We Have the Perfect Travel Trailer (Mostly)

Our trailer.

We have just returned from a three week road trip to Ontario, Canada with our 2014 Gulf Stream Ameri-Lite 248BH.  We towed it using our 2014 Dodge Ram 1500 with the 5.7L Hemi engine and factory installed tow package. While driving home we decided to go to the Fall RV show at the Timonium Fair Grounds just north of Baltimore, Maryland.  This prompted me to watch way too many YouTube videos on current travel trailers and check out a few of them in more detail on the web. We really like our trailer and it has a lot of sentimental value for us, but we thought there might be some new lighter trailers out there that just might tempt us. However, what we found was just the opposite.

Most manufacturers now make a travel trailer model very similar to ours, having an almost identical floor plan. The picture below is a Jayco 224BHW model, but almost every brand has a model very similar to this. The entrance is slightly towards the front. As you enter, the walk-around queen bed is to the right with the kitchen and dinette to the left. Just past the kitchen and dinette are the extra wide bunks and the bathroom. Some have slide-outs and some don't. Some, like ours, have the bathroom sink outside of the bathroom, while others put the bathroom sink inside the bathroom. There is no wall between the queen bed and the rest of the trailer as these trailers are between 27 to 29 feet in length and there isn't enough space for a wall, although there is always a curtain.

Typical double wide bunk with walk-around queen layout.

So what did we find in our recent romp though the RV show and RV YouTube videos? The first thing was that is was difficult to find a trailer with this layout in a 27 foot length. Most were 28 to 30 feet in length. The Jayco pictured above does have a total length of 27 feet and 1 inch. Now, if you ever talked with an RV sales person you know that they will tell you "it's only one or two extra feet, you won't even notice it". That may be true when towing it, but we've been able to squeeze into some pretty tight (and spectacular) camping sites with our RV that even an extra foot would have made much more difficult if not impossible. Sure, we've certainly come across sites that our trailer was also too long for, but why reduce access to sites even more by going longer?

The second thing that really surprised me was that all the travel trailers with the layout described above weigh more than 4,000 pounds dry with some weighing 5,000 or 6,000 pounds. However, these trailers didn't typically have a larger GVWR than ours which means that they cannot carry as much cargo. Another surprise was that most also had smaller holding tanks for fresh, gray and black water. You can get the full specifications for our trailer by clicking on the link in the first paragraph. For those of you not familiar with dry weight and gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR), dry weight is just what it sounds like, the weight of the trailer with nothing extra in it. The dry weight may not even include the battery and certainly does not include the weight of propane, fresh water, waste water or any extra stuff you put in the trailer. The GVWR is the total weight your trailer can handle. Therefore, your cargo carrying capacity is your GVWR minus your dry weight. The Jayco pictured above has a dry weight of 4,620 pounds, a GVWR of 6,000 pounds and a cargo capacity of just 1,380 pounds.  Gulfstream makes a newer version of our Ameri-Lite trailer with the same floor plan BUT they removed 2 of the windows that we have in our 2014 model, so that was definitely a deal breaker for us. After all this, we found out that we actually already own the perfect travel trailer for us...mostly. If you would like to read about how we picked this RV back in 2014 check out Purchasing Our First RV here.

Over the years we've done a number of things to our trailer to make it better at doing 5 to 6 week long road trips. Our camper came with two wardrobe cabinets on either side of the queen bed with hanging bars which were not very useful so we put shelves in them. We installed a tongue mounted bike rack that can carry two bikes. After having to replace shredded tires while on a trip on more than one occasion, I now check the manufacturer's date code and replace them when they get close to 5 years past that date. I have also upgraded from load C rated tires to load D rated, the highest I've been able to find in 13 inch tires. We also now carry 3 spare tires and, on longer trips, an air compressor and a tire repair kit along with a full set of tools including portable hydraulic floor and bottle jacks. Another big improvement we did was upgrading the mattress to a thicker, but more comfortable one. This required that we upgrade the struts on the bed lift, which resulted in us reinforcing the strut mounts and hinges.

Pull-out electric cable.

We have also re-sealed the roof, side and window seams several times and re-packed the wheel bearings a few times along with other miscellaneous repairs and maintenance tasks. I have just purchased a roof fan vent cover so that we can have the bathroom vent open when raining or driving. I have also purchased a 30A marine plug conversion kit to convert our 30A pull-out cable as this cable is very difficult to retract into its' storage area and can allow ants and other bugs to get into the power cable storage area when the cable is out and touching the ground. Lastly, I purchased a set of bug proof refrigerator vent covers to help keep that area clean. 

Speaking of RV refrigerators, the gas/electric, also known as absorption refrigerators that were common  in most RVs are being replaced with 12 volt compressor refrigerators by many RV manufacturers. Absorption refrigerators can run on 120 volt AC or propane, but have some drawbacks. They are not very efficient when running on AC, can be a fire hazard if not maintained properly and take a long time to cool down (8 hours or more). But they have one big advantage - you can run them for days and days on propane.  This is very important if you want to camp without electric hookups for more than a day or two, which we have done at all national park campgrounds, BLM lands, some state park campgrounds and sometimes even private campgrounds.

This is the major drawback of the 12 volt compressor fridge.  As it runs off of your RV's 12 volt battery, it can typically only run for about 24 hours. Some manufacturers install a single solar panel to help keep your RV battery charged, but it needs direct sunlight to operate at a decent efficiency and we've been camping in many places where our trailer is in shade most of the day. You can certainly upgrade to higher wattage solar panels, add more panels and even install a lithium-ion battery bank and inverter to power not only your fridge, but also your air conditioner. However, these systems aren't cheap and the more power you want to store and use, the more expensive the system. Oh yeah, you still need the sun for those solar panels to work. So for us a 12 volt fridge is really a non-starter.

Harbor Freight generator.

So, yes, our RV was and is mostly perfect for us, but we will also continue to make improvements. One improvement I'm considering is to upgrade to 14 inch tires as I have seen Gulf Steam put them on other identical models of our trailer. This would provide us with a better selection of quality tires with even higher load ratings. I have also been considering installing a second battery in parallel to the first giving us almost double the battery life. Currently, we can dry camp (i.e. no hook-ups) with a full tank of fresh water and empty gray and black tanks for about 4 days. Usually our gray tank fills up first and is the limiting factor for how long we can stay out, so I haven't really needed a second battery, but it would provide a greater margin of error. The way we camp, we definitely do not need any type of solar as a system that would be capable of running our air conditioner would cost around $3,500.00 and I can buy a 3,500 watt generator at Harbor Freight for under $1,000.00 if I really wanted to run the AC without an electric hookup.  For now, we continue to be content just using open windows and battery operated portable fans on warmer evenings.

Now that we have had a thorough look at the latest travel trailers and stacked them up against the one we already have, I can say that there was not anything out there to tempt us to trade in.  It seems that the trailer that we have is still meeting the requirements that we had when we bought it, and the newer needs we have developed over time.  Given the sentimental nature of our travel trailer to our family, that's a good thing!  

Purchasing Our First RV

When I was growing up my family went on a fair number of camping trips, first in a tent, then a small pop-up camper with no trailer brakes and a full canvas top, and finally in a regular pop-up with trailer brakes and a center hard-top. None of our campers had any hook-ups and were just used for sleeping and staying dry in a rain storm. We did all of our cooking, eating and relaxing outside. My wife had a similar experience growing up. We had tent camped together several times as well so we both had a pretty good idea of how we liked to camp, which is important when considering the type and size of RV to buy.

Typical pop-up camper.

I would have been happy with a pop-up trailer, but my wife wanted something with a separate walled bathroom so that she and our daughter would not have to make any middle-of-the-night walks to the campground restrooms. This ruled out pop-ups as the ones with bathrooms typically use curtains except for a few fairly large pop-ups. We also ruled out motorhomes because you are buying another large vehicle so they are expensive compared to travel trailers.  They also require more maintenance, don't have as much space as an equal length travel trailer and, unless you tow a car behind you, you will have to disconnect and reconnect your electric, water and sewer every time you leave from and return to your campsite. 

We had attended a few RV shows and visited a few dealers near us throughout 2012 and 2013 so when the 2013 Fall RV show came to the Timonium Fair Grounds just north of Baltimore, Maryland we were ready to make a purchase. Our requirements at the time were:

• Separate walled bathroom with separate shower. By this time we had ruled out bathroom shower all-in-ones.
• We were looking for a travel trailer, sometimes called a bumper pull as we had a half-ton truck, but didn't want to install a 5th wheel type hitch.
• We wanted something as small as possible while still providing a full bath and enough space for a family of four with no pets to do cross-country road trips. When camping in national parks and some state parks the smaller your rig the more sites you will have to choose from.
  
• Things we didn't care about: TVs, built-in radios, slide-outs, power awnings or power jacks. The simpler the trailer the less things there are to break.

Typical hybrid trailer.

Based on our requirements I was mainly looking at hybrid trailers, sometimes called pop-outs because the main body of the trailer looks like a normal travel trailer, but the beds pop-out of the front and back and some have a third bed that pops out of the side. These are not slide-outs as a large hinged door is opened from the outside of the trailer, folding down and flat for each bed and the walls and roof for each bed are some type of weatherproof material. These types of trailers with full baths are typically 19 to 22 feet in length. My wife wanted permanently set up beds for our 2 children given the amount of time we planned to be on our trips (4-6 weeks) and we didn't want to convert a dinette to a bed every night.

Our trailer displayed at the RV show.

Towards the end of the day we found a 21 foot travel trailer that had upper and lower bunks, a full bath with separate shower, but no sink and a corner queen bed.  It was the Gulf Stream Ameri-Lite 199DD and was at Bay RV's display. They also had another American-Lite model there: the Gulf Stream Ameri-Lite 248BH. We went back and forth sitting in both and decided that the 248BH just felt more comfortable. However, I was worried about the length as it is 27 feet in total length, almost 4 feet longer than the 199DD. In the end, we decided that the larger trailer just felt right and so that was the one we purchased. It was a fairly basic trailer: no TVs, no built-in stereo, no slide-outs, no outdoor shower, no power awning or jacks and only 13 inch bias-ply tires. However, it weighed less then 4000 pounds dry, but had a GVWR over 7200 pounds, which ment it could carry a lot of extra weight. It also had large bunk beds, decent storage and all of the basics that we were looking for.

Picking up our trailer at Bay RV.

A couple of weeks later we went to Bay RV to pick up the trailer. They installed a brake controller and set up the Equalizer load distribution & anti-sway hitch. I drove around their parking lot a few times to get the hang of making turns and off we went. During this multi-year buying process answering the following questions really helped us get the right trailer for our family and the type of camping we planned to do with it.

• How many people will be camping with you?
• Will you be bringing pets with you?

• 

  Driving practice at Bay RV.

  Will you be bringing big toys with you (i.e. bicycles, motorcycles, ATVs)?
• What types of campgrounds will you typically be staying at (i.e. full-hookup RV resorts, national and state parks, boon-docking)?
• What types of trips will you generally do (i.e. long weekend trips, multi-week trips, full-time RVing)?
• How much time do you expect to spend inside the camper vs. outside?
• How comfortable will you be towing or driving a big rig vs. a smaller rig?

    We hope this helps some of you first-time RVers find the one that best suites your needs. Check out our other blog entry We Have the Perfect Travel Trailer (Mostly) to see how well we did 8 years and over 20,000 miles later.