Go Fast camper or small teardrop trailer

Ya slide in camper aint gonna happen, checked my sticker and was disappointed my payload is 1,140lbs:

 

Why are you guys worried about towing? Your trucks are solid. If you are doing offroad trails I totally get it. Most camping around here happens at campgrounds with paved or gravel roads. 225k on my 3.4. You bought the most reliable pickup on the road. Don't be afraid to use it.

Here is some functionality you may want:

• Stand up to change clothes (how remote do you expect to camp? If you are east of the rockies.....)
• Take a shower inside (the trek through KS is long and you may want to sleep at walmart)
• Take a poop, inside, and maybe press the button on the bidet to make sure everything is squeaky clean
• Warm up the tea pot while it's pouring down rain, in your socks

With 34 gallons of water and 2 full 30 pound propane tanks this all weighed in a 2900 pounds at the CAT scale.

When you have good functionality(read, useful in a broad range of situations) and comfort your girlfriend/wife will want to camp more. It's awesome. Trust me.

 

If directed at me, i'm not worried about towing... I just don't really want to do it, lol. Also, storing a trailer is a big issue for me. I don't have much room in my driveway down here in SD. Land is a premium!

BUT, I understand you just simply can't beat the creature comforts a trailer brings as opposed to some bed mounted system. No way of getting around that. It'll be a tradeoff either way we decide to go.

 

Now that I can understand. Sorry for the derail.

Most people don't buy the right camper the first time anyways. I know I didn't .

 

So far the ONLY thing that would push us (my wife) to go with a trailer is an inside bathroom/shower. I personally could care less, but its something she wants. I would be perfectly happy with a Super Pacific shell camper, our little porta-potty inside a ground tent for privacy and storage of other gear (or just hoof it when out in the wilderness) and some outside side mounted shower system. That would be my ideal setup. Now, just gotta convince the wife!

 

@gkomo, if you aren't using it more than 3 weeks a year it'll be better to just rent a trailer and not pay for storage, maintenance, and take the depreciation hit.

We were tent campers for a long time, spending up to a month every summer on road trips.

Then in 2014 I had a cancer recurrence and got really sick.


I wanted to get outdoors still and be able to camp but needed a bathroom that was close and a heater because I was always cold so we went out and bought a new 24ft Jayco X213 a couple after being discharged from the hospital following surgery (I was still puking a lot and on oxy for the pain). I got better by the time we were camping again but we still used the trailer over tents most of the time in the years that followed. My wife had our first and second kids and we were able to get them out camping when they were both really young (3 months and 6 months old).

We realized that we slept much better when we were on a flat surface and not in a ground tent so we bought a RTT that was large enough to fit the family and started getting back out for disbursed camping when the kids were 3 and 4. The camper worked out great for us at that point in our life and we still used it but towing a 5,500lbs trailer was tiring and we generally limited our trips with it to 3 hours from the house.

We were also doing more disbursed camping on BLM and NFS land and I wasn't about to tow that trailer down any of the forest roads but we missed the amenities...kitchen, fridge/freezer, lighting, power, outdoor shower (we used that way more than the shower in the trailer), awning, and storage (we lost a significant amount of bed space once we started loading this stuff into the truck).

This winter we put a deposit on a new trailer (Patriot X3) that will go anywhere my truck can off-road and we are prepping our current trailer to sell it. The new trailer fits in our garage and will get most of the stuff we were putting in the bed of the truck back on the trailer. We won't have to load everything into the truck before heading out since most of the stuff has a home in the trailer...hitch up and go.

We will keep the RTT for quick overnight trips or if I'm heading out solo and we plan to kick the kids out of the trailer to the RTT when they are a bit older.

 

I saw you post in another thread about the Patriot x3. SUPER cool, a little out of our price range though! Congrats on that, i'm jealous... that's a very sweet rig. One of the other advantages I see for the Super Pacific (or GFC or the like) is they act like a truck shell when not in use which is something i'd like. I get what you're saying about renting something since we go so few times a year. Last year, for instance, over Thanksgiving we met up with my brother and his family at a campground near Pismo Beach. My brother has a large trailer and a large truck to pull it. But his wifes brother did one of those rent-a-trailer deals where they bring it to the campground and set it up and all that for you. Seemed like a cool idea. BUT, my brother also does a lot of BLM camping and hoofing it out in the wilderness without his trailer. This is where i think something like the Super Pacific would come in handy, where I can just drive out to the boonies and camp.

We already have the porto-potty thing, we have a nice propane stove/oven (camp chef) with the 25lb tank connection. We have ground tents, sleeping bags, etc. The SP will act like a normal shell (not even THAT much heavier than a commercial shell) so i could leave it on at all times and protect whatever i have back there when not camping i.e. golf clubs or literally anything else i carry back there regularly.

I guess what i'm trying to convince my wife is... we already have everything we need for a normal outdoors camping trip. She just wants a 'protected' place to sleep (not on the ground) and an indoor bathroom. I can give her the 'protected' place to sleep with one of these shell/camper combos - i just can't give her the indoor bathroom. Unfortunately these shell/camper combos are like $10k so that's not a financial decision i can just go off and make on my own.

 

Our first TT and so far have never looked back. It does everything with the exception of bathroom but, there is an encloser we can put up on back so we can shower. Wifey did not care about the toilet part, Porta potty for that. It is a complete/off grid set up. Even set up for off road. 1700 dry, fully loaded with gear im around 2500-2800# total truck and TT

 

If you are married, there is a 100% chance you will camp more if you have a toilet.

 

Land is a premium in south dakota? Oh wait, San Diego, yeah, i get it now. I have to admit that of all the hairy situations Ive been in, and of all the places where I tried to squeeze my trailer through some trees or up a gravel switchback, or parallel park it downtown, the absolute most white-knuckle towing I ever did was I-8 to the 5, to 405, to 1. All cities have their insane traffic quirks, but so-cal is not a trailer friendly place. Especially surface streets, where y'all do that weird "stick your nose halfway into the road and hope no one shaves your bumper" thing.

I agree with this. Renting is usually the most cost-effective solution. My popup cost me 12k after taxes, renting a similar model averages 100 bucks a night. When shopping I wanted my break-even to be within less than 5 years, that meant that I had to spend more than 25 nights per year camping. Which I easily hit and then some. (For the past 4 years of ownership I averaged 40 nights per year.)

As the campers get bigger and more expensive, that pseudo "ROI" gets tougher to achieve. Thats why I stayed cheap. Well that, and mine fits in the garage:

 

My wife and I love the Topo2, until we saw the price tag. Astonished a small tear drop trailer can cost more than a brand new vehicle used to tow it, lol.

We have put on hold our decision for whatever we plan on doing. Our baby due date is Nov 21... by the time we order anything it'll probably take longer to get and after the baby is born we probably won't be going anywhere within the first 6 months anyways. So, like its been stated, maybe renting is our best option. However, now i'm in the debacle of even if we rent (with a newborn), i can't fit the car seat in the rear of my access cab anyways. Really wishing I would've been smart to foresee the need of a double cab back in 2015 when i bought my access cab.

I guess getting a GoFast or SuperPacific wouldn't have worked anyways, lol. Still gotta haul a child in a rear facing car seat and that just won't work.

 

Oh thats tough. With a young kiddo I would start looking at cabins and Yurts to scratch that camping bug, at least this year. It takes 90% of the work out of it and you can use the family car to get there.

Example:

https://www.hipcamp.com/en-US/discover/colorado/riverwalk-yurts

 

@gkomo, congrats on the incoming offspring!

Don't let that stop you from getting outdoors...we were trailer camping with our son when he was 6 weeks old (June bday) and our daughter when she was 4 months old (Jan bday).

 

Good to know. So we've pretty much decided that the AC has to go. Now the decision is do we buy a double cab Tacoma, or something like a Crew Max Tundra. I still want a truck just because being a homeowner it comes in handy but also would need to do baby duties from time to time. We also have a little Lexus NX300h (wouldn't have picked that but we bought it off my grandpa when he stopped driving for a deal we couldn't pass up)... that will be more full time baby hauler. I'd prefer a Tacoma just for the size, but damn those Tundras (3rd gen with the v8, or even maybe the 4th gen coming out) look nice a roomy.

 

Before I got married, circa 2001, I used to camp with my girlfriend in a 70's slide in camper. It was on a 1975 Chevy pickup with the 350 v-8. A very satisfying arrangement. The best thing about it was the low price, and everything being on 4 tires, it was fairly nimble in the mountains. No toilet inside, but a nice bed and a kitchen.

Now, a few pages have flown off our calendars. The delightful full sized Chevy with a 350 is long gone. Our current setup is a hand-built wooden teardrop camper. Dry weight about 700 lbs.. The advantage is unlike the ole slide-in, there is no need to maintain a giant pickup year-round for a few camping trips. We can tow it with a Honda, or with our Tacoma, or with almost any mainstream vehicle we got in the future. That's the advantage.

The disadvantage has to do with suddenly having six wheels on your car, being twice as long as before, all things you need to think about and behave more like a trucker or a professional driver, where you plan your moves ahead and stay more on known paths or routes. That is the down side.

Still, I love camping. To the original poster, I advise you to look for the cheapest used camper of acceptable quality you can find. If you can tolerate both teardrops and slide-in, that doubles your chance to find the right deal. Use the money you saved while waiting for the bargain to appear, and pay the full price, no payments. In the meantime, do as much tent camping as possible! That's just my personal suggestion. I'm not advising you as a legal or medical expert. Enjoy!