Suggestions for a light hard side camper?

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zippinbye

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 4, 2011
Posts
45
Location
Las Vegas, NV and Pender Island BC
A former TC camper owner here, back for another round.  Bottom line, when we became a family of five, our 10.5 foot Alpenlite/Western RV camper became impractical.  Doable, but it was tough on the middle child who was too claustrophobic to handle the over-dinette bunk, and chose the floor with a foam mattress instead.  Hazardous duty, when dad came down from the cabover to use the aft toilet in the night!  We switched to a 30 foot bunkhouse fifth wheel, which is really luxurious in comparison.  It's night and day easier to set-up and break camp (we always unloaded the camper if in a location for more than one night, in order to have transportation without packing camp), hauls much nicer than our high-profile, two ton slide-in and is vastly more comfortable with the the whole family aboard (we can even bring friends along), and cooking is much more pleasurable.  Well, I digress; not really trying to make thread on why a towable has been better than a TC for us.  With one kid in college now, I realize some trips could work well in a TC with the four of us. More importantly, my desire to access back-country camping opportunities still exists.  Once we had the Alpenlite dialed-in with air bags, a Torklift tie down system and other niceties, reality set in that it was too heavy and sway-prone to comfortably take it on many of the unimproved roads/trails we had hoped to.  Clearly, any TC in our future needs to be much better suited for back country access.  I have already debated the pop- vs. hard-side quandary, and hard-side wins.  Even a hard side pop up like an Alaskan would be questionable, but worthy consideration.  Light weight is the main criteria, along with mandatory bathroom, even if it's just a port-a-potty.  So likely a 9 footer based on what I can see (I'm not worried about one foot of overhang, even two).  Another criteria is keeping the price in reason, so an older rig is likely; mid-90's to ten years old or so. So after saying all that, here's my questions:

1) Are there any hard side pop-ups aside from Alaskan?  Need more possibilities to choose from, since there's just a handful of Alaskans that come up on a nationwide search.  A 2400 lb. wet weight would be about as much as I'd want to take on, but willing to ponder it for the benefits of low profile.

2) Looking for suggestions of hard side brands/models that have been around for a while and have a reputation for light weight. Hoping to find alternatives to campers that are synonymous with the light/back country mission, such as Northern Lite, because they are rather costly.  Love to have a N.L., but they are likely out of budget.  I'm pretty much open to any brand that could hold up to some wheeling, in the 2000-ish pound, plus or minus range.

Edit: Just saw a 2003 Fleetwood/Elkhorn 8s on RV Trader in the $6000 range.  Supposedly 2500 lbs - definitely at the high end of my "wants," but in the realm of what I'm talking about.  It looks pretty decent, equipped with all the features we'd need.  But it's just a "for instance" to give an idea of where my mind is going. - RC

Thanks in advance for any suggestions you could offer.

- Rich
 

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