We didn't buy our fifth wheel off a lot. We designed it.

We partnered with Grand Design to build the 414LJMJ, almost 44 feet, 3 axles, and we put everything in it we'd wanted for years on the road. Two fireplaces. A bathtub. A side deck. A dishwasher. Washer and dryer. An L couch. More storage than we've had in any rig we've ever owned. A bed that feels like sleeping on a cloud.

I still think we nailed it. Our RV feels like home.

And that's the problem.

Right now it's back at Grand Design getting some prototype things fixed, about a month of work. Instead of sitting still, we took them up on a loaner: a 33-foot Super C motorhome, two slides, our Jeep in tow.

We left Indiana, hit Niagara Falls, worked through upstate New York, and made our way into New England. Five stops in now, in a rig our family of four would have a hard time living in, doing things I wouldn't have done in the one we designed.

The campground we shouldn't be in

We're at Hampton Beach in New Hampshire right now.

This is one of those places you don't just book. You get four of your closest friends on their own computers at 7 a.m., a year out, and everybody hits the button at the same second to give yourselves five chances instead of one. And even that doesn't get you a site. It enters you in a lottery. Then you wait to find out if you won.

A cancellation popped up about a week ago, and grabbing it meant moving another reservation, rerouting, and hustling across a couple of states to get here for four nights.

Worth every bit of it.

The ocean is a two-minute walk through the dunes, close enough that we can see the water from the site, and we still have full hookups. Downtown is walkable for coffee or dinner or putt-putt with the kids. Last night we watched fireworks on the beach.

And I'll be honest with you. We would not be here in our fifth wheel.

Not because it wouldn't fit. Because I wouldn't have done it.

I wouldn't have driven a 44-foot rig through beach town traffic on a summer weekend for four nights. I wouldn't have cancelled a reservation and rebooked another one on a week's notice. I wouldn't have spent over an hour tearing down and over an hour setting back up for a stay that short.

I'd have looked at the opening, done the math, and stayed where I was.

In the 33-foot motorhome, we can set up and tear down in less time than it takes just to set up the fifth wheel. Two slides instead of four. Four leveling jacks instead of six. No deck to set up. So the math came out different and here we are, watching a boat go by.

We optimized for comfort

Everything we put in the 414LJMJ makes it better to live in.

Nothing we put in it makes it easier to go.

Every fireplace, every slide, every axle, every foot of storage. All of it was a vote for the parked experience. And you don't notice you're voting, because standing inside an RV is the only way anyone ever evaluates one.

You climb the steps. You touch the countertop. You sit in the recliner. You picture Saturday morning in there.

What you can't picture on that lot is the Tuesday two years later when something opens up four hours away for three nights and you decide it isn't worth the setup.

That decision doesn't feel like a loss. It feels like being sensible. And it's the same call every time, so you never notice you're making it.

Here's what scares me about that.

If I'm not stepping out my door into a place worth being, I might as well be in an Airbnb 365 days a year. The whole point of being in an RV is what's on the other side of the door. Take that away and I'm just paying a lot of money to live in a nice box in a parking lot with a pool.

So we gave our dream RV a smaller job

I'm not telling you to buy a smaller RV. We're not selling ours. We designed it and we love it and we're getting it back in a few weeks.

What we've landed on instead is treating the 414LJMJ like a seasonal home. We chase 70 degrees, north in the summer and south in the winter. Most of our reservations are at least a week long, and some are a few weeks. We stopped pretending it's a rig that wants to dart around.

And then we scratch the other itch somewhere else. Cruises. RVing overseas. Six weeks in a borrowed motorhome on the East Coast.

We quit asking one RV to do both jobs.

Ask what it costs to leave

Comfort is easy to see on a dealer lot. Friction isn't.

So ask the less obvious question before you sign anything: what will it take to move this RV every time we want to go somewhere, and how often will that talk us out of going?

Not the length. Not the floorplan. The friction.

A week ago this campground wasn't on our schedule. Tonight we're walking back down to the beach.

That's the kind of yes I don't want our RV talking us out of.

Until next time, see you down the road!

— Nathan