Do most Hi-Lo owners use their TT's as campers? Or do any of you "tour".

I would "tour". Go from place to place seeing what I wanted to see and move on.

I am not one who goes to a camp ground, or national forest and sets up camp for a week, or more.

If anyone "tours" in their Hi-Lo, does the constant hitching and unhitching get old after a while?

I see that you have been getting plenty of input on the RV.net forum.

I guess I could say that we use our HiLo for most everything. Our favorite activity is boondocking on our 100 acre property about forty miles from home, there it is just us and nature, and no CG fees. We also like to go on multi-day trips and hit a campground for home base and visit several places in the area, such as, Henry Ford Museum, Gettysburg, and Niagara Falls. Other times we have hit the road and stopped along the way to see some sights, and maybe stop for the night without unhitching and keep on going the next morning. We have done that on trips to Arkansas to visit relatives, and to Maine's Acadia NP.

If hitching and unhitching seems to be a bother, make it easier on yourself and get a power hitch jack and you won't to crank it up and down. You get it down to a system after a while and becomes quite easy. Compared to watching people with their motor homes, leveling, etc., our HiLo is a snap.

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My Great Wife Joyce
2018 Jayco Jay Flight 21QB
Formerly owned 1705T and 2310H
2012 F150 4X4 SuperCrew EcoBoost w/Leer Cap
Reese WD Strait-Line Hitch
Amateur Radio K3EXU

It's not the hitching/unhitching that bothers me that much, although I do wonder if it would get old on a 6,000 mile trip to the west coast and back.

And I definitely would get a power hitch jack.

What I'm thinking about doing in 2014 now is not only going to LA (I know, I'm crazy) but after leaving LA going up to Yosemite. From Yosemite, I may go to Grand Canyon, then up through Utah, to Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, Little Big Horn, Black Hills, Mount Rushmore/Crazy Horse, then head back east with at stop at Wisconsin Dells, then back home to Virginia.

I know it's a lot to do, but I'd have no deadlines, and the only limiting factor would be fuel prices. But back in Virginia, most of my western US wonderlust would be over. The following year, I'd turn my attention to the Canadian Maritimes.

I'm just not sure whether a Hi-Lo TT and pickup would do better for these trips than a 21 foot Class B.

I would have to say your 21' Class B would give you the best of both worlds. Looking on the other forum, I see you have a Roadtrek which would do most everything you would need on a trip like you have planned. If you were planning on staying more stationary a HiLo may be better suited. Take your big trip in the Roadtrek then get a HiLo to enjoy later on. Keep them both in reserve.

__________________
My Great Wife Joyce
2018 Jayco Jay Flight 21QB
Formerly owned 1705T and 2310H
2012 F150 4X4 SuperCrew EcoBoost w/Leer Cap
Reese WD Strait-Line Hitch
Amateur Radio K3EXU

Currently, we just set up at campsites, but at some point I would like to tour the western United States as you are, possibly for eight to ten weeks.

My lovely wife and I tour tent camped for our honeymoon through the New England states, and I had planned to stay for two or three nights at a time in order to see as much of the area as possible without getting into the gotta drive every morning. It believe that it was much more enjoyable to be able to sit and relax for a day or two at a time. Usually there was so much to see and we couldn't even see everything within the three days before we had to hit the road for the next destination. I don't think that I would enjoy getting up to drive each and every day.

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2016 Toyota tacoma TRD sport
Classic 2693 RD
Luke 1:49

Hi Atlee,

My wife and I use our Hi-Lo for both destination camping and touring road trips.

Our road trips tend to be long...six weeks and 5-6,000 miles. Ironic that you want to come west from Virginia, since in May we are traveling to Virginia from the west! Long trips are easy with a Hi-Lo. They don't fight you when being towed...very smooth and easy because of the low profile and low center of gravity. Its easy to have fun on the road when your not exhausted and beat-up from the drive... Well, now that I think about it, transiting through certain urban areas (like Chicago and St. Louis) can be VERY stressful and tiring. Most of the West is wide open and relatively traffic free.

With a Hi-Lo, its more than just hitching and unhitching... you must also clear the decks and lower away, so to speak. When touring, my better half and I both have it down to a system and can be on the road in 25 minutes or less. That's if we've unhitched. If we haven't unhitched we've been out of a campsite in as little as 15 minutes. We don't put a clock on ourselves, and we don't rush. We've just done this sooo many times that we've gotten very efficient.

We do a lot of the preliminary stuff the night before, chairs and other equipment stowed, awning retracted, tow vehicle lined up, most of our interior stuff put away, etc. In the morning all we generally have to do is disconnect and stow our hook-up hoses/cables, retract the stabilizers, lower the top, complete the hitch-up, pull the chocks and go. Sometimes I even hitch-up the night before. We have a simple typed pre-lowering and pre-moving checklist that we go through EVERY time, to make sure nothing was forgotten. Naturally, if we want a more substantial breakfast than fruit/coffee it does take longer to get going, but we tend to eat less when traveling.

In the wide expanses of the west, when we're just trying to get from one sight to the next, we'll just pull into a KOA (or clone) for the night. At such times we won't unhitch, and only unpack what we'll need just for that night.. no chairs, no awning, just the minimum. Likewise, for a quick overnighter we won't even hook up the sewer line. I do carry a grey water drain hose and will run that to the sewer port, especially if its a second in a row in-route stop.

As with most things in life, Hi-Lo set-up, take-down, parking and getting-on-the-road processes get easier and faster with experience.

Jim

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1967 17' Hi-Lo Bon Voyage (1967-1969)
1969 19' Hi-Lo Bon Voyage (1969-2011)
2004 27' Hi-Lo TowLite (2010-present)
2015 Chevy Tahoe LTZ

I have towed over most of the US, parts of Canada and Alaska, with a Hi-Lo, there is just the 2 0f us. I like being able to unhitch and just use the TV for exploring or sight seeing. Started with a manual lift jack and that quickly had to be replaced with a power jack, also have a rechargable drill, to run the stabilizer jacks up and down. We now stay for a week or so at the same place, in winter. But trips in the summer are spent traveling.

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Rich
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(215TL) - 1995 21' TowLite
(2209T) - 2009 22' TowLite
(2510 ) - 2010 25'

Take the HiLO! My girlfriend and I did almost that same trip back in '10 except we started in New Mexico. My recommendation is to leave the motor home home and roll with the trailer! Here's a few reasons.
1) Gas with the HiLo you have to get better gas milage.

2) A lot of the country in the West can best be seen and experianced from a dirt road. We like the freedom of being able to "drop" the trailer and "go see", unincumberd. This was especially true in Yellowstone. We "dropped" @ the campground just inside the park east of West Yellowstone. That worked out great because Yellowstone is so BIG. We drove over 200 miles inside the park! If your goin' ya might as well see it all!

3) You can get into places with the Hilo easily that you couldn't even think of with bigger(taller) rig. Between Jackson and the Tetons is the Gross Vaunt(Fat Belly) Valley. There is a large(100+) campground called Gross Vaunt(Pronounced Grow Va) that is a nice Federal campground with hookups. We went boondocking on up the (dirt)road past a beautiful lake caused by a landslide and found a small (12) campround called Red Hill. Completely empty except us. Big rigs couldn't get in, but we did. Backed right up to the river. Cool. Stayed 2 nights all alone.

I'd like to suggest a couple of places to see that we really enjoyed on our trip through the West, if I could. Go see Brice Canyon. Beautiful Salmon rocks. Go see Fischer Towers. 20-25 miles north of Moab. Rough road, but AMAZING rock towers with a primitve campground just below them. CAMP ON!

I don't have a conventional motor home, it's not a Class A. It's a class B, the size of a church van, but will all of the amenities of a large RV, except space. My current B has gotten 13.2 for nearly 40k miles we've put on it.

Not for me. I also 'tour' or use it as my 'hotel' when visiting family.
the constant use is second nature to me now.