Choosing Our Future “Home” On The Road

 Blog Post #2 - Written April 20, 2025

Choosing Our Future “Home” On The Road

When we first decided to “drive around the country in an RV”, that’s about as specific as we got for several months. Then my eldest (and wisest) brother suggested that maybe we should decide what kind of rig we wanted to get in advance, many months in advance, rather than the week before we wanted to leave. And it’s a good thing, because planning something like this takes time. Lots and lots of time and endless nights of research and planning after putting the kids to bed.

We told ourselves we wanted to do this “RV trip” in early 2024.  We started researching the types of “homes on the road” in Oct/Nov of 2024. We literally had no idea what the options were, let alone the pros/cons of each. I don’t know what we were thinking haha.

And to be clear, we are still not experts. Not even close. But I’ll share our thought process and you can decide to either nod your head and think highly of our logic, or laugh at our ignorance  :) 

1. We have 3 young kids. So we needed something big, with 2 separate rooms on opposite ends of the home.

2. We are going to live in this full time, not just for a couple weekends camping during the summer. So we couldn’t settle for certain layouts, like bunkbeds that are separated from the main living/kitchen area with only a curtain. We decided our 2 separate rooms needed to have real doors.

3. I originally thought we’d buy a motorhome, but then I learned how expensive they were (well over $100k) and it’s hard to find one with 2 private rooms. Plus, we would’ve needed to tow a “get around town” vehicle behind it anyway and it just felt silly to have 2 motorized vehicles. Felt more efficient to just have a truck that could be both the tow vehicle and the “get around town” vehicle.

4. Then I learned how [relatively] inexpensive trailers could be [in comparison to motorhomes]. And it was much easier to find a layout that worked for us with trailers. We found several that could’ve worked, in the $30-75k range for a new one.

5. We figured we’d find a used one for cheap. But our [limited] experience was that the used inventory wasn’t huge, it was difficult to find exactly what we wanted used, and the price differential wasn’t that great. So we actually decided to just buy a new one. And we’ll hope it doesn’t depreciate too much before we sell it!

6. Next we had to decide between a 5th wheel (gooseneck) that attaches to the truck in the bed, or a travel (pull behind) that simply attaches to the hitch.  Pros of 5th wheels are they’re typically larger and easier to tow. Cons are they’re more expensive and eliminate your truck bed as potential storage space. We ultimately decided to go with a pull behind travel trailer because they were cheaper and would allow us to use the truck bed for storage.

So drove down to RCD RV in Medina, OH one freezing cold December day and toured a bunch of different models.  Our kids were troopers, trudging through the snow from trailer to trailer, but man was it frigid. We learned a lot that day, seeing what layouts existed, options and accessories, and getting a real feel for the space and sizing. We ultimately decided on a 2024 Forest River Salem 31KQBTS.  Megan loved the large back room (with 2 slideouts) so the kids could have a big space to play in, do home-school, etc. 

Forest River is on the cheaper end and we knew that going in. As others have quaintly put it, we're essentially living in a nice looking cardboard box on wheels haha.

We signed the paperwork in January. Set us back just under $40k. They said they’d store it for us at the dealership until we were ready for it.

Now we just needed to find a truck to tow it!

TL;DR - we bought a new 2024 Forest River Salem tow-behind travel trailer