It’s Official
April 24, 2013—Whoo! The Journey is registered in Colorado.
Just a few hoops to jump through.
In early March, we bought the Journey in Phoenix, AZ. It had a New York title that listed a lien holder so we needed a notarized letter releasing the lien—which the owners had, yea! In New York the previous owner keeps the license plates so we needed Arizona to issue temporary license plates to drive back to Colorado and we had to get to Colorado in 60 days. No sweat, right?
To work this all out, it took
- A call to the Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) in Arizona to see if we could get temporary tags.
- Another call to AZ MVD because two different people verifying the same question always seems to be a good idea.
- A call to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in Colorado to make sure we’d have all the paperwork needed to issue a title.
- Another call to CO DMV to verify we really had 60 days to get back home—who wants to drive a rig over Red Mountain Pass, the #2 most dangerous pass in CO in early March? Not us.
- A call to our insurance company, Foremost*, to obtain insurance which is required by Colorado to register a vehicle.
- A bit of paperwork: bill of sale and NY title signed over to us plus the addition of the notorized lien release.
- A trip and 30 minute wait at the MVD in Scottsdale AZ to get temporary tags—where we were told we couldn’t get temporary tags…
What? We verified with two people! - A consult with an MVD manager and in fact, for $15, 90-day temporary tags are issued to non-residents in AZ! (c:
- A month-and-a-half waiting in Las Cruces, New Mexico for it to stop snowing on Red Mountain Pass in CO (the most direct route to our home base is over this pass).
- A long detour around Red Mountain Pass because the weather forecast was wrong the day we left for home—it snowed on the pass and conditions were icy!
- A call to DMV in Montrose to figure out who did our VIN inpsection: the City or the County.
- A trip to the Montrose City Police Department to prepay for a VIN inspection ($15).
- A visit from a Montrose Police officer to do the VIN inspection. Note: This is a surefire way to peel everyone in the RV park away from their TVs and out walking their dog. (c;
- Lastly, a trip to the DMV in CO to pay taxes and license fee, get a title, and our very lovely CO plates!
Glad to have that done. Was it worth it? You bet. Now it’s back to figuring out where and what we’ll be doing this summer.
* We’ve since dropped Foremost in favor of Geico. We have a couple rock chips in our windshield that we thought we might get repaired and while the Foremost website says that this might be covered by policy—no one we spoke to at Foremost could tell us if our policy actually covered this without submitting a claim and sending out an adjuster to look at rock chips!
Adios Casita
March 31, 2013—We delivered our Casita to its new owner yesterday in West Texas. She was the first person to contact us and had been looking for a fiberglass egg in which to full-time for a while. She got the whole shebang—the solar system, AGM batteries, and barely-used generator. Here’s the last pic of our Casita at its new home; a blank slate ready for the new owner to make it her own.
We bought a Casita not knowing how long we’d use it but knowing that it should be easy to sell if things didn’t work out. Well it worked out much better than expected and two-and-a-half years later, we have great memories, have made many new friends, explored a lot of nooks and crannies in the States, and have been able to spend much more time with our friends and family than when we lived in sticks and bricks.
One of our friends asked “How many Casitas would fit in our new rig?” Well, M., it looks like about three. (c;
Casita Bonita SOLD
March 30, 2013—Indeed, the first person to contact us is now the new owner of our Casita.
March 15, 2013—Looks like the first person who contacted us about the Casita will be the new owner. We accepted an offer today and will be working out the purchase details. If all goes well, we should be delivering Casita Bonita to the new owner at the end of March. We sure will miss our little Casita; it’ll be a great home for the new fulltiming owner though. Loved to see the smile on her face!
March 12, 2013—After much debate, we’ve decided to sell our 17′ Casita Spirit Deluxe. We’ve had an awesome time traveling the country the past two and a half years with the Casita in tow, have made new friends along the way, and created great memories.
It was time for a change though. Soooo….what are we up to now?
A New (to us) Journey
March 10, 2013—After months of looking and almost giving up, we found a 2003 Winnebago Journey in Phoenix.
We got lucky! We bought it from the original owners who kept it in mint condition, kept all of the original documentation, and had all maintenance records. So we’ll continue to roam the country for a while working as we go.
We’ll still have the best of both worlds (at least we hope): We’ll have a homebase in the Journey (aka the mobile condo) and if we want to get outdoors where the Journey can’t go we can always park it and take off in the Xterra with our camping/backpacking gear. (c:
After a long day caravanning (Jim in the Journey and Julie towing the Casita) from Phoenix, we’re parked in Las Cruces enjoying views of the Organ Mountains while we get the Casita ready for new owners.
We spent a lot of time hiking around the southwest the summer of 2012. We started out with some of our favorite hikes around our old hometown of Leadville Colorado. Yet, we spent most of our summer hiking in Southwest Colorado from a homebase at Molas Lake.
