Trailers vs campers 4 weather/Season -40C +70C

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Fozzy325

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When I first started looking into mobile sleeping accommodation I thought it would be easy, however, I’m finding it hard to make a decision.
Here are my requirements,
1. 4 season all weather -40c to +60c
2. Standard 4x4 capable (OEM standard vehicle e.g Jeep rubricon/Land Rover LR4) do the Moab and Death Valley standard trails
3. Kitchen, shower, storage etc.

I am stuck between the Turtle explorer or the conqueror UEV 490

I would like to your opinions of what are pros and cons of what you own. E.g if you own a trailer pros / cons, if you own a camper pros / cons.

If you owned both I would be most great full if you could give both opinions

I have searched the forums. But they are very centric about warm weather areas.

What I have learned from the forums.
General
1. Turning circle trailer is better than camper.
2. Fuel consumption heavy vs light

Campers
1. Quick sleep is easy for campers in bad weather
2. More security against bears
3. Do not need to climb up and down ladder
4. Static solar panel mounting

Trailers
1. Better storage capabilities
2. Better kitchen capabilities
4.
 
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Wandering With You

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“Trailers vs Campers” - ultimately is a question of “shelter”.

My family and I spent the past 3 years asking this question. While we (I in particular) enjoy “Overlanding”, we are by no means uni-dimensional outdoors enthusiasts. We are runners, mountain AND road bikers, backpackers, snowshoers, paddlers, hikers, alpine, nordic AND kite skiers and climbers. So when deciding what the best shelter for our family of three would be, we had to ask what would be the best shelter to suit ALL of our active lifestyle pursuits. While I logged plenty of miles exploring dirt roads and tracks last year, all but one of my expeditions were day trips. The realization of this made the choice of a Lance 1685 travel trailer the best option for us.

Advertised as a 4 seasons unit (with no promised operating range) the Lance will provide the “basecamp” our family needs for all of our pursuits. Yes, I won’t be able to bring it on multi-day overlanding excursions, but I will be able to tow it into most semi-remote camping areas in state and national forests and onto frozen lakes in our home state of MN.

While I too spent an exhaustive amount of time debating this decision and designing 4 different trailer setups (which I would have commissioned builds on) - in the end the more “traditional” RV style trailer ended up being what we believe will be best for us. When I want to partake in a multi-day expedition, I will simply either tent camp or sleep in the bed of my Tacoma as I have done in the past. Down the road, once the truck is paid off, I may even invest in a RTT for such trips.

The RV style camper provides an excellent ease of use and storage. We can keep it loaded and ready to go for quick weekend getaways - get off work at 4, hitch up, drive a couple hours to the woods and be setup, cooking and drinking a beer by 7, with a warm, protected bed to sleep in and not having to go out into the elements for that mid-night bathroom trip. Furthermore, financing is simple and we’ll write off the sales tax and financing interest on second home credits, it having an indoor bed, bathroom and kitchen.

Hope that helps. That’s my family’s decision and we’re sticking to it. The unit is currently being built for us in CA and will be delivered by the end of the month. We hope to have many nights and years of adventures in it.

Remember, just as you don’t take your rig backpacking, you won’t take a trailer of any kind on a TRUE overlanding expedition with high-risk, high-consequence scenarios. Evaluate what kind of set up best suits the widest breadth of adventures you will partake in.

My two cents, hope it helps!
 

Fozzy325

Rank V
Launch Member

Influencer II

2,808
Calgary, AB, Canada
Member #

15226

“Trailers vs Campers” - ultimately is a question of “shelter”.

My family and I spent the past 3 years asking this question. While we (I in particular) enjoy “Overlanding”, we are by no means uni-dimensional outdoors enthusiasts. We are runners, mountain AND road bikers, backpackers, snowshoers, paddlers, hikers, alpine, nordic AND kite skiers and climbers. So when deciding what the best shelter for our family of three would be, we had to ask what would be the best shelter to suit ALL of our active lifestyle pursuits. While I logged plenty of miles exploring dirt roads and tracks last year, all but one of my expeditions were day trips. The realization of this made the choice of a Lance 1685 travel trailer the best option for us.

Advertised as a 4 seasons unit (with no promised operating range) the Lance will provide the “basecamp” our family needs for all of our pursuits. Yes, I won’t be able to bring it on multi-day overlanding excursions, but I will be able to tow it into most semi-remote camping areas in state and national forests and onto frozen lakes in our home state of MN.

While I too spent an exhaustive amount of time debating this decision and designing 4 different trailer setups (which I would have commissioned builds on) - in the end the more “traditional” RV style trailer ended up being what we believe will be best for us. When I want to partake in a multi-day expedition, I will simply either tent camp or sleep in the bed of my Tacoma as I have done in the past. Down the road, once the truck is paid off, I may even invest in a RTT for such trips.

The RV style camper provides an excellent ease of use and storage. We can keep it loaded and ready to go for quick weekend getaways - get off work at 4, hitch up, drive a couple hours to the woods and be setup, cooking and drinking a beer by 7, with a warm, protected bed to sleep in and not having to go out into the elements for that mid-night bathroom trip. Furthermore, financing is simple and we’ll write off the sales tax and financing interest on second home credits, it having an indoor bed, bathroom and kitchen.

Hope that helps. That’s my family’s decision and we’re sticking to it. The unit is currently being built for us in CA and will be delivered by the end of the month. We hope to have many nights and years of adventures in it.

Remember, just as you don’t take your rig backpacking, you won’t take a trailer of any kind on a TRUE overlanding expedition with high-risk, high-consequence scenarios. Evaluate what kind of set up best suits the widest breadth of adventures you will partake in.

My two cents, hope it helps!
Many thanks for your two cents,
I totally believe in what you are saying. It’s just like the military. If you are light infantry you’re not taking artillery shells on a patrol.

In the day I was all about mountaineering, climbing, hiking then moved to enduro bikes, sheep trail riding and I would love to get back to that, however my other half has only camped and is excited by mountain trails in the Land Rover,
I really need to think of her comfort of the adventure and build it up.

So if put that into overland thinking. I really should be thinking of:
1. What is the objective of the journey
2. What is our participation with other things besides vehicle base adventure
3. What is the difficulty of the area we going into
4. Are We going to be static or mobile for a period of days
5. What is the length of the engagement
6. What is the level of comfort our group is comfortable at before bitching
7. How adventurous are we?
8. What is the level training/expertise required for the location were are going.
9. What period of the year/seasons/weather

Answers
1. To see as much as we can but do it away from civilization
2. One day base camp at the max. Then 4x4 in the same day. 4x4 with the trailer/camper to get to a remote camp site
3. As much as an unmodified OEM ish build Land rover can do.
4. Only static time will be after long trip of 20+hrs then stay for a day. Or being at an event. Rest of the time will travel
5. Two weeks max, long weekends, weekends
6. Me = bivi and a good sleeping bag, her 5th wheel hardships
7. Me = live for it, Her = I’m getting her more and more adventurous so at the moment 4x4 on unmanaged winter icy gravel trails.
8. Depends, but I would think not much more than setup system and enjoy the stars and a joint (were legal) and a local 30 walk
9. All year round so it needs to 4 Season trailer camper.

This list I have at the moment is
Camper trailer - Conqueror 440/490
RTT trailer - Turtleback expedition
Camper Trailer - Offgrid trailers Expedition

Price wise
Conqueror most expensive
Turtleback
Offgridtrailers
 

Overland A Far

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Fozzy - we went through the same dilemma. RTT - Ok in Africa, warm weather, easy set up but the up/down ladder thing got old. Here in cold/mixed weather - not so great. Expedition Trailer - Echo brand from ZA worked well and had the amenities with reasonable set up and tear down times - easy to pull and rugged. I sold it as it had a few cons that just didn't make Mama happy. New ones are modified from our old version and we looked hard at them at the BC rally. Available in Calgary! All are pricy in my mind but they serve well. 4Wheel Campers - great units and have it all but expensive - WOW expensive!
We found a compact full camper for the Tacoma - under 1000 lbs, big bed, stove, fridge/freezer small but OK, propane heater and pressurized water - a bit tight on the storage side but works super for us and the pups. Mama is happy, I can quickly drop it off and do some 4X4 trails, and still can tow my all missions trailer (home build) that has extra water, shower, fridge/freezer, outdoor kitchen, gear storage and room for the ATV or mountain bikes. This works for us - for your rig one of the expedition trailers is where I would go.
 
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Fozzy325

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Calgary, AB, Canada
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Fozzy - we went through the same dilemma. RTT - Ok in Africa, warm weather, easy set up but the up/down ladder thing got old. Here in cold/mixed weather - not so great. Expedition Trailer - Echo brand from ZA worked well and had the amenities with reasonable set up and tear down times - easy to pull and rugged. I sold it as it had a few cons that just didn't make Mama happy. New ones are modified from our old version and we looked hard at them at the BC rally. Available in Calgary! All are pricy in my mind but they serve well. 4Wheel Campers - great units and have it all but expensive - WOW expensive!
We found a compact full camper for the Tacoma - under 1000 lbs, big bed, stove, fridge/freezer small but OK, propane heater and pressurized water - a bit tight on the storage side but works super for us and the pups. Mama is happy, I can quickly drop it off and do some 4X4 trails, and still can tow my all missions trailer (home build) that has extra water, shower, fridge/freezer, outdoor kitchen, gear storage and room for the ATV or mountain bikes. This works for us - for your rig one of the expedition trailers is where I would go.
Wow, many thanks for your input. It really does help. Tonight I took the ol’lady through all the choices we have in north America especially canada and it looks like we are looking at the conquer 440 or the offgrid trailer expedition.
 

Todd & Meg

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Launch Member

Influencer I

I had my wife read some trip reports with both expo trailers with RTT's and campers (teardrops). She read the pluses and minuses of each in real life trips. By people that are not trying to sell you on what they have. The reports are just written like this is where we went, this is what we did, and this is what went good and bad. I worked well to help us decide which would be better for us. So we are building a teardrop. That said I know there are trails we want to do that we won't want to pull a trailer on and we might look into ausedc RTT for those trips.

When you asked about camping in the cold and a lot of the people with campers are from warmer areas. Remember in the desert it can get cold at night this time of year. Add some elevation to that and it's not uncommon to see temps in 0 degree F range.

Todd
 
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animaloverland

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Fozzy325,
Like anything else...it depends on what you plan to do. For ultimate flexibility, I would recommend any well built hard sided camper (including semi-hard side pop ups) on a capable 4x4 truck that isn’t overloaded with good suspension. It will give you something that is easy to drive and really capable off road but also self contained so you can camp responsibility anywhere you like to boondock in just about any weather. This option allows you to setup camp quickly and choose camp stove cooking outside in good weather or stove top cooking inside in bad weather. I don’t do a lot of base camping, where I would park unhitch and explore with out & back trips. I like to keep moving and not retrace my paths, so this isn’t ideal for a trailer. You only have to worry about 4 wheels on the ground instead of 6 when you are on the trail. A fully loaded adventure camper is a real liability if you get stuck or have to turn around and need to unhitch...especially on steep terrain. The trailer also becomes a big mud trap especially if you are towing behind a lifted rig with big tires for miles and miles on a muddy road...you will spend lots of time cleaning. Navigating a tough offroad trail with lots of obstacles takes lots of practice to develop good wheel placement with a trailer. There are many great adventure trailers out there and many people use them to support awesome overland trips, but you have to look at your budget and your priorities and decide what’s right for you. These are just my opinions and experience...there will be many that completely disagree with me and that’s fine...it a free country.

Four Wheel Camper
XP Camper
EarthCruiser GZL
Hallmark Camper
EarthCruiser
EarthRoamer
 
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