Buy your third RV first. We read that advice over and over again. It seemed kind of confusing to us at first, but in the end that’s exactly what we did. The notion is that when people jump at the first RV they like, they often buy something that doesn’t really suit their needs. Many end up trading in that RV after a year or two, sometimes repeating their mistake multiple times. That’s because you don’t know what you don’t know. And it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of a new RV.
We started thinking about buying an RV about five years ago. We had long been tent campers, but as we got up in age, sleeping in a tent became less comfortable. Mrs. 123 wanted a camping set up where she could stand up to get dressed. We started looking at RV trailers as an alternative to tent camping, thinking we’d use it mainly on weekends and camping vacations.
As many people do, we started by going to a few RV lots and seeing what was available. The salesperson told us our SUV could tow up to 4,500 pounds, so we thought that would be our limit. (Lesson 1: Never believe anything a salesperson tells you.) We also knew we wanted a walk-around bed, preferably a Queen-sized mattress. And we definitely didn’t want a bed that had to be converted from a dining to sleeping area every morning. We found one that seemed to check all the boxes: the Jayco Jay Flight 195RB. It was a light, entry-level camper with a walk-around queen bed and a dry weight of less than 3,500 pounds. We weren’t quite ready to buy and that probably saved us a big mistake.
Over the subsequent year, we kept our eye out for a good price on that trailer. We watched a lot of videos from Josh the RV Nerd. Then we visited an RV show and found our second trailer. It was a Freedom Express 192RBS. It also had a walk-around queen bed, but instead of a dinette, it came with a sofa and a freestanding table. The sofa was set inside a slide, which opened up more room in the trailer but added a bit of weight. The Freedom Express came in at nearly 4,500 pounds, with a gross vehicle weight rating of about 6,000 pounds. Our SUV wasn’t going to be able to haul it. We figured we’d upgrade to a pickup truck and be fine.
We began researching the Freedom Express model and even joined a Facebook group for Freedom Express owners. But then at another RV show, we came across an RV we liked even more: the Grand Design Imagine XLS 22MLE. This one was a few feet longer and had a larger slide, but what we really liked was that it had both reclining theatre seats and a dinette. Moreover, we could still access pretty much everything in the trailer with the slide pulled in. That seemed like a nice feature if we were going to overnight in a Wal-Mart or Cracker Barrel parking lot, or if we needed to use the bathroom while on the road. We could just pull over and take care of business, so to speak. And once we decided we were going full-time, we liked that the 22MLE offered a lot of living space in a relatively short trailer.
So that’s our (current) choice. We’ve been inside that model several times now and joined Facebook groups for Grand Design owners and for owners of 22MLEs. Unfortunately, we’ve seen the price of the trailer skyrocket from about $25,000 before the pandemic, to more than $40,000 last year. Now prices have come down a bit, and we’re planning on pulling the trigger sometime in the next two months. That will give us a full spring, summer and fall to learn the ins and outs of the trailer, to customize it to fit our needs and to work out any kinks before we hit the road full-time. Considering it’s our third trailer, we should be pros by the time we depart.
