The big question is, why would we trade our class A Diesel Pusher for a travel trailer when the goal for most people is, you know, you start in a travel trailer, you start in a fifth wheel be, and the goal for many families is you work your way up to that class A whether it’s gas or Diesel Pusher. You know, the retirement goal of taking off across the country in a big motorhome, but not us. We went from the fifth wheel to the fifth wheel. It’s a Class A gas to Class Diesel back-to-travel trailer. Why would anyone do that?
So we’ve been camping for about 12 years or so we’ve owned five campers the one we’re in now is our fifth we had a fifth wheel and then we had a fifth wheel when that was a big one as the sucker was huge and then we had a Georgetown Class A and then we ended up in the which is about when our Channel kind of started yeah well our Channel began to when we had the class A actually George Georgetown we get serious with our Channel and Nautica and then we went from all that to the 40-foot Diesel Pusher brand new uh to a 31 foot six inch travel trailer yep so we’ll just jump into the reasons why we made such a drastic decision and maybe you all can relate but um they’re very simple reasons but also kind of like a discussion because the number one reason is seasonal life and season of life is different for everyone in all stages and believe us we’ve camped since our kids were little not in diapers necessarily but toddler stage an elementary school stage and up but kids grow up and also your financial goals change and so those things are huge for us in the current stage of life our kids are currently between the ages we have five kids and they’re between the ages of 26 and 14. only two still left at home, like one and a half. Emily is 18, and she’s on that trajectory. Yeah, she’s out of the house, starting her own life and independence, and she is one of our youngest, a freshman in high school. She’s in the marching band, and if any of you have band kids, you know how big of a commitment that is in the summer in the fall for the whole family, and that’s camping season, right? So there are many reasons why we started questioning, you know, who’s coming with us and how much do we need.
The other reason along with that is financial goals and we just simply have different financial goals and we’ll talk about that because cost is one of the reasons we’re at a season where we’re going to start taking local trips more often closer to home because it might just be jira and I instead of you know packing up the whole family and going across the entire country and taking two weeks off like we’re just not even sure in the next four-ish to five-ish years that that’s something that we can count on doing often maybe once a year but I mean are we going to maintain and hold on to this big motor but we ended up coming back home to Kentucky and through those seasons of change for us we discovered reason number two which was you know it really depends on where you live in the country on what maybe RV might be best for you sorry for wearing the same color not sure how that happened great minds think alike so depending on where you live it’s kind of depending on how you can so like we had our Nautica while we were in Kentucky and then we also had our Georgetown and we could pretty much Camp all year round here because of the weather now granted like one year we left to go to Key West at Christmas time and we drove through flurries almost all the way to Georgia but the roads weren’t bad it was flurries yeah it’s flurries it was cold but you know the war the road the roads weren’t bad they were wet when we got down to Key West no problem.
Now when we lived in Idaho come Thanksgiving give or take 30 days you can’t you can’t get out because you have mountain passes any which way you go you know let’s just face it it’s not safe and I know some of you guys do it you say I do it all the time but it’s really not safe to to track you know those big heavy campers over a mountain pass in snow well and maybe you can get out but in a week or two later can you get back in right you just never know and it gets so cold there that you know you really gotta like if you’re coming in back in Idaho and you know November December or whatever or the north northwest like that I mean you’ve got to stop winterize and do all your stuff before you even get into town because you’ll freeze up on the way in and so you kind of got to like keep a like a realistic expectation of what your camping season is going to be and so when we lived out west our camping season was significantly shorter yeah and that was huge for us as a big reason we moved back and we want to do it all year matter of fact we’ve taken Christmas trips gone down to Florida you know in our RVs and so we wanted to continue to do that that was a big eye-opener for us and we’re going out for Thanksgiving this year it really got us just thinking because even like in Idaho like there’s not a lot of big rape friendly campgrounds yeah and I noticed when we lived there a lot of people had RVs we didn’t see many many oversized pushers yeah um so I’m sure there are some but for us personally we felt like okay if we were gonna stay out there I don’t know that we need this vast motorhome now in saying that we live back in Kentucky now and we don’t have the motorhome so you know it’s like well couldn’t we use it more here but yeah again there’s more reasons why because all the things we’re talking about
The third reason is Simplicity. I’m Simplicity right now is huge for me. We’re at the stage of life where we’re like less is more experience over things, yes, but less is more like I think we’re tired sometimes of everything that comes with whatever you venture out to do. It’s like sometimes, and then you’ll enjoy the adventure a little bit better, I think sometimes I think it’s it’s like the moderate conveniences become inconvenient at a certain point, yes, and that can be across the board with like technology, and how much is just too much as far as like the Simplicity of the units go a travel trailer wins hands down.
Now, with a trailer, if you can buy a trailer, if you can get in essentially, you could get out. It might be a pain, but you can do it; the truck doesn’t ride nearly as well. Still, you know, it’s just a give and take it is give and. the car is a little bit jerky at times. The turning radius of a diesel pusher is better than me pulling a trailer because of the way that they’re set up. You’re sitting you’re sitting in front of the front tire. Hence, it turns tighter, and if you’re pulling a trailer, you must swing wide to avoid running it into something. Therefore, The Pusher one’s there. As far as deep grades go, we’re going up and down Hills. I’d rather Honestlyer be in my pickup truck because I have a Duramax. I’m a lot lighter than a diesel pusher. My diesel pusher had 340 horsepower and 700-foot-pound torque, and my Duramax was, uh, the pusher was 340 700, and this truck was like 450 9.75. which is crazy for a pickup truck because I can just set my cruise, and it doesn’t matter what would go up. It goes right up now; as far as coming down the hill, the pusher will likely win because it has bigger brakes. They won’t get as hot, but honestly, like, it’s kind of to me, it’s a wash at that point; I think they’re both about the same, but I think if you look at drivability, it’s your flip-a-coin preference, I think at that point.
That kind of touches on the type of sites you can get into, so when you have a 40-foot Diesel Pusher, those sites are often hard to get. You can get into more sites if you have a smaller camper. You might have more availability at this site we’re in this weekend. Nothing is more significant than what we are getting into this site. It’s a cozy place with some tree coverage and shade, and sites can be cheaper. I can fit this on a 30-foot site or an 80-foot site with a 40-foot Pusher is not getting on a 30-foot site right, and that came into play as well as far as like well if we’re going to take more local trips and be more localized in smaller state parks and that kind of things then I mean maybe we should make the trade because we can do more in the travel trailer locally than we could in the diesel.
But the con for us in the trade from diesel to travel trailers is that we like our luxury campgrounds and love them, and that’s how we want to vacation and go to the luxury campsites. You know where you get your own Tiki Hut, and yeah, it’s 200 a night, but that’s a vacation to us. We love it. You got a nice big grill or a nice stone fire pit, you know, um, loved that part of it in class A, and you will miss out on that being in the travel trailer. Now, there are some nice campgrounds all over the country that you can still camp in in a travel trailer, but you miss out on that luxury Campground experience you do, yeah.
so it brings us to number six is storage now obviously the diesel pushers have a huge basement underneath and a ton more storage fifth wheels have a ton more storage travel trailers not so much not much storage but it goes back to you know if you’re part-time or full-time and how much do you really need how much do you really need to take with you and again kind of goes back to season of life and for us right now we’re like we don’t need that much like this is exhausting got a bunch of kids between like all the bikes you’re taking and the grills and the solo stove and maybe you’re taking foldable tables and we use this example a lot because I think we carried around this foldable table for like two or three years and four campers so we bought it with our first camera and you’re like why do we carry this why do we even have this we don’t use it but she would go buy stuff and she’s like hey I found a little desk to go in in our thing and then it it was a perfect little foldable desk and we put it in the basement and it never came out and we never used it we’re like I don’t know there was examples like that that was like why are we packing all this stuff and kayaks and when we sold our Diesel Pusher and I was cleaning out the basement I’m like there was a lot of stuff that that guy got that bought her Pusher yeah that I’m like like I’ve never used this and he can have it I don’t care the whole mentality like experience over things when you’re vacationing at least when we’re vacationing it because we’re again we’re part-timers we don’t do this full-time so we don’t need like our whole life to come with us our whole house to come with us we kind of plan on what we’re bringing depending on where we’re going that week or that weekend and so we’ll pack the camper accordingly we’re trying to keep it simple because we want to enjoy the trip for us it’s a little more about the adventure than it is about the RV even though the RV is important aesthetic all of that stuff we can talk about all that all day like it matters you want to love your home on Wheels I think sometimes you want to enjoy RV more more than you want to spend so much investing in the RV we want it to be relaxing that’s the whole reason we do this right get out in nature we want to relax I think relaxing is a word a strong word you could use behind the whole idea of RV
