I am now solo in the 30-foot C my wife and I bought for travel adventures together, and road trips with the children and grandchildren. 30 feet feels too big for me now, but is still good for the adventures with the kids. It is also probably about the right size (equivalent to a 23-26 foot trailer) if I were to full-time alone.
When traveling, we never pulled anything, because we never stopped anywhere for longer than two nights. All our shopping and "running around" was done enroute from place to place, all our sightseeing done in the motorhome, most of it on the road between RV parks and campgrounds. We did not regularly visit major cities, at least not in the RV. We would prefer city center hotels to a commute from RV parks on fringes of, or outside, a metro area.
Now alone, I could probably solo in a smaller C motorhome, 23 to 26 feet, equivalent to 18-22 foot trailer. But also thinking about a trailer.
Going out to the lake for a few days to a couple of weeks at a time, I now to a vehicle to get around. First it was a 3500 pound compact pickup truck, now a 2500 pound subcompact car. Before my wife died, she would drive out independently so we would have her car to get around (we are talking about locations 15 to 50 miles from home).
Size of RV versus what you can tow? Most often, the smaller RV can tow more than the big one, Cs and A gassers, particularly on Ford chassis. Any E-450 C should be rated to tow at least 5000 pounds (typical RV manufacturer rating), as there is a 6000 to 7500 pound cushion between maximum weight for the RV and maximum combined weight for flat towing. A 26-foot A gasser on F-53 chassis weighing less than 16,000 pounds, that cushion for flat towing is more like 10,000 pounds, though the RV manufacturer has downgraded it to match the towing equipment installed (5000 is typical).
Even most type B motorhomes on E-250, E-350, Express 2500 and 3500 vans will have 4000 to 6000 pounds of flat towing capacity left when at full weight as a RV.
Smaller size reducing what you can tow, that is going to happen when you go to a RV with a lower capacity chassis, like earlier Sprinters (the Sprinter has been getting beefier as they evolve to our market) and possibly some of the recently introduced motorhomes, B and C, being built on other Euro vans, or the C motorhomes that Winnebago built on the VW T4 van in the late 90s, early 2000s.
If you are going into big cities, and want to do that travel by motorhome, a small towed vehicle is a good idea simply because even a small motorhome is going to be difficult to park in some places you will want to visit, and those places will be some distance from where you find a RV park or campground. We were pretty lucky most of the time finding RV parks with access to public transportation, but that is not going to happen everywhere, because sometimes the RV parks are too far out, and sometimes the metro area lacks an adequate transit system.
Tom Test
Itasca Spirit 29B
