Finding our Big, Big, Very Big RV!

Listen. We had no idea what we were doing when we were picking out our rig. Not at all. Not even Trav’s childhood camper experience could save us from our ignorance. So, we started at less than zero. We asked ourselves all the questions. Did we want a driveable motorhome? A travel trailer? A fifth wheel thingy that attaches to the bed of the truck? Aren't those like super hard to hook up? Wait! What about one of those super cute retro gleaming silver bullet glamper airstream thingys? Let’s google those. Nope. Too expensive and way too cramped.  And so the research began.  For a long time, we thought we wanted a Class A motorhome, the kind you sit in and drive. One with a toy hauler area in the back that we could pull a small car into during the day and that would convert into a bunk house for the girls at night. Did such a thing even exist? We didn’t know. When you don’t know anything, everything is possible.  It turns out it does exist, but we’d have to drive a two-person smart car. So that was out.  What about pulling a car behind? Maybe.  A travel trailer? Too many nightmare stories of fishtailing down steep mountainsides or being flipped like a turtle in its shell by wind sheers on open highways. So that was out.  I started paying attention to all the roadschooling social media accounts. It seemed like a lot of folks were doing the fifth-wheel thing. They seemed set up pretty nicely for a family. Roomy. Decent layouts. But that would mean we would also have to buy a big ass truck because neither of our Toyota SUVs would cut it. This was starting to feel a bit overwhelming. We needed help.  So we did what any intrepid RV explorer would do. We went to an RV show.  The RV Show in Minneapolis. It was...a lot. If you have never been to one of these places, it's an experience. Miles and miles of box houses on wheels crawling with folks holding plastic cups of beer and eating roasted cashew nuts. We filed through rig after rig, oohing and aahing along with everyone else.  Our girls ran with unfettered glee in and out of campers. “This one! This is it! No! This one! We want this one!” So much sensory input. People everywhere. Bright lights. So many choices. Lines of people coming in and out of tiny doorways. My head was going to explode. Luckily, we had hauled my sister, Chris, along, and she helped wrangle kids.  At one point, I finally hunted down a sales guy and laid out what we were looking for.  Room for a family of four to live full-time. A place for our girls to sleep that isn’t on the couch. A place for us to sleep that feels like a real bedroom. A place for Trav to work that isn’t the dining room table. A place for the girls to do schoolwork. An actual bathroom. Enough room that we won’t hate each other after three days. He introduced us to the mid-bunk style fifth-wheel—a 41-foot two-bedroom palace on wheels with a loft above the middle bedroom. It was basically a whole house. A kitchen with a full-size fridge, an island, plenty of cabinet space and a pantry, a living room with a couch and two recliners that heated and vibrated (we don’t even have that at home!), a fireplace (also don’t have that at home), a dining room table, an office/bedroom with a sleeping loft above, a real legit bathroom with a shower, a bedroom with a place for an actual washer and dryer. Say whaaaat? Yes, please. That was it. This was what we had been looking for.  Now, we just needed to look at 40-50 more to be sure.  We sat down over lunch, eating fries and cheeseburgers, marveling at how many models there were to choose from, and coming back over and over again to the midbunk style. My sister graciously took the kids home, I shoved the leftovers in my backpack, and went back out into the fray just for one more pass—just to be sure.  We continued to file through rigs until they all started to look the same. I was getting tired. So very tired. At one point, someone in a crowded fifth wheel must have been grappling with some intestinal malfunction, and a sudden, horrifying smell in the small space nearly knocked me over.  I started pushing Trav to try to exit faster. “I gotta get outta here.” I wheezed.  “I’m trying.” He said.  The line to exit moved so blessedly slow. Finally, we were out. I gasped for fresh convention center air. We filed into the next rig, and sure enough– the smell of stale meat and locker room feet. I pushed Trav out of my way this time.  As the day wore on, the smell of people huddled together in these small spaces became too much. We took a break and sat in some chairs together.  “Why does every freaking RV stink so badly?”  “I guess this is what RV people smell like.” Trav joked.  I had had enough. We had already found the one, and nothing changed our minds after that. We headed for the exit.  There it was again in the elevator —the smell—sweaty socks mixed with wet dog hair. “God, this place stinks. I can’t wait to get home.”  Trav looked at me. “Jen. Do you still have that food in your backpack?” I froze. Holy buckets. It was us. We smelled like wet dogs wearing gym socks! We were trailing that stink through every single rig with us. We were the stench. We busted out laughing.  But hey, we had accomplished at least what we had set out to do. We went home, threw those damn fries in the trash, and researched more. Hours of watching RV walk-throughs, reading reviews, and checking out social media accounts. We kept coming back to the same model.  So we hauled on over to the local RV dealer, Pleasureland, and sat down with a fella named Duane Moos. (I can assure you that if my last name were Moos, I would have moose-themed things all over the place. And delightfully, he did.) It turns out this is the same guy who sold Trav’s parents their rig years ago. That was promising.  Duane Moos and Travis in our new home! Out of curiosity, I laid out all of the same requirements that I had laid out to the salesman at the RV show, and Duane pulled up the exact same model we had already decided on. It was a Grand Design Reflection 367BHS. This style had a mid-bunk with a loft above it. A brand new 2023 overstock at a fantastic price, well below what we had seen at the RV show. He brought the model to the dealership a week or so later, and we walked through. We didn’t even have much to discuss. We looked at each other and knew this was the one.  And that was it. The Big Fun RV became real. We signed on the proverbial dotted line, and she was ours. Duane agreed to hold our RV there for a while while we figured out what came next. Now we just needed a big huge place to put it and a really, really big ass truck. It was time to go truck shopping. And this time, we would not stop for french fries.

6 Reasons We Chose a Fifth-Wheel When it came to finding an RV to live in, we had three choices: a Class A motorhome, a travel trailer, or a fifth wheel.  Class A: These are the things you think of when you think of "an RV"–the big bus-like thing that you sit inside and drive. Travel Trailer (TT): a pull-behind camper that attaches to the ball hitch of your truck.  Fifth Wheel: a pull-behind camper that attaches to a hitch that is installed into the bed of your truck  After some careful research and deliberation, we landed on a fifth wheel. Here's why: Length:  A chunk of your camper extends over the bed of your truck, which decreases the overall length of your rig set-up, whereas a TT sits behind your truck. And to get the length of “house” we need, we would be like 60 feet overall going down the road if we went the TT route. Do they even make TTs that long? I have no idea because I tossed the idea of a TT out the window right away anyway because of the next bullet point.  Stability:  We eliminated TTs mostly because I fear how unstable they are. With a fifth wheel, the RV is essentially integrated into your vehicle, and the weight is distributed differently. Fifth wheels have a larger turning radius, and since the connection is centered over the truck’s rear axle, the center of gravity is closer to the tow vehicle, which adds stability. Can a fifth-wheel fishtail down a steep mountainside or get flipped like a turtle in its shell by a wind sheer? Possible. But the potential for that feels a bit higher in a TT for me.  Capacity/Storage: Fifth wheels have the largest water, battery, and waste capacities. They also have more storage space inside and out. The shape of the fifth wheel also naturally allows for higher ceilings. With a family of four that tends to amass a stupid amount of clutter, we need lots of storage.  Convenience: If your RV has a mechanical breakdown, your entire house goes to the shop. Obviously, every RV has this issue, but non-towables (Class As) have a higher chance of something mechanical going wrong because you have both a vehicle and a house to worry about all in one unit. If something goes wrong with our truck, we have our house. If something goes wrong with our house, well, we have our truck. And so after we tow our house to the shop, we can drive straight to the nearest hotel that has a bar attached so we can relax there while we rethink our life choices.  Liveable Space:  With a fifth wheel, every inch of space inside is dedicated to living. I have seen videos of folks making great use of their driving cab space in their Class As when parked, but I like that because our “house” does not have a driver’s cab, all the space is fully dedicated to the living area. The Views! You can’t beat the views in a fifth wheel. We have a huge, low window right next to our dining table, and we feel like we are right outside when we sit there. In a Class A, the windows are lower to the ground and smaller, so they feel a bit more bus-like and less home-like. And that's one of the reasons we are doing this--the amazing freaking views!