How do you see the sights without a toad?
We are thinking about a small motorhome such as a Trend or View and prefer not to tow a vehicle. What problems or obstacles do you encounter when trying to park at restaurants, museums, tourist attrac...
Forum Discussion
I've found how well this works depends on where I am going. Without a towed vehicle, the issue is not so much about getting around (road use restrictions in urban areas need to be understood) as it is parking. Where parking demand is low, it is not so much of a problem, I can use a partially empty lot and can often find the 2 to 4 spaces I need (narrow spaces sometimes mean taking double for width).
FWIW, the width is more of a problem than length most of the time, so a C it matters not so much whether 24 feet or 26 feet or 30 feet; with spaces marked 7-8 feet wide for 18-20 foot vehicles, you still don't fit. My daily driver is an 18-foot van, I have to be judicious selecting parking for that, avoiding places where parking spots get marked smaller.
Where lots tend to stay packed full, or demand is so high space is almost all in garages, I might end up some distance from where I would like to be. Where demand is high, you will also find shorter, narrower spaces and narrower aisles cutting into maneuvering space. The mall my daughter uses in Wichita, parking her minivan almost always means an extra backing maneuver to get in, SIL's crew cab truck takes a couple of extra passes, and there is no way you are going to find a single space to accommodate an 8-foot wide, 24 foot vehicle, let alone two spaces nose to nose.
I find in this environment, the toad adds to the problem. To use the towed vehicle, I need to find parking big enough for RV + toad so I can unhook the toad, and then when I get back I have to hope nobody has filled the space behind the RV. So towing can sometimes mean driving the combined rig only to RV parks, and using the second vehicle only from there.
My experience is mostly the Midwest, rural South and Southwest. If I can stay out of cities and suburbs, the RV parking experience is mostly OK. I've also found that I can drive around in cities like Detroit, KC, St Louis, Memphis, Houston, Wichita, OKC, Tulsa, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio, but I can't always find a place to park. What makes it worse, there is sometimes no place in the metro area where I can safely park the RV for storage and drive around in a towed vehicle; Detroit and Chicago are particularly difficult for this, RV parks are way outside the city center, and outside the "nice" suburbs. I prefer in these cases to terminate the RV part of the journey where I have access to public transportation.
Can't speak for West Coast, nor for East Coast, except my experience visiting Megapolis without a private vehicle is that it is almost a solid mass of RV-unfriendly territory.
FWIW, the width is more of a problem than length most of the time, so a C it matters not so much whether 24 feet or 26 feet or 30 feet; with spaces marked 7-8 feet wide for 18-20 foot vehicles, you still don't fit. My daily driver is an 18-foot van, I have to be judicious selecting parking for that, avoiding places where parking spots get marked smaller.
Where lots tend to stay packed full, or demand is so high space is almost all in garages, I might end up some distance from where I would like to be. Where demand is high, you will also find shorter, narrower spaces and narrower aisles cutting into maneuvering space. The mall my daughter uses in Wichita, parking her minivan almost always means an extra backing maneuver to get in, SIL's crew cab truck takes a couple of extra passes, and there is no way you are going to find a single space to accommodate an 8-foot wide, 24 foot vehicle, let alone two spaces nose to nose.
I find in this environment, the toad adds to the problem. To use the towed vehicle, I need to find parking big enough for RV + toad so I can unhook the toad, and then when I get back I have to hope nobody has filled the space behind the RV. So towing can sometimes mean driving the combined rig only to RV parks, and using the second vehicle only from there.
My experience is mostly the Midwest, rural South and Southwest. If I can stay out of cities and suburbs, the RV parking experience is mostly OK. I've also found that I can drive around in cities like Detroit, KC, St Louis, Memphis, Houston, Wichita, OKC, Tulsa, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio, but I can't always find a place to park. What makes it worse, there is sometimes no place in the metro area where I can safely park the RV for storage and drive around in a towed vehicle; Detroit and Chicago are particularly difficult for this, RV parks are way outside the city center, and outside the "nice" suburbs. I prefer in these cases to terminate the RV part of the journey where I have access to public transportation.
Can't speak for West Coast, nor for East Coast, except my experience visiting Megapolis without a private vehicle is that it is almost a solid mass of RV-unfriendly territory.
