Our current plan is to find a travel trailer that we can live in full-time when we’re ready to hit the road. But there are so many options to choose from and we basically know nothing about any of them. So I plan on writing a series of posts about how we’re choosing a travel trailer, the right truck to tow it, and everything we learn along the way.
First Time
Neither of us had actually spent time in an RV or travel trailer before, so the logical first step was to rent one for a weekend. Earlier this year I started doing research on what kind of trailers our Toyota Tacoma could safely pull. I started learning all kinds of new terms and acronyms like dry weight, GVWR, tongue weight, and more.
Around that time we were on one of our weekend adventures, driving through a state park in Oregon, when I had a great idea. The park had a large campground with several hundred RV sites. So we drove through the campground looking for Tacomas, taking note of what kind of trailers they were pulling. Of course, that is no substitute for checking the actual weight restrictions, but it gave us a good initial list of trailers to research.
Now that we had a list of possible trailers, we used Outdoorsy, a site that lets RV owners rent their rigs to others. We found one that was not too far from where we live and asked the owner some questions to make sure we could safely tow it and that it had the features we were looking for.
To say I was nervous towing a trailer for the first time would be an understatement. Especially driving it around Portland, OR during rush hour on a Friday. There were a few times I slowed down because the wind was blowing me around a little, but that was the only issue I had towing the trailer.
The first night was wonderful. It was a rainy weekend, but we were able to relax outside thanks to the awning. Once it got too cold, Erin loved escaping into the warmth of the heated trailer. Having our own bathroom sure was nice too.
Unfortunately, the weekend went a little sideways from there. We ran out of propane, had no heat the 2nd night, and had several other issues with the trailer. Despite the rough ending to the weekend, we both loved the overall experience.
The primary purpose of the weekend was to make sure we enjoyed spending time in a travel trailer and that I felt comfortable towing it. Mission accomplished! We also learned that we want to find a different floorplan and also need something a little bigger than what we rented.
Next Steps
After our successful-ish weekend, we returned home excited to look at all the possible trailer options. Since the trailer we rented was near the maximum weight our Tacoma could safely tow, we know a bigger trailer means we will also need a bigger truck. That gets into a lot of details though so it will likely be a post all on its own. In Part 2 of choosing a travel trailer I talk about our experience going to look at trailers at a dealer.
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