We Almost Bought a 21-Footer. Almost.
At some point in the trailer research spiral, we pulled up a floor plan for a 21-foot camper and said, with complete sincerity, “this one has a separate bedroom.”
Reader, we do not need a separate bedroom. We are two people and two dogs attempting to simplify our lives. We live in a high-rise apartment right now and we have too much stuff. The whole point is fewer square feet, not a lateral move with wheels.
But that’s how trailer research goes. You start sensible, you watch approximately ten million YouTube videos, and before you know it you’re seriously considering a quarter of a million, state-of-the-art beast because a few videos made it look so cool.
We eventually found our way back to sanity, and to the Escape 13ft — our custom-built home on wheels, currently in production and due to hit the road with us this June.
Here’s how we got there.
The YouTube Research Phase (A Cautionary Tale)
We did what any reasonable person planning a major life change does: we outsourced our decision-making to strangers on the internet.
In fairness, the RV and trailer YouTube community is genuinely incredible. People are detailed, honest, and remarkably willing to show you the inside of their bathroom situation. We watched full-timers, weekend warriors, couples, solo travelers, families with kids, families with dogs. We took notes. We made a spreadsheet.
We started our search at 13 feet. Then crept to 17. Then 19 felt reasonable. The 21-footer was, in retrospect, a fever dream brought on by too many videos of people playing video games on a big screen TV next to a walk in closet and roaring fireplace. Thankfully, we came back down to 13 and never looked back.
The thing that actually helped us stop spiraling was getting specific about what we needed — not what looked good in someone else’s tour video. So we asked ourselves three questions. Everything else followed.
Question 1: Do We Actually Need a Toilet?
Our answer: No. Absolutely not. Hard pass on the black tank.
This one sounds dramatic until you understand what a black tank actually involves. For the uninitiated: it’s the holding tank for your toilet waste. You fill it. Then you have to empty it. In person. With your hands (in gloves, yes, but still).
As first-time RVers, the idea of learning to manage a black tank — on top of learning everything else about living on the road — felt like a very optional stress we did not need to sign up for.
We also kept noticing something in those YouTube videos: the people who had been doing this for years, the ones who’d logged tens of thousands of miles and clearly knew what they were doing? They weren’t using their toilets. Almost universally. Campgrounds, state parks, national forests, Harvest Hosts properties — bathrooms exist. Good ones, mostly.
No toilet meant we could look at smaller, simpler, lighter trailers. It was the first filter and it cut the list in half immediately.
Question 2: Outdoor Kitchen or Indoor Kitchen?
Our answer: Indoor. Because neither of us wants to make coffee in the rain.
Teardrops are beautiful. The aesthetic alone almost got us. A small, rounded little thing that you tow behind a car — there’s something so classic about it. And a lot of them come with an outdoor kitchen built into the rear hatch, which looks very romantic in the YouTube videos.
Then I thought about November. I thought about standing outside in the rain at 6:45am trying to work a camp stove while Verde looks at me with his “this is beneath us” face that he’s developed after 14 years of the sweet life.
We wanted a fridge. We wanted a stovetop. We wanted to be able to close a door when the weather was doing something uncooperative. That meant an inside kitchen, which meant we needed an actual small camper rather than a teardrop.
This didn’t mean giving up outdoor cooking. We’re packing a full camp kitchen setup and will cook outside every chance we get when conditions cooperate. But we wanted the option to retreat. The inside kitchen is the backup plan, and the backup plan matters.
Question 3: What Do We Do With It When We’re Done?
Our answer: We’re not getting rid of it. So it better fit in a driveway.
This question surprised us a little, because we hadn’t initially thought of it as a constraint. But the more we talked about it, the more obvious it became: we are going to love this trailer. We know this about ourselves. We’re going to name her and talk about her and probably have feelings about her.
Whatever we buy, we’re keeping. Which meant we needed something small enough to store reasonably — not a 21-foot rig that requires a dedicated storage facility and its own zip code. The 13ft can live in a driveway, fit in a standard storage unit, and tow easily behind a vehicle that wasn’t specifically purchased for towing. (Dylan will tell you more about the 100 series situation in a future post. It’s a whole thing.)
The question of “after” actually made the decision easier. It anchored us back to small.
Why the Escape 13ft Specifically
Once we knew what we needed — small, no toilet, inside kitchen, built to last — the Escape 13ft kept coming up. We dug in, and here’s what sealed it.
The aesthetics are genuinely great.
We chose to go custom, and the color options for the shell are giving exactly the fun, vintage camper energy we wanted. Not only that, we were able to select fabric, cabinetry, floors and counter tops to fully customize the interior too. This is a trailer we’re going to have for a long time. It should make us happy to look at it. It does.
The layout solved a problem we hadn’t fully articulated.
Finding a small trailer with a permanent bed — one that doesn’t require conversion every single night — was genuinely hard. We’re running Squid X Media on the road. We’ll be working from the trailer regularly. The last thing we needed was to break down the bed setup every morning and rebuild it every night. The Escape 13 has a permanent bed plus a convertible dining-to-second-bed setup that will function, in practice, as the dog bed. Verde and Quinn will have no complaints.
Quality and longevity are actually part of the brand.
Escape Trailers has a strong reputation in the small trailer world for building things that hold up. When you’re planning to live in something and keep it indefinitely, that matters more than a lower price point on something that might not survive the first winter. We did the research. The reviews from long-term owners are consistently good.
It’s small but it doesn’t feel small.
The windows. There are so many windows. For two people who are going from a high-rise apartment with a water view to 13 feet of trailer, natural light and the feeling of openness were non-negotiable. The Escape delivers on this in a way a lot of comparably-sized trailers don’t.
She’s Being Built Right Now
As of right now, our Escape 13 is somewhere in the production process, being built to our specs, in the colors we chose, with the layout that’s going to make this whole thing actually work. We pick her up and hit the road in May or June.
There is something genuinely surreal about knowing that a physical object — our home for the foreseeable future — is currently being assembled somewhere while we’re still sitting in a Tampa Bay high-rise with too much furniture and two dogs who have no idea what’s coming.
(They’ll both be better than fine. They’ve been our travel companions since they each joined the family. Verde is a veteran and his happy place is a hotel room. Quinn is a bit newer to the family but he’s already embraced his adventurous side.)
COMING NEXT + FOLLOW ALONG
Speaking of the dogs — next up: Meet the Co-Pilots →
One of them is 14, clumsy and chatty
The other one is 18 months old and ate a sock last week.
Following along on Instagram and TikTok? We’re @TheLongWayLiving.
Come watch us figure this out in real time.