We recently attended the Grand Rapids RV Show in Grand Rapids, MI with the intent of seeing as many motor home floor plans as possible. Since we have not purchased our full time RV yet we thought this would be a good opportunity to compare features and layouts.
The show was pretty well attended and had many of the brands we were looking for.
We focused primarily on motor homes but the show had tons of 5th wheels and travel trailers as well. We’ve settled on getting a motor home because we like the self contained nature of them. We’ve owned a 5th wheel in the past and have also rented a motor home in Alaska and we like the motor home arrangement better. We also have a Jeep Wrangler that we want to use as a towed vehicle behind it. These are affectionately called “toads” in the RV trade. We want to have the Jeep for getting around once we arrive at a location where we plan to stay and explore. There’s no right or wrong here. Others prefer a 5th wheel or travel trailer and that’s the right answer for them.
We didn’t spend too much time looking at exterior features. We primarily wanted to see interior floor plans and see what we felt would work best for us to full time in. It’s tough to know for sure what you’ll need until you’ve actually full timed in one but some floor plans just didn’t feel right from the get go and some seemed to better fit our “needs”. One exterior or chassis feature we have decided on is a diesel pusher with preferably a tag axle for the extra cargo carrying capacity. Since this will be our home, we’ll be carrying more “stuff” than your everyday weekend camper.
Some of the interior features we liked were individual recliners/chairs rather than two sleeper sofas. It’ll just be the two of us so we’d rather it be as comfortable as possible rather than have extra sleeping capacity.
Dishwashers were pretty prevalent in the models we looked at and that would be a nice feature. I’m just not sure if we’d get as much use from one since we plan to be off the grid a lot and I’m not sure the battery system could withstand appliances like this.
Having two sinks in the bathroom is nice and if they’re not side by side like this one then at least having two separate sinks for getting ready in the morning is pretty high on the list.
A nice shower is also a pretty big item. Something that you can actually turn around in without bumping into things would be nice. Space is always at a premium in a RV but some things are hard to give up.
Of course you could go for the ultra simplistic lifestyle approach and get one of these. Easy to pull, nothing but the essentials…
It even has a kitchen in the back. Just hope it’s not raining when you want something to eat.
All in all it was a worthwhile show to spend a good part of the day in. We saw lot’s of different floor plans and features and narrowed in on what we felt we needed. We won’t be purchasing anything new so we didn’t pay attention to the prices too much although some of the high end coaches were getting kinda crazy. We’ll be looking for a good used unit with a reasonable amount of mileage on it and good maintenance. We’ve looked at countless RV’s online and compared many different floor plans but you really need to get inside one and get the feel of it to determine if it’s right for you. A great place to do that is at a nearby RV show and now is the season.
