So in April of 2020, we got to chatting with our neighbor. They needed the driveway space and hadn’t used their 2007 popup more than a few times.
Adam and I had talked about camping.
He had gone quite a bit growing up with his dad. We tried rescuing several of his tents but none of them survived time and the mice. He had a travel trailer in Florida while he worked there as a railroad mechanic.
I had tried camping in a travel trailer in my former relationship. I loved the idea, but it was glamping and it was boring to me.
For us, a popup was a great trial. Not a huge investment dollar wise and we could go pretty much anywhere the truck could tow the popup. We learned that we really, really love travel. Not the high-dollar, airplane, jet-setting to sundrenched beaches with cabana attendants. We love the discovery of new places, finding those vistas, those places that make your heart happy from the peace and calm of the moment.
We love camping.
We absolutely came to hate it in the popup.
Let’s talk about trash pandas for a moment. Or as a lot of the midwest campgrounds call them on all of the entry, bathroom and in-between posters – “friendly racoons”.
One trip, the little devils tried to open the door to the popup. Worst night of sleep ever. Sofie notified us every time one got close. We were up all night long.
Then let’s talk about popup setup. That could probably be the rest of the whole post, and a few more. But I’m not going to do that. I’ll keep this as short as I can. The setup and teardown was the other half of the reason why we decided that a popup wasn’t our thing. The same weekend the trash pandas made their appearance at our literal doorstep, we arrived at the site well after dark. Two times, I nearly got pinned between the bed slides and some random part of the camper interior. Once the slides are out, there’s then at least an hour of putting the interior together. Tubs that were stored down below, have to be moved. Sink has to be placed, beds made, food found and prepped, then made.
We camped in a lot of fantastic places in that popup, but we finally decided that we wanted to look at other alternatives to the popup experience.
We did hours and hours of research and watched hundreds of videos. After stopping and starting a lot of different videos, we found Matt’s RV Reviews. While Matt worked for an RV reseller at the time (who we coincidentally also happened to buy our RV from) he did (and still does) a fantastic job of maintaining neutrality. He’s down to earth, comments on the things that legit matter (prime p**ping position anyone?), and really walks through the RV’s in an efficient, but all encompassing way.
After watching all of his reviews that we could, along with several others, we developed our list that we talk about in our previous post.
Originally we had narrowed down it down to the Coachmen Crosstrek 20XG. We were all set after watching all the videos YouTube had on file for RV’s (that’s not really true, but we tried). We thought this RV was it, the best option and had what we needed to do what we wanted.
And then we started our list. Boondocking was a huge component that didn’t make the official list, but was a key component to our list. We made a lot of our decisions for our requirements list based on the expectation that we were going to boondock as much as we could, potentially for a couple of weeks at a time. We quickly realized that the Crosstrek wouldn’t accommodate us.
There’s a lot of reasons, a lot specific to us. Mainly, the towing and carrying capacity weight limits. It had a 2,000lb hitch, which is really only good for a bike rack, you would never want to tow much with it. On top of that, it could only carry an additional 2,260lbs inside. That sounds like a lot, but start putting tools, wood, groceries, water, full tanks, and the weight adds up. We have a boat, a car trailer, a snowmobile trailer, Adam is rebuilding a Willy’s Jeep CJ2A, kayaks/canoes. All of this lead to weight. The Crosstrek just couldn’t pull/carry everything we wanted. Then we added to that the battery situation. When boondocking long term, you’ll need to recharge your batteries. While the batteries could power the A/C, it only had enough power stored for a few hours. Not long enough to run overnight. The battery system just wouldn’t give us enough power for long-term boondocking. With the Crosstrek, the only way we could realistically boondock for long periods was to add a generator.
So we kept looking. If you refer back to our list, it quickly narrowed down the options. You’d probably end up where we did after days and days of videos.
We chose the Coachmen Freelander 21QB on a Chevy 4500 chassis. No we don’t have a thing for Coachmen’s. No joke, look for towing capacity, no slides, exterior storage, Azdel siding, propane fueled fridge, under 25′ and price competitive. The Coachmen Freelander 21QB was basically the only option. Everything I said to look for, it has. On top of that, the generator runs on the chassis fuel tank, so it’s damn near impossible to run it out if you pay attention to it. Plus, the generator will shut off when the fuel tank gets down to 1/4, so you’re never left stranded.
We’ll talk more about the 21QB in one of our future posts. We’ve made a lot of mods to her that we hope you’ll stick around to see!
