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

craig7h
Nomad II
Jan 22, 2020
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
Terryallan
Explorer II
Jan 22, 2020
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.
DrewE
Explorer II
Jan 22, 2020
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.
PastorCharlie
Explorer
Jan 22, 2020
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.
Lwiddis
Explorer II
Jan 21, 2020
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.

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