Offroad Travel Trailers in the US?
My favorite type of camping is in the middle of nowhere, away from everyone else. This often means travel over hundreds of miles off road. I'm not talking a dirt road you could take a prius on, but a ...
Forum Discussion
Well, I have spent some time looking at the OP's amazing website:
themoreweexplore.com
You are really adventurous! What about modifying a large egg trailer (maybe the biggest Casita?) and beefing up the undercarriage? I am not sure the wheel wells will accommodate big tires with aggressive tread, but that would be a good thing to have on some of those slippery-when-wet Utah backroads.
Or a well-insulated conventional trailer with all-aluminum framing on a steel chassis? Again, upgrading the running gear (including the axle) would be preferable.
Although the expedition-grade pop-ups are very rugged, they may not work for you if you are looking to full-time, especially in very cold or wet weather. The same is true of a truck camper -- they can get kind of tight for full-timers. And I think there may be some extreme places a truck camper can't go that an ordinary truck can handle -- truck campers sometimes have clearance problems and center of gravity issues.
Rather than finding a "go-anywhere" trailer, you may have to settle for something like what we are doing -- we tow the trailer to the wildest place that is still marginally towable. We unhitch and then take the tow vehicle to the trailhead, which is usually several miles further into the back country.
Here is a tip that you probably already know about: if you use that "drop and drive" method, and if you take long hikes and come back to the trailer after dark, mark a GPS waypoint on the trailer before you leave in the morning. Please don't ask me how I learned this trick.
And Downwindtracker is exactly right -- we do not go off road. We go off pavement. In most of the US, it is illegal to go off road, just driving through the bushes.
themoreweexplore.com
You are really adventurous! What about modifying a large egg trailer (maybe the biggest Casita?) and beefing up the undercarriage? I am not sure the wheel wells will accommodate big tires with aggressive tread, but that would be a good thing to have on some of those slippery-when-wet Utah backroads.
Or a well-insulated conventional trailer with all-aluminum framing on a steel chassis? Again, upgrading the running gear (including the axle) would be preferable.
Although the expedition-grade pop-ups are very rugged, they may not work for you if you are looking to full-time, especially in very cold or wet weather. The same is true of a truck camper -- they can get kind of tight for full-timers. And I think there may be some extreme places a truck camper can't go that an ordinary truck can handle -- truck campers sometimes have clearance problems and center of gravity issues.
Rather than finding a "go-anywhere" trailer, you may have to settle for something like what we are doing -- we tow the trailer to the wildest place that is still marginally towable. We unhitch and then take the tow vehicle to the trailhead, which is usually several miles further into the back country.
Here is a tip that you probably already know about: if you use that "drop and drive" method, and if you take long hikes and come back to the trailer after dark, mark a GPS waypoint on the trailer before you leave in the morning. Please don't ask me how I learned this trick.
And Downwindtracker is exactly right -- we do not go off road. We go off pavement. In most of the US, it is illegal to go off road, just driving through the bushes.
