t nap across them like a couch and it would be nice to have a place to have four eat. Super comfy though, really.

We do have this option, to turn the front seats around. It’s okay; we really don’t do this often. A nice feature. Great place to don and doff shoes. Before you get all safety gotcha on me, the fire extinguisher is normally in it’s usual pictured place. No, I didn’t remove it because I was doing something risky, anticipating trouble. It was a vital reminder, laid elsewhere random, to remind me to do something important before closing the slides.

The kitchen (galley if you’re being a nautical douche. It’s not a boat). It’s a pretty usable space. Would we rather more? Sure. It works though. An oven would be nice. The microwave has a convection function that we’ve not used much. Good amount of storage.

Bow-chicka-wow-wow. A real queen size bed. One of the TV’s is on the wall opposite. The ceiling fan is 12v and makes it homey. Windows open for good ventilation and sounds of beach waves, chickens, whatever is making magical sounds wherever we are. There’s a wardrobe you can’t see on the right. And a pantry/liquor cabinet.

The bathroom (head, again for you nautical douche bags. It’s still not a boat.) is small, but comfortable. One of the furnace vents is in here, so in cold weather it’s nice and toasty for dressing and showering. Speaking of, the shower is compact, but I promise, workable. The bowl is porcelain, and if you run across a camping vessel that comes with a plastic one, run away or replace it immediately. Did I add a bidet that you might be able to see a small sliver of? Yes, I did. Can it provide hot water washing in addition to cold? Yes, it can. Stay tuned for my upcoming thorough bidet advocacy and educational post…