I am not an expert on RVs. Last fall I bought a 16' 1972 Kyote Forester Camper. We spent the spring and summer rebuilding it from the bottom up, and earlier this month we pulled it with my Dodge Dakota to the Burning Man, North of Gerlach, NV, and back. That ended up being a total of 3600 miles. We spent 15 days. Six of them were stand alone days in the Black Rock Desert. The rest we spent on the road. That is the extent of my experience. So, I have advice. If you are going to stay in an RV park, figure out where you are going to be before 3:00 in the afternoon, then call ahead and make reservations. That was advice from the owner of the first KOA that we stayed at. We were able to make a reservation every time that way. After about 4:00 they start to fill up. We stayed at KOAs most of the time. They are expensive. They are also clean.
I liked the idea of being able to un-hook and drive around in the truck. Really though, in 15 days I only did that three times. Most of the time we walked, or we rode our bicycles. In Salt Lake City we spent almost the entire day on the bicycles. We didn't stop much on the way out, but we poked along on the way home. We drove a lot of it on highway 30. The nice thing about RVs, is that you can just pull over and you have your home right there. If someone has to go to the bathroom, wants a drink, wants to eat, it is right there. With the camper, we had to pull over and couldn't do any of that on the fly, but that was no big deal. If you want to take a nap, you can just pull over and take a nap. I really liked it. Actually, we kept saying that we were not RVers, and that we were going to sell the camper as soon as we got back, if not on the way back. I even had a "for sale" sign to put in the window. By the time we got home, we were not in any hurry to get rid of it. I think that we will keep it for a long time.
We saw a lot of rental RVs while we were on vacation. A lot of people are taking that option. Everyone I talked to were having a good experience with their rental RVs. The people who rented them and brought them out to the Burning Man were hit with a hefty clean up deposit. I don't know if that is just because they were bringing them out in the desert, or if that is the norm. Anyway, it was very pricey. There were places in Gerlach and Fernley where they would clean them up for you. That was pricey as well, but not as pricey as losing the deposit.
You've gotten good advice above. Don't do like a friend of mine did and drive away with the power still attached to his Class A bus. Yikes he paid through the nose for that!
I thought about that. In fact, there are a lot of things you don't want to forget. My screw up was that I lowered the front wheel to stabilize the trailer on one of the shake down cruises, but didn't un-hitch. I pulled out of my camping site without raising it back up. No big deal, but it sure made a racket and drew a lot of attention. I also almost forgot to remove the jacks one time early on. The only thing that saved me was that I forgot the chocks as well. What I did was made a check list, just like you have for your airplane. I even laminated it. Every morning, I would religiously go through the checklist, just like I do when I fly. I never forgot anything after that.
That's my advice.
