We have a 21 on order and the build sheet is due tomorrow. Wife and I along with 2 boys (8 and 10) will be looking forward to camping in the NW (we live in Beaverton) and planning a trip to Alaska next year for my sabbatical.
It's hard with the choices....what to spend on now, what to plan for later, what little thing am I missing that I will regret later. I built up a travel trailer for use with tent camping which had a sink/water pump, solar, microwave + inverter and charger, etc., so I have experience doing some things myself, but I have a lot of other uses for my time as well so I don't want to buy it with a long punch list of things to do before we feel it is really ready to go. So we are getting solar, A/C, the stove, insulation and frameless windows, and a few other things. The only thing I currently have on my "add later" list would be an inverter, which I already have 3 of them so I hate to buy another. I probably wouldn't wire it into the existing A/C, just add one or two dedicated plugs somewhere easy to wire. Then of course there are all the little mods that we've seen on the forum, but those can come little by little.
We are buying sight unseen. We made a couple of calls to people who had them to show in the area but weren't able to put something together quickly, so we just went ahead. We went to the RV show last weekend and let the kids climb through every $400K motorhome and giant 5th wheel they wanted...I'm pretty sure they will be a bit "underwhelmed" when they see our new trailer for the 1st time, but it's a nice step up from the tent camping they are used to anyway (although our tent camping was pretty actually pretty luxurious with a huge tent + separate huge tent for the picnic table, heated shower, etc. - the problem was it took 2 hours to put everything up and take it down!). Anyway it would have been nice if there was something even close to an Escape (and they did mention Escape and Bigfoot as brands represented in their marketing), but oh well, we've done the research enough to have confidence with our purchase decision.
We will be towing it with our Land Rover LR4 which is rated for ~7500lbs and 550 on the hitch, so I think that should be ok. The LR4 is getting up there in miles but has some good life left in her I think. The air suspension doesn't allow WD hitches but that just means I have to make sure I eat enough cookies to keep some weight on the front.
Looking forward to participating in this site to get and possibly even give some advice from time to time, as well as just sharing adventures. Thanks for all that we've learned already.
It's hard with the choices....what to spend on now, what to plan for later, what little thing am I missing that I will regret later. I built up a travel trailer for use with tent camping which had a sink/water pump, solar, microwave + inverter and charger, etc., so I have experience doing some things myself, but I have a lot of other uses for my time as well so I don't want to buy it with a long punch list of things to do before we feel it is really ready to go. So we are getting solar, A/C, the stove, insulation and frameless windows, and a few other things. The only thing I currently have on my "add later" list would be an inverter, which I already have 3 of them so I hate to buy another. I probably wouldn't wire it into the existing A/C, just add one or two dedicated plugs somewhere easy to wire. Then of course there are all the little mods that we've seen on the forum, but those can come little by little.
We are buying sight unseen. We made a couple of calls to people who had them to show in the area but weren't able to put something together quickly, so we just went ahead. We went to the RV show last weekend and let the kids climb through every $400K motorhome and giant 5th wheel they wanted...I'm pretty sure they will be a bit "underwhelmed" when they see our new trailer for the 1st time, but it's a nice step up from the tent camping they are used to anyway (although our tent camping was pretty actually pretty luxurious with a huge tent + separate huge tent for the picnic table, heated shower, etc. - the problem was it took 2 hours to put everything up and take it down!). Anyway it would have been nice if there was something even close to an Escape (and they did mention Escape and Bigfoot as brands represented in their marketing), but oh well, we've done the research enough to have confidence with our purchase decision.
We will be towing it with our Land Rover LR4 which is rated for ~7500lbs and 550 on the hitch, so I think that should be ok. The LR4 is getting up there in miles but has some good life left in her I think. The air suspension doesn't allow WD hitches but that just means I have to make sure I eat enough cookies to keep some weight on the front.
Looking forward to participating in this site to get and possibly even give some advice from time to time, as well as just sharing adventures. Thanks for all that we've learned already.
. I'd like to bring our backpack tent for Wonder Lake in Denali but it seems I have some selling to do before that gets a "go".
