Meet Elsie!
Elsie is our second RV, and her name pays homage to our original rig, Lucky Charm. (Say “L.C.” out loud, and you get “Elsie”!) She’s a 2019 Fleetwood Southwind 34C. Click here for some of our favorite RV adds!
After “living and learning” with our first RV, we had very specific requirements for the floorplan, and Elsie checked all our boxes!
She’s only 18 inches longer than our first RV, and at 34’3″ still under the 35′ length limit we set for ourselves (so as to still be able to fit in many state and national park campgrounds). Though the length and width are basically the same, we added some TWO FEET of storage underneath the length of the RV. No more clutter inside; now it’s all outside and out of view!
We graduated to a king bed, which is very luxurious, but sometimes these RV companies are sneaky … this “king bed” is actually a “RV king” which is wide but a little shorter. A regular king mattress is 76 x 80″ and this RV king is 72 x 75″, but still a full foot wider than the 60″ we had in our RV’s queen bed before. We liked the “room to move around” in this floorplan!
The bedroom has LOTS of storage … maybe too much! (Nahhhhh……) The vented cabinet on the left can take a washer/dryer combo unit, but we made it an extra closet instead. The skinny cabinet on the far right is even cedar-lined! For those cold winters in Phoenix, hah!
For guests, a bed drops down from the ceiling above the drivers’ seats!
The bathroom is completely self-contained; before, the shower and bathroom were two separate entities and INSIDE our bedroom door; so guests had to come into our bedroom to use the bathroom. Not ideal! But this is pretty sweet, and plenty spacious.
We love the huge pedestal sink, compared to many RV sinks which are tiny little fishbowls which causes water to splash everywhere.
The bed slides out 30″ and the entire living area slides out 30″ on the opposite side of the RV, nice and balanced. Even slid in, it is still possible to navigate the aisle and make a nice sandwich while we’re on the road.
Elsie has 4 TV’s and they are all run from a central command inside a cabinet, so the living room TV can be wall-mounted above the electric fireplace.
A big empty cabinet above the TV was turned into a fab combo liquor-and-DVD’s cabinet by my super-handy husband!
The sofa slides out to become an L-shape – very comfy when I want/need to put my head in P’s lap and take a snooze! And still plenty of room if you leave it slid-in like a regular sofa.
The dinette is a “dream dinette” which can easily flatten out to be an additional bed. We much prefer it to the U-shape dinette we had previously. And it’s perfect when cute guests drop by, like Dolly!
The kitchen has a handy double sink, residential refrigerator (fun fact = exactly the same refrigerator we have in our house), and induction cooktop.
The driver’s cab has two large seats that can spin around and become part of the living area, and a decent-sized table that inserts into the floor.
Who drives? We both do!!
And when we’re not traveling, you can likely find Elsie in the RV party lot at Cardinals stadium, tailgating her precious RV heart out. Hey … if your team stinks, at least there’s still beer.
That’s our Elsie in a nutshell … hope you enjoyed this brief photo tour!
We love-love-love her and are so excited for future adventures to come.
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R.I.P. “Lucky Charm”
4/6/13 – 10/8/19
We bought our first girl, the “Lucky Charm,” to either “get us into” or “get us over” the idea of RV’ing, expecting to have an entry-level RV for only a couple years while we gave it a try. Six years and 50,000 miles later (and lots of lessons learned), she went to live on a farm with lots of room to run, having been traded in for “Elsie 2.0.” But the Lucky Charm lives on forever in our memories!
