RV Newbie 🚌 Would I Buy My Winnebago Travato Again? 🤷🏻‍♂️ Van Life RV Travel Day 📍

In today's video, I'm going to talk about my Travato, the things i love, the things i hate, and i'll answer the question would I still buy it knowing what i know now. what is going on youtube greetings from las vegas nevada actually a few miles outside of las vegas nevada if you've been watching my videos you know i'm staying on a military campground right now at nellis air force base but it is crazy crazy crazy hot here it's been getting up to 102 103 degrees every day and stayed at that temperature for like four or five hours so it's just too hot to do anything so it's time for me to move somewhere a little bit cooler and so i'm headed to california i'm going to my first thousand trails campsite i'm actually going there on business i met a really cool ballerina and her boyfriend online and they have this really interesting remodeled all pink rv so that's what i'm going to do i'm going to meet them there and do a little tour but i figured i'd share with you my transition day and also how i feel about purchasing this winnebago travado am i still happy with it or do i wish i had gotten something else all right so let me get the van ready for departure then we'll hit the road talk about the travado and maybe stop at a cool little place on the way to california all right so i moved into my winnebago about four months ago and i've been on the road living out of it full time for about three months i left missouri june 17th of 2020 and today is september 21st of 2020 so three months on the road full time and there are some good things and some bad things about this winnebago trovato so i figured i'd share those with you today the main good thing is it's a great little apartment to live in i love it it's very comfortable i love the open floor plan of the k it's exactly why i got this rv it's been a great boondocking rig like i mentioned i've been on the road full time for 90 days now about 60 to 70 of that has been on blm or national forest land boondocking and it's lived up to its expectations the volta system is amazing i always have power even though the water tanks are small and the black and the gray tanks are small i've been able to work around that and it hasn't really been an issue for me to be honest with you i can stay out about two to three weeks i think without needing to go into town i usually go into town about every week or so when i'm boondocking the only problem is usually trash or i run out of food another thing i love about this winnebago is how comfortable the drive is it's like i'm driving a car i've never driven an rv before and i still feel like i haven't driven an rv because really it's just a van and it's just really easy to drive i mentioned the volta system earlier that's another thing about this vehicle that i love and probably the biggest reason i bought this winnebago if there were more dealers that had the volta system maybe i would have had more choices and more options and maybe i would have chose a different rig but the volta system is simply amazing if you haven't watched my video where i run the ac for almost nine hours in a hundred degree desert weather out here in nevada you should check that video out it really is a power monster and probably my favorite thing about this rig all right we're getting ready to stop here real quick when i do transition trips that are long like today's transition trip is about five hours i usually like to find a cool spot to stop so we're about an hour into my drive and there's a really really cool spot to stop so we're gonna stop there real quick and i'll share the experience with you so i'm in a really cool spot about 40 minutes outside of las vegas called nelson ghost town so nelson has kind of a really interesting history it was a mining town and it kind of had a sketchy reputation it was pretty lawless actually a lot of deserters during the civil war came here um to escape the fighting and not to be drafted into the civil war so it had this reputation for being just a lawless town at some point a really bad flood came through the area and basically the town was abandoned and all these buildings were left here a family bought the property and have kind of maintained it they charge ten dollars to get in and you can just walk around here looking at all the old buildings and all the old cars it's actually a great place to come and take like instagram shots um if you're near vegas it's just a cool place to stop so i highly recommend it i'm gonna walk around a little bit and show you some of the uh the cool little things i got going on here if you're enjoying this video please hit that thumbs up button and leave a comment below telling me where you're watching from the youtube algorithm will show this video to more people the more thumbs up and the more comments i have so i appreciate you doing that also make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don't miss any of my weekly videos all right so i know this plane did not crash here but it's still kind of cool as someone who spent 20 years in the navy to see a navy i think this is a training aircraft if any of my navy buddies can tell me what it is comment down below but i'm pretty sure because it says t288 this was a training plane for pilots not an actual in-service uh jet look at this old travel trailer here i have a feeling a lot of people in my audience would like to get their hands on this thing can you imagine how cool it would be to refurbish this thing look at that that's so cool it looks kind of like an airstream but it's much much fatter than an airstream so if you know what kind of trailer this is uh comment down below i'm thinking it's some sort of airstream or airstream wannabe company that's out of business now but kind of cool so how cool is this thing so one of the big complaints about these old vws is that you can't stand up in them well somebody basically welded the top of a bug onto this so you could stand up in this thing so that's pretty cool right there the inside needs some work though all right so nelson ghost town that was a lot of fun but let's hop back in the van and head to california and some cooler weather i think it's like 101 degrees right now i mean i'm dying the sun is just beating down on me so let's do this all right let's talk about some of the things about my travato that really annoy me or really really ticked me off so one of the things that really ticks me off is the sound system in the living area is terrible it's a jensen head unit it doesn't integrate very well with anything in the van that it's supposed to integrate with doesn't integrate well with the tv if you do the tv volume do the jensen it's usually behind a little bit so it's just it's almost unwatchable also the speakers in this van i've blown probably half of them so i've blown two in the back and one here in the front and in my opinion the speaker system should match the max volume of the unit that you have i've never been a fan of jensen's this experience has made me like them even less so i'll probably get my own units for this van all right the tv you can barely hear the tv and if you turn the ac on high you're not going to be able to hear the tv at all so that's kind of an issue when you live in your van and you want to watch some tv the next thing i didn't like about this winnebago were the screens that came with it i wish i still had them so i could show you but they're terrible they're kind of hard to use there's these little latches that they go on and mine were just falling off all the time and they were just a pain to fold up so i bought some van made gear ones winnebago you should reach out to van mate gear and use their product for your side windows they're a little pricey but i would have paid for them from the beginning just to not have to deal with the ones that came with the van all right so i'm getting ready to turn onto a main road so i want to concentrate on driving but when i get to california when i get to the thousand trails campsite i'll talk about some of the things that really really annoy me about this travato and make me question some of the quality choices that winnebago made all right i should have filmed myself getting into this spot but i got a spot as you see here it's very steep and it's really loose dirt and with my front wheel drive it was kind of hard to get in here so i wish i would have filmed it because you would have laughed your butt off at it but i'm gonna go ahead and set up my rig and i think i'm gonna wait till tomorrow to talk about the things that kind of upset me about the rig it's late in the evening and i want to get finished getting set up here so although you won't notice it because it's going to happen in an instant so here's tomorrow good morning from idy wild california it's kind of crazy it's only 55 degrees here this morning after spending the last two weeks in 100 degree weather it's really nice to be in some cool weather here in the mountains in california that's kind of what i love about this van life when you get tired of a location or you get tired of hot or cold weather you can just hop in your van drive a few hours and be in a completely different climate a different area a different culture all of that stuff it's really great and it's why i love van life but i mentioned there are some things about this van and winnebago's quality assurance that kind of bother me and i'll i'll show you that right now so back here is my bathroom and when i bought this van i envisioned myself using this shower but i really don't use it very often it's kind of a pain to set up there's a kind of a closet back here as you'll see so it's a place to store clothes but it also is something that can get wet so you have to cover it so you put a shower curtain up so there's all these little things right here that you can snap the shower curtain in but it's kind of a pain you can't access your closet so you can't really leave it up and it's just not convenient i wish this whole area back here was a shower room and then i could just shower back here without any kind of worry i wish the design was thought out a little bit better now i do know a lot of k owners that use this shower all the time and they're happy with it it just doesn't work for me so that's not really a quality issue but it's kind of a design issue for me so let's talk about the quality issue so initial appearance my bathroom looks fine but you'll notice here this little button right here once i push it in it's over it's like this thing is just broke and doesn't work and it's just a real pain in the rear end especially like right now it's just it gets stuck in there and it's not working like this how it's supposed to work and that was the drawer i used the most so it broke so it makes me think that all these other ones at some point are going to have issues and for that drawer when i first did it it was really stuck and i had to use a knife to kind of pry it open now it's kind of damaged and i know it's something that'll be covered by the warranty but it's still kind of annoying that only three to four months into rv life that that drawer is all right let's talk about some other things that are broke in my bathroom so here's the mirror i like having this mirror in this cabinet i keep a lot of stuff in there i don't now because it's broke and i'll show you what i mean so this came loose and this one's probably going to come loose at some point again i know it's a warranty issue and i can get it taken care of via warranty let me try to get this back in here but it kind of sucks that i paid as much as i paid for this and after two to three months i'm having that kind of issue with it so that's a quality issue to me i would have liked higher-end finishes so that kind of stuff wouldn't happen i know i take this thing off-road a lot more than people do but this is a national park edition travato it's got all-terrain tires put on and i hope that's not for looks it's supposed to be able to go to off-road places and not have those kind of issues so that really annoys me i'll show you another similar issue so this sink i love this sink i use it all the time but i haven't been able to use it for the last month because this it's coming apart and i tried to fix it but it's so cheaply done that the little grommets broke off in there that i can't even fix it you know and so that's annoying so now i can't use what i consider my main sync again a quality issue i'll show you another one so so the national park edition comes with these screens this screen is pulling down the ceiling so this is something i'll need to get fixed it's really noticeable from the outside and again it's another finishing touch on this travato that's kind of annoying and it's really aggravating that i'm having to deal with this after just you know my fourth month of owning this right all right so all of those flaws and quality issues aside to be honest with you i really really love this van i love the freedom it's provided me i love the places that it's taken me i love that i can explore the united states canada and mexico kind of on my own terms i love the systems in this vehicle the volta system is top-notch and probably the number one reason why i bought this van but the other systems too the truma combi system that heats the water and the van the water pump system it's all worked great i love the open floor plan my van really feels like home it feels like my studio apartment on wheels and i absolutely adore this van despite all those flaws that i talked about would i like there to be some better finishes in here and some better quality on some of the things that are included with the van absolutely but would i purchase this van again absolutely i love this travado and i'm just really happy with my purchase you enjoyed this video please hit the like button and if you're new to this channel i make videos every single week about my travels in this van and my travels internationally so hit that subscribe button if you're interested in that kind of content thanks for watching you

Channel: 30 And A Wake Up

Views: 253,534

Keywords: rv living, rv, van life, vanlife, #vanlife, winnebago, winnebago travato, camper van, campervan, travato, tiny house on wheels, living in a van, rv newbie, rv life, full time rv living, rv living full time, full time rv, rv travel, fulltime rv living, rving, rv living tips, camping, rv full time, tiny house, rv tips, rv living for beginners, rv living cheap, cheap rv, cheap rv living, full timing, class b, class b rv, rv lifestyle, living in an rv, 30 and a wake up

Id: 2B-zNp4ATPI

Length: 17min 19sec (1039 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 08 2020