Cruise the American way!

Given how fast we're moving we wanted to make a quick decision on which RV company to hire from.

We quickly came to CruiseAmerica vs. Camping World here in the bay area and went with CruiseAmerica since they had the clearer pricing, better web site and a bunch of excellent videos describing their vehicles on YouTube.

Given our family of five (two adults and three children - two boys and a girl) we settled on the Standard RV as the smallest vehicle that will meet our needs. The smaller RV will be a lot more maneuverable on the road and more easily accommodated at the camp grounds I'm guessing!

I've got to say that driving around with huge corporate logos on your vehicle is the best of American kitsch - in for a cultural penny, in for a pound, I say! (We chose Wells Fargo as our bank because of the stage coach, after all).

We're pretty sure we're going to do a little more than the 700 miles used for the estimate so we're guessing the RV rental costs will be around $1000 when all's said and done. ~$143 per day for 7 days or ~30/day per person - seems like a good start for a vacation that'll probably be around $2000-2500 overall!

Note that we didn't take the kitchen or personal kits. Our idea is to treat this as a family camping holiday on wheels - we'll just leave our tent behind and take all the other gear (including sleeping bags, etc with us). This'll be just  a step-up from the car-boot camping we've been doing ever since we've had children!

We're picking up the RV from Alum Rock Ave in San Jose. I talked to Jasmine over there who told me that we're welcome to drive over in our car and transfer the gear and leave the car parked there for the week - so we really are only taking stuff that'll fit in our car!