My husband got this campervan bee in his bonnet sometime in our twins’ junior year of college. I willingly “yes deared” him, while thinking, “He must be nuts, but I’ll be a good sport and see where this line of thinking goes. After all, he is so measured in his actions and he so rarely runs off the rails.”

Next thing I know, we are stopping in Hershey PA and not for chocolate – WHAT?! We were there to attend one of North America’s largest RV shows on our way to our twins’ college campus to catch our daughter playing in an early season field hockey game. Our stated mission was to see if Rob could stand up inside a campervan and lie down comfortably on a bed while checking out the layouts. No way was I going to invest in two weeks of cramped misery camping with him until he proved up the fit.

My own secret mission was to see if my considerable girth could fit comfortably throughout. While an active woman, I had never been able to lose the weight I put on carrying our twins to full term.  Not that I hadn’t tried – EVERYTHING. I had come to terms with my obese body being stubborn and strong and yes, frankly beautiful in its large form. I ate a simple, balanced diet, based in real foods on small plates, and the rest was just going to be what it was. My only poor number was the scale.  But after 20+ years of extra large pressures, my knees were barking routinely and that troubled me, especially as my husband laid out his vision for a grand West Coast campervan trip after the kids would graduate.

I might inject here that I kind of stink as a sports mom.  When your husband is a runner and your twins are three sport athletes, the games, meets and tournaments all meld into one. I am happily there to root them on…and maybe knit something in the slower moments. Thus, I don’t recall if our daughter’s team won that weekend, but I do know that our stop in Hershey was a success. We both fit in the vans and we liked the same layouts – more along the European lines of a front lounge and a bed in back.

There is a funny aside about the layout decision – ok maybe awkward is better. What cinched the layout for us may have been when we were fit testing a Roadtrek with rear lounge area that doubled as the sleeping area in the form of two twin beds. Being my usual insistent researcher self, aka nagging wife, I made us both lay down to see if the van passed the horizontal fit test.  Just as we got all comfy in our separate spaces I might add, the salesman walked in and did not notice us lying there until we started to get up. Startled he exclaimed, “Oh ladies! I didn’t see you there. By all means, don’t get up, just enjoy…(oddly long pause)…whatever you were doing back there…” The look my husband gave me! Hah! Almost as good as when the server at Dunks gave him a senior discount, a bit prematurely, on this trip.

We did not purchase a Roadtrek and then they folded anyway. We did decide the entertaining space and the sleeping space needed to be distinct. Right lady, er Rob? We agreed that we did not like how the wardrobes dropped down over our feet and how a TV dominated a corner space making it feel like a media lounge in which we might happen to fall asleep. (That dual purpose media-sleeping function was served well by our couch back home – not really the vibe we wanted for camping.) We did not wish to entertain company in the same location as our primary bed or have to make up and tear down the bed daily in order to use the seating area. There are great workarounds for combo lounge-sofa bed setups – such as specialized bedding (like sleeping bags) specifically for these RV sofa beds. For us that design aspect does not strike our fancy.

This post is Part 1 of a four part series, Want to keep reading? Fit Test, Part 2 can be found here.