So we took our new rig to New Hampshire and camped for three days and nights. Overall, such a nice improvement over the 2005 3500 RL we had previously owned!
Standouts included the Level Up system, the television behind a mirror, king-sized bed with large rear bedroom, and the Mor/Ryde system. In most areas, Montana has clearly made improvements. The woodwork is cherry and just about entirely real wood. The sinks are stainless steel and large and deep. The refrigerator is very large; side-by-side with side-by-side freezers on top. Even the surround system gets kudos, as previous versions of Montanas I looked at had cheesier systems. Inside of ours is a Sony system along with the Sony Bravia television.
Some things that could be improved in our opinion: the mirror in the bathroom is too high; my wife can just about get her face into view. The freezer in the refrigerator is also too high, requiring a stepstool for even me to reach some things. I find the placement of the valves for gray and black water to be questionable. They are in the same compartment that houses the sewer hose and I don't like having to pull the valves by hand without a glove since the sewer hose lies right alongside of it. Also, there is no light in this compartment. I fixed this by buying a cheap diode light at Home Depot. It's activated by motion and can stick magnetically to the metal wall inside of the compartment. On a lesser note, I'm not a fan of the tiny television in the bedroom but hey, it's there and I'm using it!
Aesthetically speaking, we do enjoy the front living room and have already had occasion to use the fireplace in New Hampshire as the temperatures dippedinto the 30s overnight one evening. We do miss our recliners but the couches are fairly comfortable and we are adding footstools. We also added a set of nesting tables so that we can take them out for company as need be or leave them secured.
Since we have opted to not add a dryer and washer inside of the the washer/dryer closet we have added these:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I bought five of them and have them stacked to the left of the wooden shelving that begins about 4 feet up on the right side of the closet. We put towels and facecloths in this closet area and left the area below it open so that we can put a laundry bin for dirty clothing. The chrome shelving I added starts on the floor on the left side and goes about 6 feet and change up. This will enable us to use more storage area as this rig does not have quite as much storage as some of the rigs do due to the design. We love the openness of this design though and opted not to go with the 3850 FL for that reason even though that rig offers more cupboard space
On a scale of 1 to 10, we are leaning toward a nine right now.