Thanks again for the information.
I'm finding more options for BH FW that we like but looking at floorplans, the ones we like are 40'+ and in the 16k lbs range (I said 18k lbs to give me some buffer space but it looks like that's around where I need to go from large truck to very large truck! Looking closer at the weights, we can probably do 16k which might give us more cheaper options). The reason we don't like any of the 37' ones is that all the ones we've seen don't have the 'living rm / kitchen' space we want to comfortably sit 5+. They seem to all have the dinette or stand alone chair and a sofa (often only 2 seater) inline against the far wall (and the travel trailers are similar). The 40'+ ones have another sofa or euro recliners perpendicular to the sofa. Travel Trailers also don't have the storage space we'd like.
As far as towing a smaller travel trailer or tenting, it just doesn't work with our family. Our kids are not old enough to stay in tent by themselves so wife or I have to stay in the tent and many of the campgrounds we go to won't let us have a tent. As far as a small TT, we'd need to get 2 sites and again, we'd have to split up.
Spending more on the truck is certainly an option but I don't think I need to (since I think I can find something in my budget) and as mentioned, I don't want to as the truck will only be used to pull the trailer so I don't want to spend $20k-30k on it. Ideally, I'd just rent a truck when we camp but I'm not even sure if we can rent a suitable truck but more importantly, it doesn't really work for us as we drive and leave our rv in Florida every winter so we'd have to do a one-way rental twice / year (or do the return trip).
As we all know, with RVs often comes compromise (budget, space, style, storage, etc) and we just have to decide what the best option is for us. We really like our class A for the living room space but we kind of need more sleeping options so we're looking at large fifth wheel. Obviously, for us, getting a FW means we need to compromise on the tow vehicle and it also means giving up driving in the class A which we prefer. We haven't seen any TT that we like as much as our current setup but we haven't given up.
