The Great Mattress Adventure!

 As most of you know the mattress they put into RV's are mostly junk. Getting one to last more than one season is a huge accomplishment. One of the first things we added to our used Montana when we purchased it was a mattress pad. While the 3" cooling foam pad was an improvement I was just never a big fan of it. The issue was the pad was a residential King size and our bed was an RV King size with tapered ends. The pad was just too big and did not want to stay put! We decided to go mattress shopping last week and Rudee researched places to go while I measured what size would work for us. We both wanted to stick with a King but there was some limitations on sizes to fit our bed. We have a front living room model of fifth wheel which we both love. The bedroom is in the rear and has opposing slide outs, one slide houses the bed and the other is the closet and dresser drawers. When you slide them in for travel the foot of the bed pushes into the dresser drawers which are spring loaded. With everything closed up the foot of the bed is 3"-4" into the drawer "enclosure". Kind of odd but it works well and gives you a ton of room when you are all set up. So with my measurements in hand we headed out to "bed shop". The maximum thickness we could have was 11" but, after researching RV forums the night before, I was confident a "standard King" would work as long as it was not too thick. Oh ya, it had to be ready for us to pick up no later than next Monday. Rudee had address' of four different mattress stores in the area so off we went. Two of the places were a total bust with long delivery times. The third promised he could get us a suitable mattress by Monday afternoon as long as he could "catch the delivery truck" before it left the warehouse 300 miles away. The last place had the mattress in stock locally, in fact they had 6 of them at their warehouse and we could run over there the next day and pick it up. We went ahead with the purchase, paid the bill and reserved a pick up time. Whew, glad that was over! I did find out after some 42 plus years of marriage that we can't totally agree on the firmness (or lack thereof) of a mattress. I like medium to firm, Rudee likes .......well I'm still not sure. LOL

The next morning as we were preparing to leave I started having some apprehensions. Rudee said "let's just double check it is going to work". We measured the length and no problem 80" is doable. The thickness of 11" was right on the money. Even the width of 76" would fit just fine. Then it hit me (picture my palm slapping my forehead LOL)! Remember how I described the foot of the bed sliding into the dresser drawer enclosure? I had not measured that opening .....Oh crap, it's only 73" and that is the reason our old mattress has tapered ends! Duh! Now what do we do? Well the first this is to call the mattress store, cancel the purchase and get our money returned. They were very nice about it and processed our full refund in just a few minutes. Next thing I did was some more research and found that Camping World in Indianapolis sold a "RV King size Cooling Gel Memory Foam" mattress that is narrow enough to work for us. The reviews online were overwhelmingly positive so we called and they had some in stock. So we pulled the trigger and so far so good. I thought our biggest challenge would be getting it in the fifth wheel. Oh no, these things come "vacuum sucked" rolled up in a box. All you have to do is unbox it, put it on the platform and enjoy.......or so the instructions said! We got the old one out and yes, the new one went in quite easily. Once we got it out of the box we started cutting away the plastic around the mattress and then "POOF" me, Rudee and the mattress all unrolled onto the bed platform! Oh well it's in and just needs to finish "inflating" LOL. We have slept on it for two nights so far and really like it so I think Goldilocks (aka Rudee) has found a bed that's "just right". LOL

The day after we installed our mattress we drove the truck to Pennsylvania to spend the weekend at our sons home north of Pittsburgh. We had a great time and the weekend flew by. Before we knew it Monday morning was here and we had to say goodbye to them and head back. :-(

 See you in October sweetheart. 

Our plan was to hook on and leave Tuesday morning to start our trek back to South Dakota. With the nasty weather predicted between us and Iowa (rain, freezing rain, snow and wind) we decided to sit tight for another day. The weather looks a little better starting tomorrow and should give us a window for our travels. We don't start work until May 5th so we can take our time if needed. I'll keep you posted.