[DutchmenSport]

Sounds like over the last year you've had some experiences with your new Montana (good, bad, challenging, and fun). And sounds like you've figured most things out and now can are really enjoying it.

It took us a year to flush out about 95% of all the initial issues with ours. It seem for the first year of ownership something was breaking for falling apart after every trip. And we traveled somewhere almost every week-end and several week long trips, and 2 week trips that first year. But always came back home disappointed at the next item that broke on us. It took a year of constant fixing, but finally everything started settling down.

The second year of ownership was absolutely fantastic! Not a single thing broke or needed fixing, except my stupidity when I turned on the electric on the water heater and there was no water in it! Oops! My fault though, not the camper's.

Last year, 2021, because of Covid, my wife and I were tossed out of the buildings we worked at and told to take our company laptops and work from home full time until further notice. So, for almost all of 2021 we took "home" on the road. We started January 1 in Alabama and ended October 31 in Upper Michigan. The Montana did great! Except, a week before returning home, a slide cable broke. Slide worked ok, and made arrangements with our repair shop at home. It took about 6 week before it got fixed, but the fix took only about 4 hours, dropped it off, picked it up and done.

Then Covid changed our work environment again, and I decided to just go ahead an retire and get away from all the foolishness and uncertainty and threats. So, with all these changes happening in our private world, we stayed anchored at home since November 2021.

Now I'm officially retired. My wife is permanent work from home. So, we are already booking and planning our next leg of life. Our first outing is scheduled for the 2nd week of April and we've got campgrounds reserved from Indiana to South Carolina all the way through the last week of July now. In our plans, we will be within a short drive to the house, so we can swing by and check it over a couple times during that time period.

Meanwhile, the Montana has done really well. We didn't sleep in it this winter like we normally do. About the middle of December, Indiana weather got horribly cold and to heat the camper to continue using it in the drive way was just too costly. Oh, it heats very, very nice, even when the outside temperature is near zero degrees with supplemental heat from the fire place and a space heater in the bedroom. But the furnace never shuts off and we'll run through a 30 pound propane tank in about 36 hours. Too costly. So we stayed in the house this winter.

I'm glad to hear about your good and interesting report of your activities and successes with your Montana over this last year! I think that's great! Now that you've got the bugs work out, you'll enjoy the camper to it's fullest. You are absolutely right about one thing, this floorplan can't be beat! The back door on the opposite side is still one of it's best features too.