Howdy Donn,
Well, I guess your much better than I am.
Not better by any means, but we do guess we are all different ;-)
Living 2 people in that small of a box in bad weather is definitely not my cup of tea.
Not ours either. We plan on staying outdoors as much as possible, and to travel in order to avoid the bad weather. Of course bad weather can't be avoided all the time, but we plan on minimizing it as much as possible, and I think we can endure staying a few days stepping on each other's shadow if we can keep it infrequent enough.
I guess camper size depends on truck size huge truck means bigger camper, and more weight carrying capacity. If your going this way, you might want to look at Earth Roamer or Tiger motor homes. Tigers are built on 550/5500 series trucks, so there fully of handling more.
We have had theTigers pointed out to us, and have already checked them out; we loved them and found them to be just about perfect except for the price. Their simplest model is
the Benghal (in its basic configuration, with no options) goes to the tune of $125,000... ouch! And that's for a gasoline regular cab (diesel crew cab costs even more)... this is about 2x the price of a truck+camper, that's waaaaaay too rich for our blood, and that using a 1-ton (350/3500) pickup truck chassis.
Tiger's most capable model,
the Siberian (which is the one built on top of the 550/5500 chassis), ups the ante to a "mere" $248,000 (!!!) also for a basic configuration, but at least that's for a diesel crew cab. Anyway, there's no way we would be spending that amount of money... and to make things worse, we are pretty sure that if we change our mind later and decide to swap it for another kind of RV, the financial loss on such a custom, expensive vehicle would really hurt. So yes, they seem to be fantastic... but from a cost-benefit standpoint, an absolute no-no for us, unfortunately, at least until we win the Lotto (and we don't bet, so it makes things just a little more difficult ;-)).
We haven't checked the EarthRoamers yet, thanks for bringing them up; we will surely have a look.
Remember in any camper storage space will be at a premium. Where are you going to put more than one change of clothes? How about dirty clothes? Dishes? What are you going to use?
Thanks for asking about these points; here's our thinking so far
Clothes: The Northstar 12STC we're considering has two wardrobes (small ones, but they seem to be able to cope with reasonably more than a single change of clothes) as well as many overhead cabinets all around (for non-hanging clothes like underwear, tshirts etc which constitute most of our dressing, we think we would be using the ones around the bed).
Dirty clothes: the idea is to stash them at the hampers that are pictured at both sides of the bed.
Dishes (and a reasonable number of pots and pans and cups etc): our plan is to store them in the storage under the kitchen, as well as in its overhead cabinets.
If this is going to be a full time rig, you will very like[l]y want to pull an enclosed utility trailer to carry stuff like lawn chairs, BBQ, folding table, spare clothes, etc.
You know, we have actually thought about that. The fact that the Northstar 12STC entry door is on its side actually (we think, please correct if wrong) would enable us to use the TC for sleeping/eating/etc even with such a trailer still attached... so no need to unhitch for quick overnight stops. We plan on trying without the trailer at first, but it's good to know we can move up to one if the cargo capacity of the TC proves to be too limiting.
Thanks for your input, Donn, much appreciated! Please tell us anything else that comes to your mind, the more ideas we get, the better.
Cheers,
--
Vall & Mo.