Red Bay, Alabama - Home of Tiffin Motorhomes

8/14 to 8/26

When we decided to go fulltime, we concluded that our current motorhome, a Tiffin Allegro Open Road 32CA, probably wasn't going to be best choice.  Since it is only 1 year old, it seems a bit early to be looking for a new one.  It's original purpose was to allow us to take 3-4 month trips and then return to a home base somewhere.  It did those functions perfectly.  We were gone on extended trips last year and again this spring, but we felt lost when we returned to our sticks and bricks house.  We missed traveling; we felt lost in the big house; we were bored.   

We had initially planned late last year to relocate to New Mexico and use that as our base to explore the west.  And then we changed our minds...

We had visited Lazy Days while we were in Florida in April.  We hadn't made any decisions and really were just going to look at a few Tiffin models we had not seen.  We looked at gassers (the popular 36LA and new 31SA), some Allegro Reds (entry level diesel pushers) and finally a couple of Phaetons (much more upscale diesel pushers).  Nice place to look at new motorhomes but we could tell that this was a high overhead operation and probably not a place to buy.  But it was fun to look.

So we did our due diligence and started checking out Winnebago and Newmar motorhomes.  Our local Winnebago dealer wasn't too far away so we went to snoop.  Both he and the next closest dealer didn't really stock too many of the diesel models.  Hard to compare when you have nothing to look at.  Newmar was a bigger disaster - no Newmar dealer within 200 miles of us had any stock - an occasional gas unit, but no diesels, not even used ones.  When you live 50 miles from Washington, DC in one of the wealthiest regions of the country, few dealers and minimal stock says something is amiss. 

We knew Tiffin, we knew how the Tiffin dealer network was configured, and we felt comfortable with the Tiffin products.  We have had an excellent experience with our little Open Road (and we might be the only motorhome in Red Bay that isn't here for service).  So it was going to be another Tiffin product.

Procrastination does have its benefits...

We looked at enough floorplans online that we might be experts in what is where in each model.  We had seen some of the new ones for 2013 at Lazy Days and were really impressed with at least two of them - the Allegro Red 33AA and the Phaeton 36GH.  The Red was eliminated as it didn't have enough basement storage, and the Phaeton was looking better and better.  And then Tiffin released their Phaeton dealer update and 2014 pricelists (thanks Tiffin RVNetwork) and we got serious.

We placed our order with Sherman RV in Sherman, MS the last week in June.  Our house closed July 26th and we arrived in Red Bay, production schedule in hand, August 14th, the day the chassis went into the weld shop.

We are currently staying at the fabulous Red Bay Self-Service campground.  At $20/night, $100/week with full hookups its really not too bad for a gravel lot.  Lots of other Tiffin owners to talk to and we have had fun swapping stories and quick fix tips as well.  While we could have moved over to the regular Tiffin campground, we decided to stay here as we were not here for repairs and the Service Center is doing a booming business the last couple of weeks.

Added benefit - free rainbows!

We found out later that we could have stayed for free at the Service campground but after riding our bikes through there, I'm glad we stayed in the Self-Service Campground.