The Coachmen Freelander 21QB

I think we might be the only RV owners who haven’t named their coach. We know it’s a she. But beyond that, we’ve not named her. Maybe we will when we get to living in her more than we do now.

We previously had given a whole list of items that were requirements for our new camper.

Those main points were:

• Price Competitive
• Azdel Siding (we’ll follow-up on this later, but any of Matt’s RV Review videos that discuss Azdel should give you insights)
• No Slides
• Generator
• Tow a Lot and Carry a Lot
• Propane Fueled Fridge
• Full Bathroom
• LOT’s of Exterior Storage
• Great Kitchen Options
• Black, Grey, Fresh Water Tanks (no Cassette or Composting)
• Storage, Storage, Storage
• Under 25′

I’ll briefly touch on these, but will follow up on a few of them later for our reasoning and anything we’ve noticed since we bought our camper.

First, Azdel Siding. After settling on Matt’s RV Reviews as our preferred video review source, we started pouring through the videos and then backing those up with internet searches. One thing we discovered is that water damage is a huge issue with these Class C’s. We know we’re probably going to have to deal with it at some point, but we wanted to limit the possibilities for it to affect us. Azdel siding is a product that is touted as never delaminating. We can’t speak to how this will perform long-term, but we knew that it was a required option.

An extension of the water damage conversation was slides. We also knew that slides were not going to be an option for us. We had heard of so many issues with them leaking, with the mechanics going bad or breaking, or any other number of issues. We just didn’t want to deal with it. The camper is just for us to sleep, use the bathroom facilities, cook and store food. We weren’t planning on watching TV, or lounging inside excessively. We were OK with the square footage reduction to not have the issues with the slides.

Price competitive. We bought ours for around $60k with tax/tags etc. The Class A’s and B’s were so tremendously higher priced, for a new vehicle, and we just couldn’t validate the perceived benefits. As the Class B’s basically can’t tow much more than a small bike rack and the Class A’s would have challenges getting into some of the area’s we’ve camped, the no slide, less than 25’ Class C was a perfect choice.

For the interior options, I had some items that I wanted, but that Adam could easily fix. The table (I wanted a Lagun table), I wanted an extension on the kitchen counter, a convection microwave. Things like this are upgradable. What wasn’t as easy to upgrade were things like a propane fueled fridge. That would have required a lot more work, and the two other RV’s that would have worked (A Winnebago and a Nexus), didn’t have the propane fueled fridge. The kitchen layout also allowed me to get my kitchen space. Stock, it’s a tiny, tiny kitchen area. However, Adam added an extension on the counter by the door and put a Lagun base on the dining table. In addition, he also changed out the sink and faucet so that I had a much larger space to work with next to the stove. The kitchen is perfect now and I can cook almost anything I want, no issue. The one sacrifice I made was for the convection oven. However, I did decide to purchase a toaster oven/air fryer combo for our house that will easily transport and sit on the counter if I want to bake while we’re hooked up to electricity.

I won’t go on a soapbox about the bathroom, it’s an RV bathroom. But it’s what we needed. I did add some bungee elastic using push pins in the corner medicine cabinet. That works perfectly. It holds all of our bottles. I have a little storage piece locked down with command hooks on the counter arc out. The shower itself is a bit of a mystery. The bottle holders make zero sense. We removed that piece and filled in the holes with silicone. The shower sucks. We’re doing our research to replace that, stay tuned! But overall, it works for us. Adam is 6 ft and I’m 5’2”. You’re definitely not going to be dancing in there, but you can use the toilet and take a shower. That’s all we needed it to do.

I mention storage repeatedly. This coach has an abundance of it. With us not planning to travel with the kids, the bunk over will essentially turn into our closet and extra lightweight storage. Think totes of winter clothes, our freeze dried food cans, TP & Paper Towels, fishing poles, skis, etc. Then above and below the dinette, there’s even more storage. The closet right now is a closet, but when we start traveling in her, that will transition to additional food storage. We only weekend to week-long camp right now, so we don’t need that much extra storage.

And the exterior storage is MASSIVE. It’s under the corner-bed and oh my. It holds everything we need with extra space. I don’t know that we’ve ever ran out of room. Adam added lights and an access panel to under the bathroom plumbing. We have so much in there, an extra picnic table that Adam’s dad made (it comes apart and stores flat), our chairs, a side table, a rug, grill, extra propane tank, tools, leveling blocks. Occasionally, if we’re camping close to home, we can load up with a weekend’s worth of firewood as well. I can’t say enough about this storage space.

The last items have more to do with us wanted to be fully self-contained and able to boondock for long periods of time. The generator, propane fueled fridge and largish tanks. The generator works perfectly, whenever we need it (so long as you don’t ignore the warning chirps and run your house battery down – our hands are up, we did that). The propane fueled fridge has never let us down. We leave it on Auto (except when the camper is winterized). We have a plug in at our house, I keep staples in it during the season. The minute we unplug, it switches over to gas. Not a single issue, whatsoever. Essentially, we basically forget about messing with it except for the beginning and end of season.

The tanks. Oh the tanks. GPM? You pay attention to those things when you’re looking at modifications. Never thought I’d be worrying about pooping and peeing. The sweat that starts popping out when you’re 3/4 full on the black tank. This RV is pretty good for us. The tank sizes are good for about a week for us, really paying attention to usage.

The last thing is the size. We knew after the pop-up that we couldn’t go much larger than it the slides out. I actually think we’re shorter. We love camping in small state and National Parks. When we boondocked on the Badlands wall, outside of Wall, SD, we got the most amazing spot. The larger trailers and Class A’s couldn’t get level enough for their taste or to be safe with the slides. We just pull this little gal in wherever we want and we’re ready to go immediately. It also fits into a parking lot without taking up more than a couple of spaces, unless we’re towing.

Whew, that was a long one. We’ll follow up with some more details on a few of these later on. The sink is my favorite I think. The access in the basement helped us repair where one of the factory jobs was done poorly (a water connection wasn’t fully sealed). And running out of battery while camping in the snow at Hurricane River campground which meant that we couldn’t run the furnace or start the generator for hours. Thank goodness we could start the cab and run the truck heater. We made some changes after that to our electric setup! Stay tuned for more!