They Say we NEED this to RV... How and Why We Resist a Towed Car

It's been three full months since we moved into this 34-foot Dynamax Isotta 6 and the more we show you guys us driving this thing everywhere, the more you guys ask, when are you getting a towed vehicle? So today we're going to answer why we currently don't have one, how we've made it work for full-time RV life, and then we're going to ask you all if and when the time comes, what kind of towed vehicle should we get. Okay, so why don't we have a towed vehicle? And first off, it was a really big life-changing decision for us to leave the fifth wheel life and to sell our fifth wheel and our truck and move into this classy RV all within a two to three week period. It was a whirlwind and it was very consuming. If I had to research one more thing and figure out what kind of vehicle we were going to get, all the equipment that's involved with it and install the tow bar and whatever else is involved in it, it would have just probably put me over the top because that was a pretty stressful time period. And just having the ability to not add one more layer on top of that was a big deal. Yeah, for sure. Moving rigs when you live in it full-time is complicated and that definitely would have been overwhelming. Yeah, so the first one, you know, easy decision for us. Second, which we didn't 100% know beforehand, but we assumed, was that it'd be pretty dang easy to drive this Dynamax around on its own. Knowing that it's on the Ford F600 4x4 chassis, which is basically the same cab as any Super Duty truck. You know, it's got the same seats, the same steering wheel, the same mirrors. It has the same feel to it as any other Super Duty. Yeah, and having that familiarity is very comforting. It puts you out on the right foot and it just starts things off much easier. Yeah, we weren't getting into this giant diesel pusher of a Class A, which I would assume, we don't know yet, there is some sort of learning curve to get, you know, comfortable driving that. Whereas opposed to, you know, you jump into this thing, I think anybody would be comfortable within a half hour. I remember the first time you drove it. That's pretty much what you said. You're like, yeah, I'm pretty comfortable. Overall, much easier. So it's going to take some time to get to know the curves, the turns, the turning radius. I definitely noticed though, holy moly. I'll never forget the very first day we picked this up. We took it straight to Walmart. And that was my first experience with the tight turning radius. Basically, us curving around this four-way stop sign got us out of there. No problem. It was at that point when I said, this thing is a breeze to take through tight parking lots. Yeah, and really what you have to pay attention to with any type of RV is the length, the height, and the weight. So this is, you know, a 22,000 pound vehicle. It is 34 feet. It's 12 and a half feet tall. So it's fairly large, you know, and as long as you keep those, you know, factors in mind while driving, it's not that bad. And I've talked about the Ford mirrors before. I love the Ford mirrors. They have these big convex mirrors on the bottom. So if you use those within combination of the backup camera in this thing that comes with it, it's pretty simple to be aware of what's around you. And while researching this next stage of our RV life, I kind of wanted to get away from the towing factor. Yeah, we were really, really ready to be done towing. We wanted to be back into a smaller self-contained type of unit. And although people say, and I understand why, towing a towed vehicle is easier than towing an RV. Right. Just because it's smaller than an RV and it kind of just follows behind your RV. Yeah, like you don't even know it's there. Yeah, but it still adds complications. It still adds... Considerations. Yeah, all of that stuff where it's not the same thing as driving around this, you know, smallish class C. It's now you are 50 plus feet long. Yeah, because we were really excited to be 34 feet in length, period, period, no nothing. So as soon as you add on that towed vehicle, no longer can you just maneuver around those Walmart parking lots with as much ease as what I just described. And we wanted to really feel that experience of we're not dependent on having anything behind us. All we need to worry about is this 34 foot RV and that's it. And that is what I'm holding on to like with dear grip. And it's been really great. Yeah, I kind of want to enjoy this stage of our travel without having something behind us. So speaking of stages, that's a great transition to our very next point is we can always add it on later. And since there are pros and cons to every RV, every way you use it, we wanted to fully experience this stage without it, knowing that we can always add it on at any time if it never worked out for us without having a toad. And I'm a big proponent of researching, getting all your ducks in a row and, you know, being ready for whatever it is you're going to tackle in life. And that kind of is good and bad because it makes you want to buy this, buy that. Everybody says, I need this. I got to have that. And then you end up getting everything where maybe you don't need that yet. So I'm trying to rein that back in a little bit and do a little bit more slower type of research and really figure out what it is we do need. Right. And breaking this into stages, it does bring us back to our roots. One of the things we were excited about for this particular motorhome was to have that same sense of freedom that we had in our class B. And if you add on that toad vehicle stage, you just jump right past being able to mimic what we were trying to chase a little bit with this class C. So we can be kind of indecisive. We can want to try a few different things. We don't know exactly what we want. And that's OK. Yeah, there's nothing. There's nothing wrong with that. And truly, that is why we are extra thankful for our partnership with Dynamax RV for allowing us to try this ISATA-6 out for the next 12 months and really kind of figure out what it is we do like, what it is we don't like, and give us a little jump start on what's next for us. So through all that research that I love to do, you know, I kind of narrowed down. We wanted to try a class C or a super C first. You know, the class A is a big category. The class A motorhome, that's a huge RV category, and we've never been in one of those. But through the differences, I knew that I wanted to go with a C or a super C. Dynamax was a company that kept coming up to the top of the research as someone who makes a high quality unit. And we really did love what they produced. But what we didn't really know exactly which way we wanted to go was it sticking with a Ford 4x4 chassis or going more with like a true super C on the Freightliner chassis. It's a tough decision. There's lots of pros and cons between the two. So far, this motorhome has exceeded our expectations and it has been a fun unit to travel around the country. It has really fit our lifestyles great. Yeah. So now we know a little bit more about why we don't have a towed vehicle. Let's talk about how we get along without one. So we have a handful of ways that we've been making this work for us. Now, keep in mind, everybody's RV experience is going to be different depending on if you're full-time, part-time, if you're fully retired, if you're working a full-time job. So just because it's working well for us doesn't mean it's going to work well for you. And we are full-time workers. We work all day long most days. So our exploring days are less than what yours might be. Yeah. So right off the bat, not leaving our campsite every single day is not a huge deal. It's something we didn't even do when we had the ability to leave every day. Right. So that kind of... That's just a preface. That sets the stage a little bit. The easiest thing that you can do to get along without a towed vehicle is to get those campsites in the direct vicinity of where you want to visit. Yeah. So that is point number one is just walkability. And that's exactly what we did with our very first campsite in Golden, Colorado. We picked out a campground where we were in the heart of where we wanted to be. We could just walk out our door and walk anywhere within a few mile radius with ease. And even if we had a brand new 2025 Jeep Rubicon sitting in the driveway of our campsite... We wouldn't have taken it. No, we prefer to walk around if we can. And that was a great place to do it. And really, you know, most campsites have something to walk to within a mile, roughly. You know, hopefully there's some food or, you know, a little downtown area or, you know, just the campsite itself. I mean, we walk every single day two to three miles. Yeah. Starting out with the pups. And the next way that we make it work by expanding that radius out a few more miles is biking around or e-biking is what we usually do. So our next radius is about 10 miles with those e-bikes. And, you know, we love to do big excursion days on e-bikes or even just going out to dinner or... Going to the grocery store. I can't tell you how many times I've taken the e-bike to the grocery store. And it's so easy. You can just load up your bags and use your throttle to get home. So we don't use our e-bikes for exercise. We use our e-bikes for exploring and utility purposes from getting us around. Like, it really helps you cover so much more ground. But you can't always get by with walking or biking. Some of these campsites are remote or they're just a little bit farther away, maybe outside of the city. Right. Or town that you'd want to travel to. So that leaves Ubers, Lyfts, taxis, shuttle buses, trolleys, anything like that. Public transportation and ride shares. And we've been dusting off the Uber app. We spend Ubering more. We went to a concert. I went to a haircut appointment. You know, going out to dinner, taking a ride to the airport. These are all situations where an Uber makes sense. And we have been using that more. And I remember Uber was a lot cheaper. At least it felt that way back in Minneapolis when we used it more, you know, eight years ago. Some of the rides are somewhat expensive. But if you consider the overall cost and maintenance of a vehicle, you know, and you don't do it all the time, a couple times a month maybe. Insurance, maintenance, ownership. It's not that bad. I definitely think the price of Ubers varies depending on availability. So if you are somewhere more remote and the Ubers are limited and they have to drive further to pick you up, it's going to cost a little bit more. And something we discussed early on was, hey, we could always just rent a car if we need to. Sometimes we'll sit at a campsite for a week or two weeks. And we said, maybe it makes sense for us to rent the car for a week. Now, we haven't done that yet. But you guys did see when our friends, Jeff and Deb, rented the car for a day for us in the Monterey area. And we went out. And that was fun. And explored. And we realized like, yeah, that is something that's really not that hard to do. It's roughly $100 a day. Right. That's not that bad. Yeah. If there's certain attractions that you really want to see, there are going to be cases where you need a car to do it. So renting a car is a great solution in that event. Now, if we were to do a week-long rental, like you mentioned, for us, that would be more like in the wintertime when RVers go south. They sit a little bit longer. They move a little bit less, waiting for that weather to warm up. I do see us doing that in the wintertime when we're, you know, more stationary for a couple of weeks. And we want to get some stuff done. Yeah. And a few of you have mentioned things like rideshare apps, Toro, and there's probably a few other ones. That that's a valid way to rent a car. And you basically, through an app, are renting a person's vehicle. A privately owned vehicle. Private vehicle, not, you know, through Enterprise or something like that. So renting, you know, roughly for a week, we looked, was around $300. It really varies. The price can vary on the car. Yeah, quite a bit. Yeah. But $300 for the week, if you add in, you know, your shopping, your errands, and a couple, you know, trips to whatever you want to do, wherever you're at. Pretty good deal. Yeah, that's not bad. So the last and the easiest way. And the most prevalent, like this is the obvious one. Yeah, of how we get around and get by without a toad is we just drive. We drive it. The motorhome. We drive the motorhome. Yeah, it's really not that difficult. This is kind of what we wanted to experiment with in the first place. Yeah. How big of a unit could we go and kind of treat it like a big van? You know, something we just drive around everywhere. And we visited enough national parks that I know people drive those Class C rentals everywhere. Yeah. You know, you see a 35-foot Class C parking any which way in a national park. Now, of course, the smaller you go, 30 feet, 28 feet, that's going to be way easy to drive around. I think we're kind of at the end of the max limit that we'd want to drive around, you know, at 34 feet. Yeah. And it's not going to be an option in all scenarios. So you just got to be flexible, be open-minded, looking at situations where is this a good idea to drive this RV in that area? Sometimes it's going to be a heck yes, let's take it. It's going to be awesome to have everything with us, have our dogs with us, have the comforts of home. And other times it's going to be like, I don't know that, you know, it looks a little bit sketchy on this one. So you really just got to go case by case. But more often than not, we've been able to take this Class C into the parks, around like places like up at Mount Hood, Timberline Lodge, like we've already made so many great experiences. And having that feeling of everything's with you, your home's always with you. And it's just a great feeling. So I know it looks like we're going to all these fun and big excursions every single week. But in reality, we're not doing that. It's more of, you know, getting out once a week and going into town, grocery shopping, doing things like that. But we are trying to have that work-life balance. And for us, you know, driving this thing around so far, so good. So good. And one strategy that we've implemented is tacking your errands onto a travel day when you're already out driving from A to B. You know, you might add, you might get up extra early because, hey, I want to make a couple of stops and we need to do these things along the way. So that helps where you don't have to break camp on an off day. Learning how to do things like that in order to drive your Class C around definitely helps make it easier. Okay, so I have a little confession to make. I wanted to do this video as a way of starting the research of, you know, what is the best vehicle for a towed vehicle? Is it a Jeep? Is it a Bronco? Is it a truck? Maybe it's a motorcycle instead of, you know, a vehicle. I have a dream vision of it being some sort of a motorized bike motorcycle that's highway legal. Because then you can still keep that length the same. That's the next small step if we were to take something like that. You know, that would put us in between going all the way. And, you know, maybe that's a good way to do it. Where you just have the extension of the hitch. Yeah, but I haven't even started any of the research on the equipment, tow bars, like what's best. I would really like to get your guys' opinions on what you tow, why you tow it. Maybe some of the equipment that we need to look at. And, you know, kind of prepare ourselves for the future if we need to go that direction. And how many of you out there are not using a towed vehicle? We get a few comments here and there. We're getting a few comments on people are researching and they want to know more about this. It's kind of also why this stemmed this video. I think it's a conversation that a lot of people want to know. There are so many different ways to RV and this is just another variable in that puzzle. So that's going to do it for this video and we'll catch you on the next one. Ever wonder where the name Irene Iron Travels comes from? It's actually named after my online fitness and nutrition coaching business, Irene Iron Fitness. I help people move better, feel better, and eat better with strength training and real food. No fad diets, no harsh restrictions, no counting calories, and absolutely no processed food in a package. If you want to get stronger and feel better at any age, check the description below for the links with my new client special or join in on our next and upcoming group challenge.