After four and a half years and 257 nights in the Heritage Glen, we knew exactly what we had. A rig that worked. A floor plan we loved. A bunkhouse that kept Zack and guests comfortable on long trips. Two slide-outs that turned a trailer into a home.
So when it came time to move on, we asked ourselves what we'd do differently — and the answer was basically nothing. We went and got the same camper.
The 2018 Forest River Wildwood Heritage Glen LTZ 312QBUD is, for all practical purposes, the same trailer we'd been camping in. Same 35'10" length. Same two slide-outs. Same floor plan we'd already spent so many nights in. If you know what works, you don't fix it.
On the pricing side, I did my homework. Local dealers had it, but RV Wholesalers up in Ohio came in about $5,000 less for the same rig. If you read the pages on our prior rigs, you already know what happened next.
My buddy and I made the drive back up to Ohio. Same dealership. Same routine. Drive up, pick up the trailer, drive back to South Carolina the next day.
Except this time we learned from experience. You may recall from the last Heritage Glen story that we arrived at our first campsite ready to celebrate, only to discover we were in a dry county. No beer. Not this time. We made absolutely sure to have celebratory beers on hand before we picked up the camper. Some lessons you only need to learn once.
We only had this rig for a year, but we did not waste it.
The trip that stands out most was the big one — a cross-country run through the Southwest and out to Southern California that covered more ground than any trip we'd done before. Carlsbad Caverns. Saguaro National Park. Legoland. San Diego. Disneyland. Channel Islands. Joshua Tree. Death Valley. The Pacific Coast Highway. A stretch of Route 66. The Grand Canyon. Petrified Forest National Park. And yes — we stood on a corner in Winslow, Arizona. That one's on the bucket list whether you know it or not.
We also made it down to Disney's Fort Wilderness and back to the Florida Keys. It was a full year.
The Storm
Hunting season. I had the rig parked at my hunt club, which is where the story takes a turn.
A bad storm came through and dropped trees on it. Just like that, the trailer that had taken us to the Pacific and back was sitting under a pile of downed timber.
We'd been talking for a while about making the jump to a Class A motorhome — the kind of move that had felt like someday. The insurance situation, the repair timeline, and the trips we already had on the calendar made someday feel a lot more like right now. Rather than cancel everything and wait on repairs, we decided to make the leap.
And that was the end of our short but unforgettable time with the LTZ. It wasn't with us long, but it more than earned its place in the story.
The next chapter was a big one.
