Touring Our Outside Storage Compartments - 2016 Winnebago View 24G

 Happy happy happy birthday to my wonderful darling husband Steve. This little cartoon depicts him perfectly and catches his personality.

See what I mean? That's my guy!

He woke up early at 6:00 a.m. but I beat him to the punch. I had the oven going and baked him up his absolute most favorite coffee cake. The cinnamon swirl is so delicious, but it takes 45 minutes to bake. In the meantime the house is so full of wonderful smells that he is drooling by the time it is ready to come out. We each enjoyed a piece with our coffee this morning and there's plenty left over for the next few mornings. 

He kicked back with his coffee cake and his mug of coffee while he was still in his Superman jammy pants. Today he turns 65 years old. He is now officially on Medicare! I'm a few years behind him yet. 

Of course his very special birthday present (it's actually for both of us) is our new to us 2016 Winnebago View. Our last few blog posts dealt with how we arranged things on the inside. Now here is a blog post about the outside compartment storage bins.

There are three compartments down the passenger side, and one big huge compartment on the back, underneath the slide out for the queen bed.

Down the driver's side underneath the living room slide there are two more compartments, and one more on the far back corner. 

I MADE A CUTE LITTLE 

YOUTUBE VIDEO 

ALL OF THE WAY AROUND 

TO SHOW WHAT'S IN 

EACH COMPARTMENT. 

THE PHOTOS BELOW

GO INTO MORE DETAIL

OF WHAT IS IN EACH ONE.

I will start on the passenger side right next to the entry doorway. This is the most used compartment right next to the steps because it's on the patio side of the rig.

For now we have our most commonly used things there like Thermacell for mosquitoes, a little battery operated LED lantern, and the folded up patio mat. Behind that is a tote bin with our patio lights and a picnic tablecloth and a couple geegaws we hang from the awning. The little packages down front are some extra tie-down straps, some bungee cords, some little packets of campfire color powder. You throw a packet in the campfire and it makes beautiful pretty flames. A real hit with the grandkids!

We are trying to not put too much in this compartment because we may expand our battery bank in the future. Right now there are two 12 volt batteries in a compartment underneath the steps. But we may add on two more and connect them through the wall of this compartment so they are all together. We will monitor our battery usage and see where we are at before we decide to expand anything.

In the next compartment running down the passenger side is the Onan 3600 watt LP generator. It runs perfectly and has been routinely maintained and taken care of. There are only 300 hours on it. We don't plan to use it very often, but it does need to be exercised under load at least once a month for a period of time to make sure it stays operational. 

In the final compartment down the passenger side is called the wet bay compartment. It is not carpeted and has a sloped bottom.  It is a bay that you can put wet or muddy things and not worry about making such a mess. Right now we have a variety of things just kind of tossed in there. It still needs organization. But there are some kneeling pads and some leveler blocks in there as well as the dog tie out rope and pooper scooper. Can't forget that! There's an extra black 30 amp extension cord as well as a windshield squeegee on a telescoping pole. This compartment will get reorganized later. We even bought some nice velcro carry strap handles to put around the electric cords to help keep them neat and tidy. Then it will get put over in the other electrical bay. 

Now to the back side of the motorhome. We have a queen size bed in the back bedroom with a slide that comes out about 3 ft. The rest of the space under the bed is accessible through this very wide compartment door. We have put in two zero gravity recliners, two folding sit-up lawn chairs, and a big stiff rugged doormat.  This matt is the first thing set out in front of our stairs when we stop for the night. It helps to keep the dirt and pine needles from being tracked in.

I also have a wooden folding chair that I use if I am spinning on my spinning wheel because it helps me sit upright better than a lawn chair. I also use it with a folding table for my sewing machine if I am sewing outside. At this time my regular portable sewing table is too large for this compartment, so I am hunting around now and shopping for one that's a little smaller. There's also a little fold up wooden TV tray table we use between our lawn chairs. Not sure if we're going to keep that in there or not yet. There's also an emergency container of orange triangles that could be set up in the case of a problem alongside the road. So that's about it for that compartment. It looks quite full but it's really a lot of space taken up by bulky lawn chairs. 

The last compartment on the driver's side serves two purposes. One is that it has the water manifold which is the control center for all the water going into the rig. There's also an external shower that could be used to hose off sandy feet or a muddy dog or just to rinse off something before it's put back into another compartment. There are low point drains here as well as the gray water pull lever for draining and a pump that pushes it over to the outlet near the black tank. 

The other part of this compartment is the electrical bay. In here we have various adapters and the surge protector, as well as the main shore power cord. There is a little cutout area that the cord runs down through so the door can be shut and locked tight. The cord is still out and plugged into a post. The other extension cord will get rolled up and stored in here too. The far back portion of this area are the coaxial outlets if you wanted to hook up to an external satellite dish or hook to park cable. Why they are way in there at the back of this compartment is beyond me? I can't imagine them being easy to reach in and screw on and off with a cable fitting?

The middle compartment on the driver side actually exposes the black tank and the dumping valve. This is the area to fill the propane tank and an emergency shut off switch. I am very glad that Winnebago located the drain valve up to the middle of the rig, rather than hanging out the back end like some other brands. My brother has the personal experience of ripping off his entire drain system on a rutted area of a campground and losing the entire contents of his gray and black tank all over the ground! Talk about a fiasco!!!!  What a horrifying mess in the middle of a hot Sunday afternoon in a crowded county campground!  Ewwwwwww

The foremost compartment on the driver's side is "Steve's Area". Here he keeps his Blackstone flat top griddle and all of his grilling tools in a white metal tote. He carries along a couple 1 lb propane cylinders as well as a 5 lb refillable propane tank. Behind that he has a tote bag of tools and a small Coleman lantern. Last but not least, are the marshmallow roasters!

We're going to find a way to transport our two fishing rods and fishing tackle ---- maybe in a fold down type case. Otherwise they may have to ride up in the top bunk inside. We do enjoy dropping in a line every now and then, so we would like to take along fishing rods. 

So that's about it for our compartments. Once we have everything loaded up and a full tank of water on board, then we will go through the weigh scales again. If you read a couple blogs back, we went through the weigh scales when everything was empty when we first bought the rig last week. Now we will be able to know what our cargo weighs and can adjust accordingly once we do a new weighing. 

~~~~~~~~~~

It's kind of a rainy icky weekend here and there's snow forecast just north of us. The temps might be down below freezing so we didn't go anywhere camping this weekend. Instead we will stay home and work on a couple modifications in the driveway. I will do more on those in an upcoming post. 

What a View!! (Winnebago View)

 I'm seriously thinking of changing my name of the blog to "What A View" . 

This is why:

We picked up this lovely 2016 Winnebago View 24G model. We bought it from a private seller up near Antigo, Wisconsin.  This was after a few weeks of researching and searching again and looking at many different brands models and types. We took some for test drives and kicked some tires. This happened to be the one we were looking for and it happened to be at the right price at the right time. 

It's 25 ft 5 inches long.  What a far cry from the 38 feet of the Safari~!!  We are going to have to adjust our camping style and adapt our gear we carry.  But now we can get into smaller sites, maneuver easier and turn around, more impulsive and less planning ahead. 

It is on a Mercedes Sprinter chassis with a 3.0 L turbo diesel engine.  There's a lot of  "oomph" when you touch the pedal for sure. It is 12 inches narrower than our wide body Safari, so it will be a bit easier to manage and take into some out of the way places that we had to pass up on before. 

Although it's able to tow 5,000 pounds, which would handle the Saturn easily, we don't think we are going to tow unless we really need to.  I think it's funny we have a Winnebago VIEW and a Saturn VUE.   tee hee heeeee

Here is the floor plan,

What I like best is that it separates the motorhome

into three separate rooms, 

with a long galley kitchen connecting them all.

Since it was totally empty, it was a perfect time to run it through the weigh scales to make sure we know our CCC (cargo carrying capacity) after we load it up. Being over weight is seriously dangerous, so we will watch what we are loading up once we get it home. 

Before we put anything in, 

I just HAD to shoot a video! 

We have never had slides before.  Here is the main living area when the slide is out. Look at the space!  There are 2 locations to put the table, but it's rather large.  I think we will only use it if we are actually eating inside. We usually are outdoors, eating on a picnic table. 

So we are thinking of a modification we found on a Winnebago View Owners Facebook Group to buy one more table post, cut it a bit shorter.  Then buy a heavy duty cocktail waitress tray from a restaurant supply shop.  It makes a nice little table to set between the two rotating cockpit chairs....  p.s. there are seat boosters that go on those two seats to raise them up to the living area level. Another pic down below shows them in place.

Over the livingroom area is a big powered skylight. It can be wide open, or a slider goes across with a screen to keep out bugs.  The slider from the other way is a room darkening fabric in case you want to keep out the hot sunshine or make it all dark at night. It really makes things feel light and bright and airy.

This photo is taken with the "wide angle" view to get it all in the shot.  The slide has a loveseat by Flexsteel called a "Fold N Tumble" feature.  It flips out to an extra wide twin bed. It may be fine for kids, but I think it's a tad bit uncomfortable.  We are considering taking it out and installing a reclining loveseat similar to what we had in the Safari. But for now, it's okay. It is very soft ultraleather and pretty comfortable. We brought out some ottomans from the house as leg rests.  There are seat belts tucked down inside that passengers can use to ride along.

Up top over the driving area is a queen sized bunk!  It has memory foam mattresses and feels pretty nice. We don't plan to ever sleep up there, and prefer the center section flipped forward so access to the cockpit is easier.  We looked at some View models that didn't have overhead bunk. Instead they had 2 cabinets and a big picture window. We think the extra space for grandkid sleepovers will be worth having this extra area.  I can put a few totes of fabric and sewing supplies up there when there aren't any little ones along. 

What I REALLY REALLY like (of utmost importance to us) is a BIG kitchen with deep drawers and lots of counterspace.  It only has a two burner propane cooktop for now, but we may change that to a traditional RV oven and stove like we did in the Safari.  The micro is also a convection oven, but that means you have to be either plugged in to shore power or running the generator to bake anything.  We will see. But all of the cabinet and drawer space is a real plus, even over some of the other models in the same year. I think this one called the G version has the most.  The 2 door fridge is 3 way (propane, 120 AC electric or 12 volt DC).  The flooring is a single piece sheet vinyl, with carpeting only in the back bedroom. All of the lights are LED 12 volt. Lots and lots of fancy recessed LED strip lights around the backsplash, on the wall, and under the cabinets. We are going to get some dimmable rv toggle switches to tone them down.

The queen sized walk around bed is in the back. Another slide goes out the rear of the rig, about 3 feet and the part of the mattress flops back into place. It is a memory foam, and pretty comfy. But we did find that by flopping the cushions around and putting the slit to the bottom third was better on the side sleeping.  When the slide comes in, the mattress can be flipped up and over, like a taco. The bed stays fully made. 

Today we added a 2" memory foam on top, and then an electric mattress pad heater too. I will post about mods and such things in another post.  We like all of the big windows, and also each one has heavy room darkening MCD roller shades. 

The bathroom is kinda hard to take pics of unless it's on wide angle.  So there is a bit of distortion.  

There are FOUR cabinets for storage in the bathroom.  

• A deep medicine cabinet above the toilet, 
• and a shallower medicine cabinet above the sink.  
• More cabinet space below the sink and some open shelves. 
• Then alongside of the door between the wall and shower is a tall skinny cabinet from floor to almost the ceiling.   

Steve is going to add a bigger fan on the vent system.  It lets in a lot of daylight too. 

We did give the toilet space a "trial run" to make sure there was enough room in the bathroom.  One time my mom bought a big Holiday Endeavor motorhome and there wasn't enough room in front of the toilet unless you opened the door!  Oh my!   It is a nice porcelain elevated toilet, good for Steve's long legs. 

The shower is also tall enough for Steve's 6'3" body, and extra room to boot.  The skylight even has an electric light built in, so you can see in the shower either night or day. 

That is about it for a "TOUR" from the inside.  Maybe tomorrow I will take pics of the outside bins and what we are taking along.  There is a LOT we left behind in the garage because we don't want to overload it.  Once we are done with the basics, we will go back to the weigh scales to check it again. 

We did notice a bit of giggling and wiggling of someone who just added more weight to our cargo area! 

STOWAWAY!

She said if they take their motorhome

and camp next to us, 

she will still come and sleep in ours! 

After all of the neighbors were done visiting,

and the grandkids went home, 

it was time to introduce Binney.

She approves. 

Today she acts like the queen of the house, and has made herself at home.  We are ready for some camping!  Oh, now you can see the boosters that are added to the swiveled cockpit chairs.  It makes them very comfortable and brings them up to the same floor level as the rest of the camper portion. 

I will post again about more of the outside stuff, but for now, we are just going to keep loading up gear and deciding what goes where. 

We are Happy Campers! 

More to come....

P.S. Let me know what you think if I change the name of the blog?