Does anyone own a travel trailer/ camper?

[binny]

Were thinking about it, we went to look at one today and really liked it but to be honest Im just not sure were "campers" KWIM?

I think we would be a lot better off in a camper than in the cabins weve been in and the tent but not sure we would get a lot of good out of it.


Do you have one? What do you like/not like about it?


Thank you

 

[tiggger1]

I used to camp as a kid ( 7 people in a small 17 footer!) now i would think of me as a hotel person. We hubby and I bought a 25 foot fifth wheel. its older but its in good shape. I like it because we can save $$ by eating in there and we can go on vacation more because we save $$. Plus hubby said we could go to disney at least once a year with a camper, if we went in a hotel it'll only be once every 2-3 years.......hard decision huh..lol

we are now looking at newer ones and we went to a RV show last week and saw som beautiful campers. One of my favorites has a med walk up to the queen bed and in the back has its bath plus a room with slide and bunks. So my daughter would have her own room in the camper. now id only we could find one within our price range...........

 

[Pop Daddy]

dont get it, look for 4 star hotels

 

[ByTheSea]

We have a 22 ft travel trailer for about 5-6 years now. We store it over the winter months but use if fairly frequently in the summer. We try to have one "big" (week or longer) trip each summer across states, it's a great way to see the country and spend time as a family.

My spouse is the at-home-parent so they will use it during the week in the summer for short tips around the state, and we use it fairly often on summer weekends, probably not as much as we might but I travel for work and look forward to my weekends at home.

I think what we like best is when we bring it back from storage (we park it at my Mom's cabin up north) we pack it up with essentials, summer clothes, non-perishable food stuff etc and we often use it spur of the moment. We can pretty much decide to head out of town and be on-the-road in under an hour.

I'm more of a hotel kinda person myself, but I can handle "camping" with the RV - it's got good AC/heat - a complete bathroom, kitchen with stove, oven, microwave, fridge and freezer, cable ready (many sites have cable hookups) and very comfortable beds.

The thing I like the least is, well, we live in the city with an alley, and the thing just barely fits in our small driveway, we literally have less than 6 inches to spare, and there is no way I could ever hook it up and manuver it in or out of there. DH has it down to a science and luckily we have understanding neighbors across the alley, we cannot pull out the RV if they are parked in their driveways (which rarely happens, they park in their garages) I think we've had to actually ask them to move a car only once, maybe twice in all the years we've had it. If we got new neighbors with more cars and less cooperative it could be a real issue.

The other thing to consider is your towing vehicle. We ended up buying a larger vehicle to better handle the load (and mileage is horrible) but we use the monster SUV (3/4 ton Suburban) as our 2nd car, not the primary vehicle for city driving. We had saved up to buy the RV, but discovered that the interest (as long as it has a kitchen, bathroom, sleeping area) is deductible as a second home mortgage, so we financed the RV and paid for the new/used SUV.

 

[always quiet]

We have one and we love it! We initially were looking into pop ups, but I HAD to have indoor plumbing!! We bought a HiLo Funlite. It weighs about the same as a pop up and lowers for towing/storage convenience. With the push of a button, it raises to a 'normal' travel trailer!! And let's face it, staying on Disney property for under $50 a night (preferred site) is a bargain!! There is a camping forum right here on the DIS....have a look see!

 

[Rachie0507]

We have a Pop-Up Camper and LOVE it! It allows us to take the kids different places during the summer without spending a ton of money. I like that it feels a lot more like home than a hotel room too, since we spend more time in it. Ours does not have any bathroom facilities but it hasn't been a problem. We even camped two weeks after DS potty trained and he never had an accident. Our Pop-Up is small so we tow it with our minivan.

A lot of places rent campers or RV's so it might be worth renting one for a weekend to see what you think.

 

[binny]

Thank you!

I appreciate the input.


Were looking at the options and there are so many to chose from!

We really like the ones with the 4 bunks on one side of the trailer and then then queen bed on the other side.

 

[Kermit]

We used to have a pop-up but sold it when DH started working too many hours for us to really get away much. We do plan on getting another RV later when he can take more time off and our kids are older.

We had a pop-up with a shower and potty, which I would not recommend. It was really heavy, and there wasn't any real privacy in the bathroom. You can't have hard walls all the way up, so there was just a shower curtain sectioning it off. We literally never used it. We love to camp, but we're not the type to really rough it, so the bathrooms at the campgrounds we stayed in were always nice enough to use.

We did like our pop-up. Both of the pull-outs were king sized beds, which you'll never get in any other type of RV. We could put a lot of people in there, especially when some of them were kids. It did take a while to put up, but it wasn't too bad. Ours had a slide-out, which made it a lot more roomy.

Next time we'll probably get a travel trailer. DH doesn't want to have to pop it up all the time, and it was sort of a pain when it had been raining when we folded it down. We'd have to pop it out and let it dry off when we got home so the fabric wouldn't get mildew on it.

The cons of a travel trailer rather than a pop-up are the weight and the height. You can't store it in your garage. Of course, having hard walls is nice, too. We may look into HiLo's next time we buy. They were brand new when we bought our pop-up, and we didn't want to take a chance on something that might not be too great.

Ideally, I'd like a 5th wheeler, but we want to have more children than we can fit in a pick-up truck, so that isn't an option.

 

[Chattyaholic]

DH and I started out camping in a tent, then moved up to a pop-up when the kids were small and had that for several years. Now we have a 32' 5th wheel with a slide-out for the living room/dining area and we LOVE it! We use it at least once a month during the spring/summer/fall months, and occasionally park it on the back of our property and "camp" there. We don't have electricity back there but do have a generator which we fire up in the morning to have coffee and toast, but it can run lights off 12volt so we can read in the evenings, after dark, if we want to. And we have campfires back there so enjoy that type of camping when we can't get away to go somewhere. Next winter we plan to take it to Florida for a month, and eventually we will spend our winters in Florida but by then we will probably get a newer 5th wheel.