Why the Winnebago Travato Was Our First RV

Winter season 2016/17, we had gone on our typical ski trip to Breckenridge, Colorado, to take advantage of our Vail Epic Pass perks. Our flight home to Lake Tahoe landed late on a Saturday evening, so I had told the dog sitter we would be by Sunday afternoon to pick up our dogs.

On Sunday morning, I get a text from the dog sitter. She reminds me tourists are heading back to Sacramento Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area after enjoying their weekend in Tahoe. Traffic will become unbearable the longer we wait to travel across town.

Our dog sitter lived 14 miles away from us. Typically it would have taken no more than a one-hour round-trip to pick up our dogs. On this particular Sunday, it took us six hours!

We had been tossing around the idea of selling our condo and leaving the area we called home for almost 20 years at the time. Lake Tahoe was becoming too congested for us, and we had too much anxiety about beating the crowds. We owned a Chevy Express AWD van we used for weekend camping trips and had ideas for converting it for full-time living.

Not long after our six-hour journey to pick up our dogs, our real estate agent reached out and asked if we wanted to sell our condo because there was low inventory in Tahoe.

Our answer…yes!!! Her email was the push we needed.

But if we sell our place, where would we live?

We knew we would not buy another home in Tahoe. Home prices were too high to buy anywhere else, and we really just wanted to travel and see North America anyway. We decided an RV was our best option and told our agent she could put the place on the market as soon as we bought our new home.

Why didn’t we just convert our Chevy?

The reality was we did not have a garage where we could work on it, we did not have the tools, we did not have the skills, and we did not have the time.

So our new home became the 2018 Winnebago Travato 59K.

How did we decide on the Winnebago Travato?

First, we thought about the following…

How do we plan on using the RV?

For full-time living and traveling across North America to ski, snowboard, mountain bike, hike, backpack, and visit family and friends.

What are the different RV types?

I had never recreated in an RV, and Kyle had limited experience. We needed to educate ourselves on the many RV types, including:

• Class A motorhomes
• Class B and B+ motorhomes
• Class C motorhomes
• Travel trailers
• Fifth wheels
• Toy haulers
• Truck campers
• Camper vans
• Pop up campers
• Tent trailers
• And more

What is our wish list of RV features?

• Four-wheel drive for winter driving conditions and exploring dirt roads.
• Four-season ready. In other words, the plumbing needs to hold up to freezing temperatures. The holding tanks should be located within the interior of the RV. A composting toilet is preferred, so it is one less place to worry about water freezing. And it should have a high-performing, efficient heater.
• Solar panels so we do not have to rely on onshore power.
• Diesel for better fuel mileage.
• 21 to 25 feet in length for fitting in most campsites, parking lots, maneuverability, and better gas mileage. We set a 21-foot minimum as some RV parks do not allow anything smaller due to local ordinances. And sometimes, RV parks are the only legal place to stay near ski resorts.
• Storage for all of our outdoor equipment, including skis, snowboards, mountain bikes, backpacking packs, and other related gear.
• Enough space for two duffel bags to hold our clothes like this one from Patagonia.
• Space for a week’s worth of food. This is one of my biggest worries when I go backpacking – running out of food!
• Stove, because we enjoy hot meals.
• Convection oven versus a microwave. Food just does not taste right after being microwaved.
• A deep kitchen sink. Most sinks will not be like those in a standard home kitchen, but some RV sinks are certainly deeper than others.
• Comfortable bed, because we like our backs.
• A sitting area separate from the bed. If someone wants to sleep or lie down while the other person is up working or just hanging out, they can.
• Shower, or at the very least, an outdoor shower.
• Tankless water heater for faster hot water and to reduce water waste.
• No slide-outs, so we don’t have to worry about whether our rig will fit in a particular campsite once the slide-out is open. Also, we don’t want to worry about the slide-out getting stuck in the out position, especially in winter.

We spent A LOT of time on the internet searching for the best fit before we ever made it to an RV dealer lot. Once we got there, we knew more than any salesperson we met. Of all the RV types, we decided on a motorhome because we do not have extensive experience towing. Learning how to pull our home was not how we wanted to start. This eliminated travel trailers, fifth wheels, toy haulers, pop up campers, and tent trailers.

Why not a truck camper?

By the time we priced out purchasing a truck and a camper, the cost to buy a class B was similar. Living space opens up when the cab and camper aren’t separate. If we ever need to remove ourselves from a situation quickly, we can go from the bed to the driver’s seat in any motorhome without leaving the house.

The following motorhomes made it to the top of our list:

Class A

Winnebago Via 25T

Class C

Winnebago Navion 24V (Itasca Navion)
Winnebago View 24V
Winnebago Trend 23D

Class B+

Leisure Unity (Island Bed floorplan)

Class B

Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 4×4 by Sportsmobile
Airstream Interstate Grand Tour Ext 4×4
Winnebago Era 70A 4×4

Why didn’t we end up choosing any one of these motorhomes?

These motorhomes made the shortlist as they fulfilled many of our wishlist items. They had the right amount of space in the shorter length we desired. And upon physical inspection, these RVs seemed to have quality builds. However, there were some deal-breakers.

For some, the holding tanks were located on the exterior and would be susceptible to freezing in the winter. There are ways to get around this, such as skirting, but we didn’t have plans to be in one place long enough to set up the proper insulation.

In cases like the Airstream, the price was too high and the RV too fancy to imagine it ever going down a dirt road.

The class B units had a bed that converted from vehicle seating. This would mean an uneven sleeping experience.

A custom RV by Sportsmobile could probably get us every feature we wanted, but we didn’t want to put our condo on the market until we drove an RV home, and we were looking at a one-year turnaround for anything custom.

So why did we choose the Winnebago Travato as our first RV?

Our first time seeing it on a dealer lot, we didn’t really give it the time of day. Other class Bs had four-wheel drive and this one did not. It sat on a Ram Promaster chassis so there wasn’t an option to convert it to four-wheel drive either. At the time, four-wheel drive was a must-have. But Kyle had been spending a lot of time on The Fit RV’s site and thought it was worth considering. This is why we ended up deciding it was the right RV for us:

• It wasn’t a four-wheel drive, which was hard to accept. However, it was front-wheel drive, unlike most RVs which are rear wheel. It should handle better in the snow if we aren’t going to have four-wheel drive. We would invest in some Spikes Spider chains.
• The fresh water tank and a lot of the plumbing were on the interior, and the black and gray tanks were heated.
• It came with a 100-watt solar panel with the option to plug in a portable solar panel and a gas-powered generator.
• The chassis ran on gas instead of diesel, but Kyle is more knowledgeable working on a gas-powered vehicle anyway.
• Aside from a custom van option, it was the shortest RV we looked at that we liked. It fits in most parking lots and spaces, and could likely get to most trailheads located down skinny dirt roads.
• It came with an optional bike rack mounted to the passenger-side rear door that wouldn’t interfere with the rear doors opening. The design and location of the rack also made it easy to get the bikes on and off.
• There was enough space for each of us to have a large duffel bag full of clothes, plus a closet for hanging some items with plenty of other space remaining.
• The refrigerator seemed on the small side, as well as the space I would have for dry food and cooking-related items. However, I would later find out I could easily store a week’s worth of food for two people.
• It came with both a two-burner propane stove and a convection/microwave oven. This allowed for plenty of meal options.
• We were happy with the depth of the sink.
• The bed was two twin beds that could be made into a king using a table and a couple of cushions. It was bigger than the bed we had in our condo!
• The twin beds could be used like couches for lounging, and the driver and passenger seats swiveled around so we could sit there too instead of always on the bed.
• The wet bath included a shower with a showerhead long enough to shower outdoors, in addition to a separate hose connector for spraying us, dogs, or gear off with cold water.
• The wet bath was also at the very rear of the unit. In a lot of class Bs, the wet bath lives behind the driver’s seat somewhere in the center of the house, which breaks up the living space. With the wet bath in the rear of the Travato, there were windows throughout the entire space creating a more open feel.
• Also, with the wet bath in the back, the shower space didn’t feel so narrow like a lot of class Bs.

• There were no slide outs to worry about.
• It would need to be our daily driver until our condo sold, and we felt comfortable driving it to and from work, the grocery store, etc.
• The value was hard to beat. We love the Winnebago quality, and there was a considerable price difference between the Travato and all other RVs we considered.
• There were also several other features that weren’t on our wish list nice to have such as the TV, TV antenna, outdoor speakers, awning, an extra sink in the wet bath, air conditioning, external 110-volt outlets, a sliding screen door for the main entry to the house, etc.

In June 2017 we took delivery of the Winnebago Travato.

We closed escrow on our condo in August 2018. We owned the Travato for almost 20 months and were in it full-time for almost six before we traded it in for a 2019 Winnebago Revel in February 2019. I absolutely loved our Travato and miss it even though we traded it in. Here is Why We Traded our Winnebago Travato for a Revel.