Pros and cons of renting an RV from Cruise America

We just got back two days ago from a long RV trip - almost 3 weeks - in which we rented a 25 foot class C RV from Cruise America. I'm not going to go into the details of the trip, but I do want to jot down a few notes on how the actual RV rental worked out. Also, since the trip was also meant to help us decide if we should buy an RV, I'd like to jot down a few notes on that as well.

In Canyon Creek campground, close to Bend

Overall, I was happy with the trip. We had great experiences, the weather was outstanding almost all the time (baring a forest fire here and there!), and we saw some really beautiful sights. Now, for a more pro/con way of looking at things.

Pros

• It's good to have everything with you, there's not the dislocation of moving from one hotel to another, and hauling luggage around. Over a longer trip, this makes a big difference.
• You can cook food in the RV. We did eat some meals in restaurants, but mostly we ate very simple meals (think spaghetti noodles with spaghetti sauce, with a can of fruit) in the RV.
• You stay in campgrounds, which are generally very friendly places. We had great talks with people just walking around the campground, and striking up conversations. If you're staying in a hotel, that just doesn't happen.
• You can also stay in campgrounds with a tent, but putting up and taking down a tent as for as many different places as we stayed at - that would have ended up being a huge hassle, and a trip like that wouldn't have worked.
• You don't need to plan as much as you would if you were staying in hotels. Mostly we just showed up at campgrounds, and were able to stay there. A couple times (usually Friday and Saturday nights, which, as summer weekends, were much more booked than other nights), we just pulled off the side of the road, or at a trailhead, and spent the night there. This kind of flexibility wouldn't have been possible if we'd stayed in hotels.

Cons

• Driving this big, very rattly RV was exhausting. Eric did all the driving, and even though we kept the hours of driving very low (some days we didn't drive at all, some we drove 1 or 2 hours, only the first and last day did we drive more than 3), it was a strain, much more so than driving a car would have been.
• You don't have a small car with you, to do little trips. No matter where you want to go, you're taking the big rig with you.
• Renting an RV like this is expensive! It would have been quite a bit cheaper to take our car, and stay in hotels.
• The actual RV that we rented was a disappointment. Everything worked, more or less (except the cold water faucet handle on the shower came off, we had to use a pair of pliers!), but the RV was VERY old, rattly, like I mentioned above, and not very clean. Every time I sat down on the upholstery, I shuddered a bit because it was really just grungy. A rental car is much, much cleaner in comparison.

Cato University!

I attended Cato University this past week. It was a tremendously illuminating time, I met all kinds of interesting people that I would never run into in my normal everyday life, and I was absolutely blown away by the quality of the speakers. I've been exposed to a lot of the economic and philosophical theory behind libertarianism before, but this week was truly special, and I also learned just how much I didn't know.

These are my people!

Notes from our trip to Costa Rica

Just a quick blog post with a few notes on our trip to Costa Rica, to visit our good friends Steve and Ilana, with their kids Benji and Marina. They've been teaching at an international school there for a year now, and are happy and tanned, but we really miss them!

Most of the pictures are here, but I put a few noteworthy ones below as well.

Here's a couple things that struck me:

• My Spanish reappeared! I used to be fairly fluent (almost 25 years ago!), and it substantially came back. It helped that, before going, I had watched a lot of the TV show Arrested Development on Netflix, in Spanish. I was planning on doing more - trying to find a tutor for conversation practice, etc - but I'm glad I didn't, since my Spanish was good enough.
• The currency is Colones, and there's about 500 to the dollar, so it's easy to figure out the approximate price in dollars
• In San Jose, there were security people all over the place, the "guards" to whom you pay money to watch your car, also lots of security personal at the stores (for instance, the tiny little Claro cell phone store had their own security guard who opened the door for us)
• Our kids had an awesome time playing with Benji and Marina. Peter usually played with Marina, and Kenny with Benji. Peter said, "It's kind of like we're two teams, me and Marina, and Kenny and Benji".
• We really liked the "Soda" home style restaurant. Usually food was very well cooked, and really reasonable. I usually had rice, beans, platanos (baked sweet plantains), some salad, and some type of meat (chicken or beef). 
• Road closure can suck. The lodge we stayed at in the La Fortuna area was behind a road which was closed by a landslide, so we had to do a long detour many times during our stay. 

After boogie-boarding, building a fort with the boards

One of many dinners at Soda Osiris - we loved that place!

A mud bath

Road closure - No Hay Paso!

Squeeze pouch beans for lunch

Zipline tour