Best fit for family of six?

[MDB]

Hi all,

My family and I will be relocating from the east coast (upstate NY) to the west coast (Boise, ID) for work related reasons, but we are currently overseas until next spring. We are in the process of thinking about how to easily visit family on the east coast once we have returned to the US and are living on the west coast. My wife and I have 4 kids ranging in age from 8-16. We love road trips and so we had thought that the best thing to do might be to get some type of camper that we can take back and forth rather than flying each time. This would give us a place to stay at each family member's house since most of them don't really have room for all of us to sleep comfortably. It would also allow us to see the country. The cost of travel (gas, food, etc) would maybe be about the same as flying six of us round trip and paying for hotels while we visit. Maybe?

We have a few options as far as I see it:

1) Do nothing and just fly back and forth whenever we go to visit and either stay in hotels or sleep on the floor at our relatives' houses.

2) Purchase a travel trailer and a vehicle to tow it with. Our only family vehicle at this time is a 2010 Honda Odyssey and I know this wouldn't tow much of anything. We would need a tow vehicle that could fit the six of us comfortably and have enough towing capacity. From my research so far the best option looks like a 12 passenger Chevy Express van. Anything that we purchase would need to be used as our budget isn't huge.

3) Purchase a Class C motor home and tow our Odyssey. I like this option but my wife doesn't like it as much. Craigs List looks like it has decently priced used RVs, but I really have no idea what is good, what has the capacity to tow another vehicle, etc.

4) Travel in the Odyssey and tent camp 🙂

I have lots of time to think about this since we are overseas until next April, but I will need to be ready to move on this pretty quickly after we return because we will be making a return from trip Idaho to upstate NY shortly after we get back in the country. I am the type who likes to do lots of research and planning, so that is why I am starting early, and also why I am reaching out to the experts on this forum for ideas, suggestions, and reality checks!

Thanks in advance!

[Grit_dog]

MDB, ok, so you're not the typical family situation. Since it appears you have the ability and plan to "vacation" much more than most, and have a large family, my recommendation is get a motorhome and tow a toad when you want or need to. Heck you can even drive a second vehicle when you want or need to since you have 3 drivers.

Budget wise, you'll have to shop carefully, but the right time of year is coming up in the NE and NW to buy an RV. Example: A friend found a 30' Class A last year. Older, 03 or something, little sun faded but otherwise good shape, well maintained, 25k miles V10 for $12k if I remember right. Tows an enclosed trailer with bike or a Jeep with it. I've driven it, goes down the road nice at 75mph. He's probably got another $2-3k in it for tires, stereo, service work etc and some time.
The key to being somewhat economical with older used vehicles, as you'r probably aware is you have to be willing and able to spend some time on fixin and upkeep and not be hauling it to the shop for every little repair.

Good luck in you search!

[mgirardo]

My wife and I moved our family from North to South (about 800 road miles) about 13 years ago. All of our family was still up north. At the time, we owned a Hybrid. We towed back and forth for about 2 years and decided we needed a Motorhome. At the time, our kids were young, 3 and 5. They handled the road trip just fine, but towing wasn't much fun. We were stopping more frequently when towing than not. We had to stop for fuel, food and potty breaks.

In 2009 we bought a 32' Class C with bunks. It had a queen bed in the rear, 2 bunks next to that, a larger than king size bed over the cab, plus the dinette and couch converted to a bed for lots of sleeping options. Traveling back to see family with the Motorhome was so much more enjoyable. We didn't have to stop anymore for potty breaks. We didn't have to stop for food either if we brought food along. My wife could make meals while I drove. If we ended up stopping for the night, it was usually a short 4 to 6 hour stop to get some rest. We'd stop at a Wal-mart and get some sleep. We were completely self contained.

If we were to do it again, the only option for us would be Option #3. My wife has floated the idea of buying a house up north as we spend almost 6 months of the year up north, with the thought of AirBnBing the rest of the year. Problem is, there isn't much demand for short term rentals where our family is. Several times we have wanted to just do the AirBnB for ourselves and couldn't find anything rentalable near by. You need to make sure there is a demand for short term rentals in the area you plan to buy. Also make sure the city/town it would be in will allow it, not all do.

-Michael

[way2roll]

Some considerations that may help drive your decision.

- Your 2001 Honda odyssey can be flat towed behind a motorhome. It would require some equipment though (base plates, tow bars, lights etc) These things aren't cheap but the whole thing could be put together if you did the work yourself and bought used parts for $1,000 - $2,000.

- Your Odyssey does not have enough towing capacity (especially with 6 people in it) to tow any sort of camper that would be comfortable enough for a family of 6 - that's my opinion but I think you might agree.

So you are left with a few options if you want to buy an RV. Trade the Honda for a truck large enough to tow a camper for 6, as well as seating for 6 in the truck. That's going to be a big expensive truck and the truck camper combo would likely be more expensive than a motorhome that can tow your current Honda. Or buy a motorhome. A Class C if you found the right one might have capacity with food and gear for 6 as well as 6 people but Class C's have less room and typically less capacity. In your budget you may have the same issue trying to find a Class A but your chances I think are better in terms of capacity. The curb weight on the Honda is 4300 lbs dry. The max most Class C hitches can tolerate is 5000 lbs and that gets added to the equation of your total capacity. Meaning, with 6 people, all your gear, food, water and the Honda, it's going to be hard to find a Class C that checks your boxes and has enough capacity to handle all that. That's why I mentioned a Class A, typically more room and more capacity, but admittedly your budget might make it tough.

[Rover_Bill]

One thing that you and others failed to consider is the seasons during which you plan to make your cross country treks from Boise Idaho to upstate NY. It is EXTREMELY challenging to travel by any RV in the northern states from mid-Fall to early Summer. VERY FEW OPEN campgrounds, hazardous driving due to strong winds, flooded and/or icy roads, freezing temps at night - so no RV trips for Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter visits. 😞

How many week long cross country trips do you plan to make during the four summer months - June, July, August, and September? My recommendation is that you consider renting a class-C for your SINGLE summer adventure trip and plan on flying/driving for all other visits. With your 30K budget, consider purchasing a durable, high MPG SUV for your trips that you and DW can easily drive. You'll get to your family faster and have more time to spend with them.

[MDB]

Wow! Thanks for all of the great feedback so far; this is exactly why I joined the group!

I should have provided a couple of additional details:

1) Our jobs are flexible, so we can travel for extended periods of time a few times per year (a few weeks at a time each time). We also home school our kids, so that isn't an issue. We often turn road trips into learning experiences for the kids which we have found really enhances their education.

2) We would use the camper/motor home/travel trailer/whatever for more than just trips back east. Since we will be living in Idaho, there are a ton of places we want to visit that are within a couple day's drive or less. Yellowstone and Yosemite come to mind immediately.

3) Budget is in the sub 30K range. We have only ever purchased used vehicles, just to avoid the immediate depreciation that happens when you drive a new vehicle off the lot. From my initial research, it looks like I can find decent used travel trailers and class C's for this price. By the time I add a tow vehicle to the TT, I start to bump up against (or exceed) my budget which is why I started looking at the class C.


To answer a few of the questions and comments so far (and if there is a better way of doing this than a "reply all" format, please let me know):

- My wife loved the first comment that suggested buying a house back east and renting it on Air B&B when we aren't there. She actually suggested this weeks ago. We have a friend who could be a caretaker when we aren't there. However, there are the obvious issues of owning two homes, taxes, upkeep, etc. I'm not as big a fan of this idea as my wife is, but she is usually right! 🙂

- We don't like the pop-ups or hybrid options. My in-laws had a hybrid TT and had issues with leaks in the canvas. Plus my wife likes the idea of a fully hard sided wall between her and the wildlife!

- We haven't ruled out class A, we just didn't think it was an option because of the price. I would certainly like that option, but haven't done any research on it.

- We love to road trip and have family all over the US (though most of them are on the east coast), so we would like to take some of our breaks from work to visit them, and thought maybe an RV of some sort would be a good way of seeing family and also seeing the US.

- My Odyssey is a 2010. I haven't even considered it as a possibility to use as a tow vehicle as I don't want to trash the transmission. It does not have the tow package I would assume we would need to use a tow dolly if we towed it behind a motor home. I don't like the idea of having the drive wheels on the ground while towing, but maybe that worry is unfounded.

Thanks again for all of the feedback so far!

[theoldwizard1]

Rick Jay wrote:
... We, too, have a Honda Odyssey and originally we were looking at pop-ups, then small hybrid TT, to tow with the Odyssey. It quickly became apparent that there was no "Honda towable" solution that would work for us.

6 passenger and a fully loaded large pop up would be right at the limit of an Odyssey. New models (with 3.5L V6 and 10 speed transmission) can tow up to 3,500 lbs, but I am sure it is less on older models.

[Rick_Jay]

MDB,

Ok, parts of your story are similar to ours...4 kids, want to travel to see sights and visit family which was scattered along the east coast. Our reasoning was a bit different. (Wifey does NOT do well in hotels once we had kids. Even when we had just one, it was apparent that the only way we were ever going to go anywhere was if we had ALL of our stuff with us all the time. It just drove her nuts fearing we'd leave some of the kids clothes, or favorite toy behind. So shortly after child #2, we began thinking about alternatives.)

Anyway, I'll also tell you to be careful as you read on, lest you follow in our footsteps! 😉 We, too, have a Honda Odyssey and originally we were looking at pop-ups, then small hybrid TT, to tow with the Odyssey. It quickly became apparent that there was no "Honda towable" solution that would work for us. So then I thought about picking up an E-350 van (this was back in 2002ish) pulling a larger TT. But the cost of a newer E-350 van and a new TT put us in the price range of Class C motorhomes. So, we started looking at those. Had just about settled on one, but then realized there was not an E-450 based C that could carry the six of us the way we wanted to travel AND be under the manufacturer's weight limits for the vehicle. As an engineer, that thought bothered me, so we started looking at other alternatives, including a Class A. If you haven't already looked at my signature, you'll see that THAT is the solution we arrived upon. We bought it new in 2004 and still have it and I expect we'll be using it for at least another 3-5 years, at which point I hope to retire and possibly get a 20 year old Prevost. But that's a different topic! 🙂 SO...we started looking at things we could tow with our Honda, and we ended up buying something that TOWS our Honda. Yes, we were fortunate that we could justify the extra cost. I won't go into that now, but suffice it to say I think it was worth every penny. I would expect our kids will be able to use it when I get my Prevost! LOL

What we liked BEST about our motorhome floorplan was it's dual sofa layout. At the time we purchased our motorhome, our oldest was 7 and our youngest had just turned 1. The dual sofa floorplan gave them plenty of sleeping options as well as plenty of places to sit while travelling (we have 12 belted positions in our motorhome) as well as room for us to watch a family movie on rainy days. It's been a GREAT floorplan over the years and I still have yet to find a floorplan that I think would work better for us. I do not like the "bunk" Class A floorplans because invariably the kids bunks are a paper-thin wall away from the "adult" bedroom. Too close for our comfort. In our rig, all of the kids are asleep up front, and we have a decent space between them and our bedroom for some privacy. (Yes, you can have some semblance of privacy in a motorhome! LOL)

The class A also had much larger capacity holding tanks and much more storage inside and outside. With a family of 6, you quickly realize things like finding a place to store at least 18 pairs of shoes without tripping over them can be interesting. (Sounds like a lot, but 6 people, and each has at least 3 pairs: dress shoes, sneakers, hiking boots. Oh, wait, plus water shoes...make that 24 pairs! LOL) Anyway, our rig has closet and drawer storage where the bunk models have bunks. We figured, and for our kids anyway, that dedicated living space was more important than dedicated sleeping space. That has worked really well. I know in some families that might not be the case...but our kids like each other! LOL

We have used our rig for day trips and even, when the kids were smaller, for trips to the mall. I was gaining experience driving the rig, and it gave us a place to retreat to when the kids needed a rest.

A couple more thoughts...what year Odyssey do you have? Per Honda, the last year that could be towed four-wheels down is 2004. Anything newer than that and you'd have to use a dolly, or so says Honda. I've heard of people flat-towing 2005+ models, but they're taking a bit of a chance doing so.

So, anyway, in a nutshell, IF you're going to entertain the idea of a Class C, you probably should look at Class A's, too. IF I was going to do ANYTHING different, I think I might be tempted to purchase a 3-5 year old higher-end rig than a new middle-of-the-road rig. But when we were buying, slides were just beginning to become standard, and most of the 3-5 year old rigs available didn't have slides, something we felt we needed with 6 people on board. As I said, upon retiring, I will strongly think about picking a 20+ year old rig that had an original price tag near the million dollar mark. But as a complete newbie, as I was when we bought our rig, I would NOT recommend that path.

Anyway, good luck as you start figuring out what will work best for you. You have some time to ponder and search, and that is a good thing. We spent about 3 years from our first visit to an RV show to purchasing our Class A. But that time was well spent. We avoided buying the wrong RV, which can be rather costly especially if you buy new. Do your research BEFORE you buy.

~Rick

[theoldwizard1]

There is another option. A pop-up ! Check the towing capacity of the Odyssey and look for something that fills the bill.

Carry a "screen house" for outside cooking, eating, etc. You might even want a small tent for the older kids to sleep in.

[way2roll]

Any reason you've ruled out a Class A motorhome? Some bunkhouse models with drop down bunks in the front will easily sleep 6 and offer more room than a class C as well as more comfortable chassis and some now have a bath and a half. They also usually offer more carrying and towing capacity in case you want to tow a car. Not that it can't be done with a C, but with a large family, you want as much room as possible.

You haven't stated a budget, this will probably be the biggest driver to your decision.

[DutchmenSport]

Since DrewE mentioned alternative transportation methods (train), don't rule out travel by bus. I haven't traveled by bus in a lot of years, but I use to in my younger days.

For your situation, a motor home, CLASS A or CLASS C makes the most sense to me, provided you plan on using it for more than just visiting family, in order to justify the cost.

[DrewE]

RV travel is not especially inexpensive. RV upkeep can be a bit spendy and/or time consuming; less money and more time the more you do yourself. I've generally found that travel with my motorhome is at best a wash compared with driving a car and staying in motels and eating in (not fancy) restaurants; admittedly I do have a fairly fuel efficient car. If spending a good length of time at a destination the motorhome does better than if only traveling for a quick trip. The overall experience is different, of course, so it's not really
a pure financial decision one way or the other often.

For the motorhome option, if you're traveling mainly to visit relatives and friends (who presumably have one or more vehicles), you could perhaps get by without towing another vehicle without too much difficulty. It's not too hard to stop for groceries and such along the way with a motorhome. It's a bigger pain to break camp and pack things up to go out for dinner one night while staying at a campground. Bicycles are sometimes a reasonable transportation alternative to a car or van, and less of a pain to carry with you (though I'm not aware offhand of any six bike racks suited for use on an RV; four bike racks do exist, the Yakima RoadTrip for one example).

For a travel trailer, a full size van can make a quite fine tow vehicle. I would not limit it to just Chevy/GMC vans; to me, the Nissan NV looks like a very nice possibility, and appears to have more comfortable seating than the Chevy or Ford E series vans (perhaps on par with the Ford Transits). I haven't done a thorough study on the matter, though; that's just first impressions.

A decent sized popup trailer might be another possibility, maybe in combination with a tent. They're easily more comfortable than a plain tent, but doesn't require a lot of tow vehicle and is comparatively inexpensive to maintain.

If you have time available, there are some good deals to be had traveling by rail, particularly with the multi-day USA rail passes. For under $500 a person (for the 15 day, 8 segment one) you can go coast to coast and back. Unfortunately, the trains don't go very close to Boise....

[the_bear_II]

Our family of 6 traveled back to Kentucky/Ohio area each summer to visit relatives as I was growing up. We used suburbans and tents for several years, then a delivery van converted to a motorhome, then a suburban and travel trailer for the remaining years. The best choice was the travel trailer and suburban.

During the trips to and from we visited many of the historic and tourist sites across the country. My parents would have us research the areas we would travel and the places we visited. It helped to gives us a leg up in school because we had seen first hand many of the places teachers would discuss in history and geography. It is a part of my life that I still value. During these trips we visited all of the states in the Continental US plus most of the National Parks.

[Tyler0215]

When you get settled and are ready to visit back east, rent a class c for the trip. if you like it, then you can think about buying. If you don't like RV travel you are only out the rent.

[catkins]

RVing is a wonderful way to travel as you see the country. It is NOT an inexpensive way to travel. There is annual maintenance, tire replacement, overnight costs, insurance and more. Towing slows down the speed at which you can safely/legally travel whether a towed car or Trailer. That many people in one RV will allow for little to no privacy for anyone. Storage for clothing and more would need to be carefully looked at in any RV/trailer you might consider.

If long distances are in your future, driving slower only increases the required time while towing/RVing dramatically increases fuel costs. Many class A Mhs get 8-10 mpg on a good day with no mountains to cross. We use 50MPH as out time estimator for our travel which includes short rest stops/quick lunch in our travel day.

My family loved our little trailers we had. I have such good memories of our adventures. Your family may also love joining the RVing world. Just think very carefully about why and how this would it work for you all. Go wander through some an envision how the space and seating would work for you when camped and when travelling. Good luck!!!