Back when I was 10 or so, my father used to take me camping. When we weren’t tenting beneath the oak forest canopy on the banks of Fisheating Creek, we were hiking through Old Florida pine scrub on the Florida Trail north from U.S. 41 toward Alligator Alley. Those times we did Disney’s Fort Wilderness campground, the kids would stay in a rented trailer. He’d pitch his tent out back. He was that kind of camper.
About the same time and about 1,500 miles to the north, a girl I’d meet a decade later was camping with her family. They’d tow the family trailer from Toronto to places like Lake Nipissing or Algonquin Park in northern Ontario. They were another kind of camper.
For two families, this was camping. Four decades later, we’re camping again, tho’ our “lodging” of choice might have my dear ol’ dad (RIP) spinning in his REI goose down sleeping bag…
Our family last year bought our first travel trailer, a 24-foot Coachmen Freedom Express, and a Ford pickup truck to tow her.
This is the first of a multi-part series exploring what took us from youthful memories of camping with our families to adult adventures, whether at some beachfront RV park, a wooded campground, or a music festival.
The key takeaways we learned: 1. Before shopping for, and certainly before buying, any RV, list your must-have amenities – and size you’ll be comfortable with. Now’s the time to Be Bold, you can revise your wish list as you see what’s out there. 2. Do your research to make sure they’re available in the size or style unit you want – and within your price point. 3. Like any industry, some salesmen will try to sell you only what they have, and might say what they don’t have doesn’t exist. 4. Consider used; you could save a ton of money and certainly will open a much wider inventory of available units. Finally, 5. Take your time. Depending on your market, finding what you want might require time and distance to see what’s out there…
I’ve told some of this story before. Close friends (RTM co-creator Barry and his wife, Jen) invited me to the Lockn music festival in Central Virginia. We “car-camped,” or pitched tents beside our cars. Those are the same friends who later bought “Bertha,” their 31-foot travel trailer and introduced us to festival glamping (click here to learn about “glamping”).
A half-dozen or so festivals in Bertha later, Robbie and I decided to make our leap.
Simply said, but insanely confounding. With scores of new-model travel trailers on the market, and potentially thousands more used units available nationwide, our choices were mind-boggling.
We had a couple of things going our way. Florida is a robust RV dealer market and the RV industry has never been stronger. A dozen or more dealerships with millions of dollars in inventory are within a three hour drive from our South Florida home. Craigslist, RVTrader, and classifieds put scores more units a drive away.
Most importantly – and this is very important when hunting for something with more options than choosing which act to see at a multi-stage festival – a half-dozen trips with Bertha told us what we needed. We wanted…
– A slide out, or a portion of the unit that slides out to expand the unit’s interior space and create more living area.
– A master bedroom with a door that closes. This would provide us privacy in a unit, with a convertible couch or dinette that could accommodate two or four more quests. Some “bedrooms” are behind curtains, or no divider at all. Privacy is important.
– An outdoor kitchen. Bertha had a full kitchen, with a two-burner stove, a microwave oven, a dorm-sized refrigerator, and a sink with hot and cold running water. Every breakfast and almost every other meal we’d eat in Bertha was cooked in that kitchen, often with The Black Crowes playing on the Harman-Kardon Bluetooth speaker. This is vital. The family can sleep, while I cook – and tease the neighbors with the beautiful smell of bacon on the grill.
Finally – and this was the deal-killer – we wanted all this in a trailer ranging between from 21 to 24 feet. We didn’t need a much larger unit; towing it would require a much larger vehicle and more challenging towing than we were game to bite off.
We did our research online and by phone. We called dealerships from Fort Lauderdale west to the Gulf of Mexico and north to the I-4.
We laid out our wishlist. <Crickets> If I had a buck for every time a dealer said it was impossible, especially with that outdoor kitchen, we’d be having a batch of Starbucks with every breakfast.
So we hit the road. First, I visited a few dealerships and Facetimes my RV inspections with Robbie. The next week, we went out together. In all, we visited about eight dealerships over two weekends. We found a few units, but none matching our short – but seemingly insurmountable – list of must-have amenities. Eventually, we hit RVOne, a dealer off the I-4 in Tampa. Walking the lot, still, we were skunked.
But the sales rep checked their inventory and found a year-old model model 45 minutes east at their Orlando location.
We drove to Winter Park, took a night at the historic Winter Park Hotel, and at 11am showed up. The unit was a Coachmen Freedom Express 248 RBS (in RV speak, “24 feet, eight inches, Rear Bath House”). It had everything we asked for, plus a relatively spacious bathroom, a large awning, a pair of LP gas tanks, among other features.
It also had a negotiable asking price.
By noon, it was ours.
We’ve logged probably two dozen nights and about 5,000 miles with Mr. Charlie since bringing her home last May (yeah, most people refer to their boats and RVs in the feminine. Our kids had called two of our cars “Charlie,” so it seemed appropriate to continue the lineage. So there’s that…)
This form of “glamping,” comfortable as it is, would have been shunned by my father in deference to that tent on the shore of the Fisheating Creek. But for us, it’s just what the festival ordered.
Check in next for a story on how we chose Mr. Charlie’s tow vehicle, Donkey Jr. We’ll explore the origins of that name, too…