New Host Everest

TxGearhead wrote:

ReneeG wrote:
Great report! Thanks for posting this. Are you comfortable crawling in and out of the bed and is your age a factor? I'm asking because we are in our mid 60's and someday when we get to the point of not wanting to hook up our FW, we've thought of a Host, but will we be "too old" to climb up and down into the bed. I know health is a huge factor and right now we are relatively limber and healthy.

Me and the wife are 72. She will not go anywhere in the cabover because of the outside steps. I'm OK with them and getting into bed.
My biggest issue is loading the Bigfoot. I haven't used it in a while, so I asked my 35 yr old son to come over and help me load it. Both of us are just getting over covid. My son is a take the bull by the horns type and doesn't shy away from anything. With only 1/2" clearance between the dually swing outs and the fenders, it took awhile to load up. He asked me: "you been doing this by yourself"? Yes I have. We were both wore out.
So, even if getting into the bed is no issue, there can be others. I can hookup to our 5th wheel in less than 10 minutes.
A Class C sounds pretty good.

Thanks for the feedback.

ReneeG wrote:
Great report! Thanks for posting this. Are you comfortable crawling in and out of the bed and is your age a factor? I'm asking because we are in our mid 60's and someday when we get to the point of not wanting to hook up our FW, we've thought of a Host, but will we be "too old" to climb up and down into the bed. I know health is a huge factor and right now we are relatively limber and healthy.

Me and the wife are 72. She will not go anywhere in the cabover because of the outside steps. I'm OK with them and getting into bed.
My biggest issue is loading the Bigfoot. I haven't used it in a while, so I asked my 35 yr old son to come over and help me load it. Both of us are just getting over covid. My son is a take the bull by the horns type and doesn't shy away from anything. With only 1/2" clearance between the dually swing outs and the fenders, it took awhile to load up. He asked me: "you been doing this by yourself"? Yes I have. We were both wore out.
So, even if getting into the bed is no issue, there can be others. I can hookup to our 5th wheel in less than 10 minutes.
A Class C sounds pretty good.

11 nights in our Everest in Montana. True about the bathroom door. If possible I would give up the floor space for a rectangular bathroom so door isn’t angled in.

Getting into our bed is fairly easy. We are 60 and 51. My wife enters from the bathroom side, myself the other opening by the fridge. Making the bed—we sleep on top of a comforter and use fleece blankets. Fold fleece blankets in the morning and smooth out the comforter. We chose a queen with windows on either side for light and air cross flow.

I’ll post some photos in another thread.

Nice report. Enjoy the new camper. I just got back from 7 nights in my Cascade. Love it!

congrats on your new host! I'm sure you will get lots and lots of enjoyment out of it.

For those who asked about making the bed: on my Eagle cap 1165, the bathroom blocks about three quarters of the space between the main room and the bedroom, so access for making the bed is pretty limited. The trick to make it easy is to get the pillows out of the way, get underneath the blankets laying on your back and make snow angel motions. That gets the covers all spread out and almost flat. Then carefully slide out from under, and crawl back up on top on your hands and knees and finish with a little tugging here, alittle tucking there, throw the pillows back into place, and it's done!

You posted a great report with pictures! TY. Enjoy your new unit.

Thanks for the feedback. Hubby is 5'9" and I'm 5'6", 57, and 66, respectively. Both of us could lose 10 lbs, but that's about it. Crawling in from the foot of the bed is a good test. In our FW we have a standard King. In the house, we have a split, electric king, probably like yours

The Everest has a standard bench dinette or optional U-shaped. Although the two of us like the U, I can see how it might be tight for four adults and the traditional dual bench would make more sense.

The difference with the Mammoth is a 3-panel door to the bath that gives you more space plus the bath is a little larger than the Everest. I don't remember if the Yukon is more like the Everest or the Mammoth. Some people do not like the multi panel door and have come up with other screens for the bath while preserving knee/leg space. The swing door would be an issue for me due to long legs, but my wife could fit either.

The basement will actually fit four 27-gallon bins if you do not have an off-grid package. The tray is sturdy enough to lie on and pull yourself in to inspect or repair anything along the inside walls. My shoulders are too broad to turn over but I can get over 60 degrees rotation either direction and can lay on my chest to reach all the way to the gray tank false wall.

You will find it is few stairs to get in and out of the camper. Host's come with one internal step and 4 external steps but really need 5 outside for a pickup and 6 for a chassis cab. The most stable solution is replacing the fold up steps with a Torklift model but those do not work as well when the camper is offloaded and low to the ground. You will need to figure out how much you use the camper off and on the truck to figure out which stairs are better for you.

Once inside any of the campers that have the floor starting above the pickup bed rails (Chalet, Eagle Cap, Host), you will notice two things: First there is much more open floor space since the floor is 8-8.5' wide, Second the height transition to the cab over is more like a residential bed.

We use a fitted sheet on the residential-sized mattress and a comforter with duvet over the top. The trick is to start at the head of the bed and work your way down for each layer you apply. The cab overs in these large campers are tall enough that you can crawl around on your knees without ever getting close to the ceiling.

As for age and health, I'm 57 and DW is 49. I'm 5'11" and DW is 5'7".
We're both larger than we should be. Crawling into the cabover bed is easy enough. Getting out entails either getting on hands and knees and crawling backwards or sliding yourself. With the extra headroom in the Host, it's much easier than it was in my non-basement model Lance. The standing area height of the Host and my older Lance was about the same, but because the floor on the Lance was down in the truck bed and the Host is on top of the bed rails, the overall height is much higher on the Host. Downside is that the Host is really tall. Upside is that the cabover on the Host has a lot higher ceiling.
If you're not sure what it will be like living with a camper, try getting on and off your current bed from the foot rather than the sides.

As for making it, that's no big deal. Just crawl in, start with the top two corners, then do the bottom corners. Again, it's much easier to crawl on the bed with the extra headroom in the Host.
Campers with a front bath that blocks access to one side of the bed would be much more difficult to deal with.

At home, we have a split king adjustable bed, and ordered the Host with a king mattress and am thinking of changing it to an adjustable split king as well. I couldn't do an adjustable in the Lance as it would have raised the height of the mattress and made it too claustrophobic.

ReneeG wrote:
Great report! Thanks for posting this. Are you comfortable crawling in and out of the bed and is your age a factor? I'm asking because we are in our mid 60's and someday when we get to the point of not wanting to hook up our FW, we've thought of a Host, but will we be "too old" to climb up and down into the bed. I know health is a huge factor and right now we are relatively limber and healthy.

Besides the age & health factors, how in the world do make that bed, my DW has a fit making the queen in our class C even though she can get around both sides.