I guess I come from the old school of thought, it's camping and doesn't need to be like the home I live in.
I see so many complaints of stuck slide outs and leaking slide outs, I just don't want the problem whether it's now or in the future. Granted not as bad as having a Pop Up camper cable break 1000 miles from home and no way to fix, but still bad enough.
I always felt that the 26BH was a huge camper. My brother has a bigger camper where the sofa isn't across the width of the camper but in line with the length of the camper on the side across from the door. BUT it doesn't have a slide either. His camper is about about a 32' and a Fleetwood.
On the 26BH, I don't consider it cramped at all because everyone should not be standing up and moving around at the same time. There's seating for 4 at the dinette and seating for 3 or 4 on the sofa. Then there's the rear bed to sit on as well as the front bed. It's huge, there's enough room to have 10 people sitting down (beds, sofa, and dinette) and not even need to be standing up in the way of others.
Slides are nice, but come at a cost. Don't forget twigs, branches, leaves, acorns, pine needles, pine cones and the like can collect on the top of the slide and damage the seals unless you clean the top everytime before you retract it into the camper. Or you could get a slide awning but debris can still get in. It's an added chore to maintain the camper.
Unless the floorplan I need demands a slide, I try to avoid slides. I spend most of my time outside under the front awning, or in the screen house, or around the fire, or hiking, or fishing, or site seeing. I spend little time in the camper unless it's raining.
We usually have 4 or 5 of us and always thought how roomy it was. I have been camping in tents, pop ups, small travel trailers, large travel trailers, since I've been 5 so I appreciate the positives of every type and style of shelter.
The 26BH IMO is the perfect midsize family (family of 5) camper.
We were a family of 5 when I was a kid and camped in our 17' Shasta.
That's it behind the Rockwood Pop Up. Got rid of it a few years ago. It was a 14' box as I measured it, with a short 3' tongue. Back in the day, they didn't use batteries so the tongue was shorter. They used compressed air to give water pressure and propane to light the inside gas lights of the trailer. As far as sleeping, we had an upper double accordion bunkbed, a double size sofa bed, and twin size dinette bed. We also had sitting for 9, 5 at the long sofa and 4 at the dinette. That to me was a nice camper and never thought of it as being small. It had a wet bathroom, stove w/oven, and heater (no A/C). It was great for us.
Different strokes for different folks.
