After a few years hiatus from camping and finally getting our RV sold, DW is getting the bug again and we are shopping for a chapter 1 of retirement rig. Still a couple years in the future but planning is fun. The idea would be to go on a travel binge for maybe 3 years with at least one long trip and lots of bucket list trips. So the rig would need to be livable for months at a time, able to carry enough cargo for months, and still small enough to get everywhere.DW has a 30' number as the max and I'm finding a few 33' motorhomes that could work.We've had a triple axle hauler with an HDT tow vehicle and always found a place for everything, though some times it was tight. Only once we were stuck trying to maneuver the rig to back into a one lane access over a culvert from a narrow road with soft shoulders and a brick mail box in exactly the wrong place. For sure then a few feet shorter would have made it and we never got in and ended up camping dry instead.So... for the US bucket list stuff, national parks, the keys, etc - is 30' really a hard limit? Can we push it to 33? 35? When is the rig just too big?

Yes, when a campground, be it public or private, says “blank” is their max length, that’s what you honor. It’s “too big” when you exceed the stated limit.

As you have experienced in your past adventures the rig is never too large, it is rarely one will find a lot too small to accommodate it; but rarely. Dry camping is good if one has the proper equipped rig.

The longer the rig, the fewer sites there are that will fit it. It's a continuum, generally speaking, and not a hard and fast cutoff where suddenly you go from all sorts of sites to none. However, with every increase in length and corresponding decrease in the pool of suitable sites, your chances of finding a site go down by at least a tiny amount.My motorhome is just about exactly 32' bumper to bumper, and I have yet to have a night where I couldn't find a place to camp. I have had to be a little flexible sometimes, and for instance select which Vermont state park I would visit for the weekend on a whim based on what ones had an available suitably sized site. (Vermont state parks, incidentally, have a much lower percentage of sites suited for large rigs than most any other state. A fair few of the campgrounds are not all that much changed from when they were built by the CCC.)Some campgrounds, especially public campgrounds, have maximum lengths listed that don't seem to bear a lot of relation to how big a rig could actually get to and fit in the site. Some others are precisely accurate.

Like every thing else. You have to give to get. You want a longer RV, you limit the number of sites you can use. Want a larger choice of site. You limit the size of the RV. Life is full of choices. In our favorite CG on the Blue ridge Parkway. There are a very few sites our 30' TT will fit into. Next Tt if there is one. will be shorter.

My story, I had a 36' 3'5thwheel with more storage than I needed. So DW and I thought it was time to downsize. We looked and looked found a 30 Class A that we liked. After a little more than two years and some both long and short trips, found it lacking stuff. We just this past year went to a 37' MH. We have storage (tons) we can walk around each other, we feel comfortable on the rainy days. The 30 was just to much of a down size for us.We stay at private parks outside of the National parks. Trying to find a spot has not been a problem. For us the 30' just did not work

Maximum length rig considerations | Good Sam Community

DrewE
Explorer II
Jan 29, 2020
GDS-3950BH wrote:

Lots is lots. Just because some online database, press release, or reservation site like reserve America or reservation.gov lists the equipment length as 40' or 40+', in the real world you just might find you're in for a surprise when you get there. IMO the folks that come up with those numbers never owned an RV or towed a trailer in their life. They do not look at the trees along the road, the site number poles across the road, the location of the utility posts that restrict turn radius on a pull thru or the fact if you get a tire off the gravel/paving your stuck, or anything else.

We almost never had an issue back when we had 28'ish or smaller bumper pulls anywhere, but have had "lots" of issues since we have had 5th wheels @ 35' bumper to pin or a little less.

Strange...with my 32' long (exactly) class C, I've never come upon a site advertised as long enough that was impossible to get into, and I think in general a class C is less maneuverable than a fifth wheel; for sure, its minimum turning radius is worse. Some sites are easier than others to get in, of course, and I have seen some pretty tight access roads, but nothing that's anything like false advertising.

I have, on the other hand, encountered a fair few sites where the length was understated by a little...or a lot. I've also found plenty of sites where they were admirably accurate.

I'm not discounting your experiences; there are far, far more campgrounds I have not stayed at than those that I have, and many parts of the country I have not been to at all with my RV, so we can very well have seen different things. They just don't jibe at all with my experiences so far.
GDS-3950BH
Explorer
Jan 29, 2020
.:S
TechWriter
Explorer
Jan 29, 2020
Veebyes wrote:
TechWriter, reservations work for the weekend warrior or the limited time vacationer. He knows where he will be, what day he will be there & what time he will get there.

I've been doing this as long as you have, and times have changed.

I full time and would like to wander. However, there is much more competition for campsites now than when I started.

If you have a big rig like I do, planning is now a must.
Veebyes
Explorer II
Jan 29, 2020
TechWriter, reservations work for the weekend warrior or the limited time vacationer. He knows where he will be, what day he will be there & what time he will get there.

Then there are the roamers out there. We might have a rough plan of when & where we are going but the whole trip is very loose, subject to weather & what catches our interest along the way that might demand a change of those loose plans.

Reservations are made for holiday weekends & for special events that we plan to attend.
TechWriter
Explorer
Jan 28, 2020
GDS-3950BH wrote:

Doesn't really mean much. Define 40'+. Is that the parking pad length? How much is plus worth?

I go to lots of ACOE parks in the mid atlantic, that have sites our 40' 5r will fit in, but I can not get to them because . . .

Define "lots of ACOE parks" -- let's say you went to 1000 different sites. Since by my reckoning, there are over 40,000 sites that are 40 feet or greater, you would have gone to 2.5% of them.

Veebyes wrote:
Those are some interesting statistics TechWriter but they don't help much when you roll into a CG with your 40'plus triple axle bunkhouse, 2 bath rolling townhouse & all of the few sites that can accommodate it are occupied by somebody in a pickup with a doghouse in the bed or people in conversion vans.

Reservations?
davelinde
Explorer
Jan 28, 2020
T18skyguy wrote:
Consider what you want in the interior, cause that also affects length. I have to have a couch, cause I hate sitting at the dinette. I found many more had a couch

Surprisingly I've found floorplans with either a couch or recliners and a king bed in the under 30 category. What I'm struggling to accept is GVWR that leave very little cargo capacity as well as very little room for cargo in general. Moving from 30' to 33' seems to matter a bit.
T18skyguy
Explorer
Jan 28, 2020
Consider what you want in the interior, cause that also affects length. I have to have a couch, cause I hate sitting at the dinette. I found many more had a couch at a 32 foot length. I'm sure there are shorter ones that have it. Over the years, when this subject comes up, a good many members say 32 foot.
davelinde
Explorer
Jan 28, 2020
To clarify my issue here. The 30' number is out there and DW is attached to it. We are not looking to get another triple axle rig - we had one. However if we make a hard limit at 30' it takes DP MH off the table, which is fine. But I'm struggling to find a short gas rig with the ability to carry much and that's not fine.

If expanding our criteria to 35' won't lock us out of a lot of places I'll make the case to DW...
Veebyes
Explorer II
Jan 27, 2020
Those are some interesting statistics TechWriter but they don't help much when you roll into a CG with your 40'plus triple axle bunkhouse, 2 bath rolling townhouse & all of the few sites that can accommodate it are occupied by somebody in a pickup with a doghouse in the bed or people in conversion vans.

It is the way it is. No matter what they drive people will take the biggest site available. Nothing like seeing somebody with a popup trailer in a 75' pull through as you struggle, with your 38' FW, to back into a spot far more suitable for that popup.

This is why size matters. The bigger you are the tougher it is to get a site suitable for your size in CGs where people are allowed to pick whatever they want with no consideration for size requirements big or small.
Lwiddis
Explorer II
Jan 27, 2020
"In traveling coast to coast twice and in over 40 states I have not been in a park where I could not park my 40' coach and Jeep."

I must be visiting the little places you missed!