site

Website enhancements.

Introducing the Tiffin Allegro Bus 2016-2018 Owners group on Facebook

There are several groups on Facebook for RVers, from general topics like Full Time RV Living and RV Boondocking, to ones specific to our brand of motorhome like Tiffin Motorhome Owners Group, Tiffin Motorhome Lifestyle, Tiffin Motorhomes Technical Forum, and several more… to ones specific to a model, like Tiffin Allegro Bus Owners, Tiffin Phaeton Owners, Tiffin Open Roaders, etc. And even some specific to model and year or floorplan, like Tiffin Phaeton Owners 2002-2012 and Tiffin Phaeton 40IH & 44OH Owners.

We have a 2017 Tiffin Allegro Bus 40SP. While the Tiffin Allegro Bus Owners group covers that model, there have been a wide range of features and changes over the years. So I thought that a more tightly focused group could be useful. While I was tempted to create a group for our specific year and floorplan, that seemed a bit too narrow. And there is a lot of commonality between the coaches released in years either side of ours in the various floorplans, e.g. they all have similar Spyder control panels, furnishings, appliances, finishes, etc.

So, without further ado, I’m pleased to introduce the Tiffin Allegro Bus 2016-2018 Owners group on Facebook.

This new community is focused, as the name indicates, on the Allegro Bus released between 2016 and 2018 (inclusive) by Tiffin Motorhomes, including the 37AP, 40AP, 40SP, 45OP, 45OPP, and other floorplans in those model years.

It’s difficult to start a new community, but I’m seeding it with cross-posts to the Sinclair Trails blog, on topics related to modifications and repairs of our 2017 40SP coach. Hopefully those will be of interest and use to others, and hopefully other Allegro Bus owners will find this group and join, and add their own posts on relevant topics.

Eventually, I hope this community will be a useful resource for discussions of repairs, enhancements, and other topics specific to these coaches. Time will tell!

If you have an eligible coach, or are interested in them, please join the group!

2017 Tiffin Allegro Bus 40SP

Making a multi-year route map

On January 1st I published a post on 2021 travel, that included a map of our travel stops and route for last year. A month later I followed up with an update on our planned route for 2022.

I recently had the idea to combine the maps into one, overlaying the routes from 2021 and 2022, so we can see everywhere we’ve traveled in our coach, plus last year’s Yellowstone trip in a rental trailer. To keep them from being too confusing, I changed the colors for each of the three routes.

I made the combined image wide, to use as the header on the Sinclair Trails Facebook page:

Route map

Here’s a cropped edition:

Route map cropped

And cropped some more, to only show the parts of the country we’ve explored so far, or plan to this year:

Route map cropped more

I made this by taking screenshots of the excellent RV Life Trip Wizard web app, which we use to plan our routes, then combined them in Acorn, my favorite image editor for macOS:

Route map in Acorn

Here’s the base map of the US, obtained from the Trip Wizard by combining multiple screenshots:

Route map USA

Each route is in a separate layer, with extraneous content lassoed out, and the hue altered to give each one a unique color; here’s 2021:

Route map 2021

The Yellowstone trip:

Route map 2021 Yellowstone

2022:

Route map 2022

The combined result again:

Route map cropped more

I think this is fascinating to look at, and a useful reference. I plan to update it as we plan future stops (the 2022 route only covers till October). What do you think? Interesting?

It’s alive!

This new blog is finally working. Yay! Now we just need an RV.

We did have a purchase agreement for one for about a week, but the seller pulled out due to changing health issues. Very disappointing. So now we’re looking for other options. We still have time….