6 years, 9 months ago Mike Moyers
I guess FACEBOOK is good for something after all
“Sometimes you just gotta get weird.” Carl the greens keeper in “Caddyshack” said something like that and it’s always stuck.
So, last year after seeing something on FACEBOOK, my wife and I got weird and drove to a place called South Webster, Ohio.
Let’s start from the beginning.
In 2015 my family vacationed in Yellowstone National Park. We drove to Montana, picked up a 30 foot motor home and proceeded further west. I had never driven a motor home, but I thought, “what the heck?” It was a blast. My family had a great time, enjoyed the sights and really got to know one another again.
It’s amazing how close you can get when you go for a week without wifi!
Anyway, for the next 8 months all my family talked about was buying a motor home. I knew I couldn’t afford one, but what the heck?
One evening while enjoying an adult beverage I chanced upon a FACEBOOK post for one of these specialty groups. Motor homes and travel trailers were the featured items, so I joined up and starting looking. And what did I find? A motor home that I just might be able to afford.
It was a Winnebago Itasca Model on a Ford chassis with a 460 V-8 engine. A thirty-footer, that slept six and had just 35,000 actual miles on it. The model year was 1989 and the price: $5500.00.
That’s fifty-five-HUNDRED dollars.
So, I got the number of the owners and gave them a call. The Mrs answered the phone and proceeded to tell me all about it. Seems the motor home was a 2 owner that had pretty much been in storage. The first owner drove it 28,000 miles and owner number two drove it just 7000 miles. Age and health issues were the reasons given for selling the motor home. The lady sounded sincere so I thanked her and told her I would give it some thought. I called back a few days later and spoke with her husband and he pretty much told me the same story.
I showed my wife pictures of the motor home and kind of glossed over the story. She didn’t seem to be too interested so I put the project on the back burner.
On July 5th during a sales meeting here at STARadio I mentioned all this to my sales staff and they (all women) asked me what I was waiting for? “Go see the darn thing!” was pretty much the general response. So, I called the owners, asked them to hold the unit, and got the serial number. Then I checked with CARFAX and authenticated the vehicle’s history. It checked out. A call to the bank and a certified check was produced. And another call to my trusty State Farm agent and the vehicle was covered. Thank you Charles Scholz.
I finally got around to telling my wife we were going to Ohio.
We left Quincy at 3pm and arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio at midnight. The trip was great. We talked non-stop all the way.
After another call to the owners we headed to South Webster, Ohio the next morning. The motor home was just like it was described. Clean, well maintained, manuals in place and road ready. Well, almost. The tires had aged badly, so we bought a set at a local tire shop and headed home.
Three weeks later we took our $5500 motor home east on vacation. We saw the homes of James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. We took in all the sights in Washington D.C. We stayed on the beach in Virginia Beach, Virginia. And a few miles later stopped in 
Charlotte, North Carolina where we toured a number of NASCAR garages. We even went to the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
The Moyers family couldn’t have had a better time.
Over the Christmas holiday we took the motor home, containing 7 people, 5 bicycles and a dog, to Gulf Shores, Alabama for a week. It’s quite a vehicle.
I guess the reason I’m sharing all this is that sometimes you just have to get a little weird and not be afraid to take a chance on something.
We did and it’s been one of the best things that’s happened to us. It’s been a fun ride. There’s a lot out there we want to see.
But we want to see it as a family. And traveling in our vintage 1989 Winnebago is the way we want to see it.
