Thank you for your replies!
I would love to buy a truck/camper together, but not sure I can find one local. My leave of absence is now so if I wait too long it will pass my by - I'd love to get a rig and drive around the USA for the next 4-6 weeks! In my line of work these breaks are almost impossible to obtain (even though I had vacation hours saved to cover the whole thing) and require quitting or at least serious begging. My current budget idea is to try to get an old camper - I can always recover the cushions - and spend more money on the vehicle.
People seem to expect their PU to drive at least 200k miles. Since I will not be putting very many miles on mine - per year (I will keep my commuter car). A PU with 100-150K miles could last me another 10 years. It is going to be tricky to find something, but after looking around I think I can do it in 20k or maybe slightly over.
Idaho requires titling of campers unfortunately. I suppose it's because the state's broke and there are so many PU campers around here. Apparently it's pretty cheap though.
Tonight I am researching the options of making a really light popup camper work in winter versus the expense of a 3/4 ton truck with a more 4 season trailer. It's not easy to look when the salesmen don't know what payload means (they often give me the tow rating or the GVWR).
One guy who did seem to know what he was talking about said that you could go over the payload by the weight of passengers in the truck. His reasoning was that payload refers to weight in the truck bed - so if you park and extend your jacks the weight is not in the truck bed when you are inside the trailer. Thoughts on this?
I did find an old 95 Bigfoot in which the dealer stated they had just replaced all of the plumbing. It's molded fiberglass.
