the hunt begins

ya it is going to be fun, the best thing is it ticks off all the "wants" we have come up with over the last 5 or 6 years with the older slumberqueen.  we get the north south bed, a heated bathroom, better interior storage and exterior storage (although not as much exterior as I would like, but it will work) 

for the battery I'll probably just transfer my home made LiFePO4 over for now and work on solar.  I am hoping to get 600 to 800 watts on it depending on the room.  

that was the one we were originaly looking at, well the 2023 version, but I decided it had a lot of unusable  space on the inside, and the weight would have maxed my truck out.  I was willing to deal with the weight, but the more time I spent in it, the more I disliked the layout.  I did like the exterior storage in the slide though.  

Very good point. One which I may not have considered the full magnitude of. But is easily realized once you think about multiple people exiting in a TC at the same time for any reason. 
At the end of the day we gonna pay it though if we want to carry the house on the truck!!

that very well would be a factor, although its not like the old days where they are inside assembling, they build outside in moduals then place them on the floor as it rolls by, so you would just have to have one or two guys doing any finishing work and conections for water and electrical lines etc. I can't find how many campers adventurere puts out a weel, but ya AF is 20 per week now, I would suspect with the new facilities and more lines and employes that adventurere is higher than that when they have all their lines running.  

ya with the exchange rates as low as they have been for the last 5 or so years its a no brainer for americans to shop in canada, you get an extra 0.30 on each dollar you spend pretty much.  its not like it was for so long where the CDN buck was higher, at par or just slightly lower than the US grean back I find .85 is that sweet mark, lower than that, it costs to much to go to the US, higher than that it is good.  

haha, that darn van life doesnt have to be near as expensive as people make it.  I chuckle when I see some one spending 10K on a electrical system that you could have put in for about 1500.00 guess we know where their priorities are.  

I always tell people truck campers are so expensive because of the engineering that goes into them because you are not just setting a box on a premade frame, the whole thing has to support and contain its self, while giving you room to live with the moderen conveniances all while fitting in the back of a truck with out blowing out the tires.  

I think all truck capmers are overpriced right now, they have been coming down, but not to pre-covid levels now.  before covid I could have bought a good bigfoot new for under 60K, during covid that went up to just shy of 100K now it is about 70K  same with NL.  

now to be totaly clear the 901 I will be getting will probably be bare bones, no microwave, no a/c, I will try get them to throw in the motors and controler for the jacks as I would like the electric jacks.  but most of their rental units didnt have any real options.  we don't use any 120V stuff in the one in my 1991, so it isn't a big deal that way, I would have liked the A/C just so if we go somewhere and want to go sightseeing and the dog can't go we could rent a site with power and have the A/C setup for him, but thats always somthing I can add myself if we decide we need it. 

HERE is the camper we are looking at

you know truck camper pricing is kinda funny between the US and Canada.  so in salem there is a used 2023 901sb for sale for 40858.00  here the price is 39900.00 but lets do the conversion, so right now that salem rv would cost me 56775.05 US.  there is no incentive for a Canadian to go south of the boarder to find a rv right now, especialy with truck campers which seem to be more expensive in the US than in Canada. It would probably be a very good idea for you guys to shop up here with the exchange rate that canadian sold one would cost you 28712.24 

they are quite popular, mind you I kinda live in a hub city, there are three ways to get to Alberta from the coast and two of them pass through my city so I see a large amount of trafic.  but ya I see quite a few truck campers.  a lot of it is probably because alot of our camp sites are not accessable to larger trailers, which is why we decided to try a truck camper, oh and to cut down on the ferry costs...  its over 850.00 cdn, round trip, for me to take my 5th wheel accross to vancouver Island to visit friends and camp a bit.  but the truck camper is about 200 bucks.  

ya Adventurer is built in the US but still a canadian company.  so its a hybred haha.  I ruled out artic fox, to heavy, and expensive for what you get, the side walls are only about r10, the roof in the middle is good but the edges are the same or less than the walls and the basment is very low and uses fiberglass pink for insulation.  I do like the 856 layout though, but its heavy for its size.  

lance there are no dealers here that I can find, and you don't see many on the road and I don't realy put them in the catagory of AF, NL, bigfoot, adventurer, I kind of put them in the old adventurer class when the adventurer was a mid teir truck camper instead of a top teir for the company.  eagle cap use to be the top teir in the day, but that was discontinued and the adventurer because their top teir when they moved from Canada to the new manufacturing plant in Yakima, Washington in 2008.  they did a bunch of process retooling and changes to the construction methods.  now the eagle cap is just a limited edition they put out once and a while.  host, they are just to big and heavy and expensive from what I have seen.  I have been closit looking for a couple years now, and when you concider the adventurer has a higher insulation rating than bigfoot and Northern light (yes the clam shell makes resealing easier) but with my camping well into freezing levels, I want that insulation factor.  its funny, the one we went and looked at a couple weeks ago, was running getting ready for its PDI as it was sold, it was -8C that day (17.6F) and it was toasty warm, even in the bathroom haha