Considering Travel Trailer

T

tamoore

New Member
Location
Indianapolis, IN
It's been a year since I was forced to retire at 62 due to a medical condition. My wife has medical conditions also but we are both adjusting well to our circumstances and stable medically. We've been thinking very serious about purchasing a small travel trailer. The one we really like is only 20' long. I have a 2016 Ram 1500 Laramie V8 with a towing package. But I've never towed anything in my life and I've never been camping (except when they made me in the Army lol). So if anyone has gone through this before and you're willing to share your experience I'd be interested in reading about it.

We live in a condo in Indianapolis and I'm thinking of all types of options for parking when we're not using it. Should I lease a year round lot at a nearby campground which we can enjoy regularly, which we can return to after traveling? Or is it better to rent inside storage for when we not traveling?

When traveling how do you find and decide where to stop for the night? Is it as easy as finding hotel rooms? How does this work?

Is it a physical challenge to hookup when you park?

I need to find a traveling by travel trailer 101 class. Lol
 

We thought of doing something similar when we retired. We even thought of selling the house and buying a rather large RV and traveling the country for a year or so before we settled down. However, when we factored in all the expenses and hassles of buying, towing, insuring, parking, etc., etc., it really didn't make good financial sense. For the costs of such a rig, a person can stay in clean comfortable hotels/motels dozens/hundreds of nights. We tested our "travel" wants a few weeks after I retired....closed up the house, had a shell put on the pickup, loaded it up, and headed for Canada for 5 or 6 weeks. We had no troubles finding nice places to stay at night, and saw some marvelous sights all over Canada and the NW U.S. After a few weeks of this, we pretty much got it all out of our system, and now we fly to Denver once a year to visit relatives, Las Vegas once a year, and the rest of the time we visit the kids and local casinos about once a month....with free nights at the casinos.

Bottom line...before you commit to this lifestyle, look for a camper to rent, and try it out for a few weeks....before you commit any serious money to this.
 

We never wanted a large rig, motorhome or trailer. Smaller rigs are far more maneuverable and use less gas. We had a 17' Casita which worked well for 2 retirees. We bought it used for about $7000 and sold it for about the same price some years later. If this sort of rig interests you look at the web sites for Casita, Escape and Scamp.

Some large rigs are too big to fit the campsites in National Parks and National Forests which are much better places to stay than random motels.
 
Passport America offers discount memberships and they publish a directory of participating campgrounds. The Good Sam directory is available at Camping World and many other RV stores. The directories grad the campgrounds and list prices.
Hooking up is neither difficult nor strenuous. For an overnight stop I just plug in the power cord and hook up a water hose. It is important that the trailer be level for the fridge. I do not unhitch for an overnighter. There are books with more detail available.
 
Thank you everyone for these suggestions. I've found them very helpful. I had to run to Illinois Saturday and Kim went with me. We stopped in a rest area and staff there gave Kim some information about campgrounds in Illinois and interesting and odd places to see and visit. She was so comfortable riding in the truck up high with the luxury interior she's suddenly taken on a new excitement about this.
 

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