Gryphon & Butterfly's RV

The beast itself is a 25' long 1978 Dodge Southwind class A rig, with a 440 cubic inch engine, with a high performance aftermarket 4-barrel Eidelbrock carb on it, and a low-ratio diff. After quite a bit of work by qualified mechanics so it could pass even the extremely lax emissions tests required of such a beast, it gets about... 6 1/2 miles per gallon. Even Vern, my '63 Chevy pickup, got more than that. Fortunately, it's got dual 20 gallon tanks. And it may actually get around 9 or 10 mpg on the flats, but we haven't found any flats to try that out on yet.

The Yaga Hut
A full kitchen (on the left), though the (propane) oven is about the size for a pizza. You might be able to bake a cake in it. It's wide enough, just not very tall. There's a tiny old microwave above that, and then on the right, there's a very nice fridge, that'll run off AC, DC, and... propane! At the very back, there's full toilet facilities, and a 'deep shower', that can double as a tub. Two single beds, and a couch that folds out as a double... though not a particularly comfortable one. Big Freaking Amps generator
It's also got a generator that's worth more than half of what we paid for the entire RV... especially out here. One of the projects for Springtime is to do some wiring work on the house, that'll let us use the RV's generator to power the house. Or, at least, parts of it... it puts out plenty to run the fridge, stove and other essentials. I think the BFA stands for "Big Darn Amps".

It's... interesting, to drive. Yvonne drove it the last half of the way back, from a short trip into town for something... and when she got home she practically fell out of it, laughing hysterically, and said it was the most terrifying thing she'd ever driven. :P

I dunno... it definitely has its moments. Pretty unforgiving about lapses of attention... and kind of hard to recover from those lapses. A little scary when you hear your RV tires 'scrubbing,' when you've taken a curve a little too fast. And the way it leans... aiigh! But you get used to it. Sort of. And I gotta admit, there were some stretches down south of here, where the world opened up into these great flat tableaus, where the view out that front picture-window of a windshield was pretty damned amazing. Though for the sake of the photo below, you get the back of the tarp we cover it with, or the lightwash would be too much to see anything.

But there's a few details about that you might not expect. Like... when you reach for the rearview mirror, it's still a foot and a half out of reach. And that the passenger must remember to swivel their seat back forewards after exiting it, or you can't see out the right mirror... which is about 5 feet from you. The dash itself, nicely padded with stylish naugahide, is 14" deep, except for the driver's area, where it's a spacious 19" deep. And 91" wide... a bit over seven feet. This is where our collection of tasteful bobble-heads will go. The ENTIRE top of the dash hinges up, as you can see here, and you could hide a body in the space revealed. And those gaping darknesses above our Way Cool Prayer Flags (we need 'em...)? Space for TWO bodies, up there! Seriously... I can't even reach the front of that storage space.

And that if anyone forgets to latch the divider back in the 'open' position after they use the toilet, twenty feet behind you... you can't see out the back anymore, after a right-hand curve. Fortunately, a decent left-hander tends to slide it open again.