Buying the Trailer
How do I even begin?
It was stressful. End of story.
Oh, I'm supposed to expand those thoughts, you say? Well, you asked for it...
G has been obsessed with the Safari Alto for years. It has an electric roof that raises to show a wave of windows. When raised the clearance is about 6'8'' and the seating section converts to a king size bed. The finishes are modern, the aerodynamic body means less drag on the road, and it weighs about 1700 pounds dry. No other trailer we looked at (Chalet, T@b, Lance, RPod) could compete. In October 2015 we made the decision to take some time off work to travel, manage some construction projects around our house, and generally relax after working crazy hours for years. We thought traveling to all the National Parks in a travel trailer would be a fun way to see our amazing country and also spend time together. I'm wondering how naïve this statement will sound at the end of our trip!
The Alto has 3 major negatives that almost made us go with another brand. It's manufactured and sold out of Quebec, Canada can run close to $40,000 US brand new, and we wouldn't have been able to pick it up until September 2017. That's right folks, there is currently a 1.5 year wait for a new Alto trailer. Once we settled on the Alto, we didn't want to wait for a new one so we searched the cutthroat used market in both the US and Canada using Craigslist and Kijiji. The market for used Altos is very strong and you have to be diligent in order to compete with other buyers. G used an online translator to create texts that would be understood by the French Canadians we were conversing with.
We looked at a 2010 model in Squammish, B.C., but it had some water damage and hadn't been well taken care of. A few weeks later, while in SoCal for a wedding, G had made arrangements to see a 2014 trailer in Victoria, B.C. We flew home to Portland on a Tuesday morning at 10 am and were on the road by 5 pm to Anacortes in order to catch the ferry to Victoria at 8:30 am the following morning. All was going according to plan until we made the decision to buy the almost perfect trailer and tried to make arrangements for payment.
The morning after we saw the Alto and made the big decision to buy, we boarded the first ferry to Port Angeles with a plan of attack in mind. It was going to be tight, but we had 45 minutes to get to the bank, get a cashier's check for the entire amount, and taxi back to the ferry terminal to go back to Victoria. G was going to the bank and I was going to US Customs and to grab a to-go lunch. A mere 30 minutes from docking in Port Angeles the seller calls us and changes up the plan. After some research of some other payment options, i.e. PayPal, wires, etc., she now wants a portion of the payment US cash and a cashier's check in Canadian dollars for the remainder. The frustration definitely started to swirl around on the boat. WE HAD A PLAN! Why change it now? Especially when it complicates the bank transaction threatening our turnaround time.
Let the countdown begin! G raced off the boat into his waiting taxi and went straight to the bank. Even though the bank employee he had spoken with earlier had promised a speedy transaction, now they were busy and all bets were off. Tick Tock. Oh, it's your first time doing a cashier's check? Greaaaaaat. 15 minutes go by and the teller is STILL working on the cashier's check. Meanwhile I'm texting back and forth letting G know how much time he had left. "Oh, you also need cash? Let me get the key holder so we can go into the vault." Aghhhh! Another 10 minutes go by. I know we aren't going to make it. The ferry horn blows warning for 5 more minutes until departure. G gets in his taxi. The taxi's transmission is failing. The driver is going 28 MPH in a 35. Whyyyyyyyyy is this happening?!?!?! G runs out of the taxi into the ferry building and I let him know it left 30 seconds before. He walks right back outside and screams out of pure frustration. Poor guy. Beers. We need beers.
As a result of our...ahem...delay...we were lucky enough to go to the most fantastic pub, Next Door Gastropub, in Port Angeles. Our waitress had a 100Watt smile and knew exactly what we needed. They also had an great Spot Prawn special with Peri Peri sauce. Neither of us had ever had these and we've since had them two more times in the 3 weeks since!
Finally back in Port Angeles 5 hours later we are greeted by the seller at the ferry terminal with a 6 pack of beer. She feels bad. We all get in the car and go over to the mall of all places to get temporary insurance for the trailer so we can drive it to our hotel and on the ferry. These private insurance sellers are all over, but the one at the mall was open late. The whole process took about an hour with yet another frustrating service experience, but in the end we got our trailer and the seller got our money. We parked our new baby outside of our hotel and "Woodstock" was born.
I could bore you with our 12 hour drive back home the following day (1.5 hr ferry ride, 1.5 hours at the border, 2 hours stopped traffic in Seattle) but I won't. The bottom line is that we were so happy to start this new adventure that all the crap from the previous three days didn't matter. We were finally getting out of the box and into the wild.
What we learned:
Make sure to get reservations on all the ferries you plan to take during your entire trip. Traveling with a trailer isn't as easy as a car and the spots fill up fast.
Make sure to have all the correct purchase and insurance documents for when you go through customs. Although customs was a breeze, it does take a while.
