Hello Steve,
Greetings to you from Flagstaff! We regularly take our TM to Valley of Fire. I’ve added more detail than you may want
since our camping region likely overlaps yours.
We pull a 3124KS with a factory-towing long-bed double cab Tacoma. Everything you’ve said and heard from others here for towing matches what I would think. We’re fine power-wise on most interstates, although the big hills to Flagstaff from the west require patience.
We have driven to hike the Sierras from Flagstaff 3 times – all September. Because of our truck isn’t super-powered, and with those valley temps in Nevada that can be over 100F, we’ve always taken the mountain-front highway through Lone Pine to avoid any of those wonderful but steep highway passes through the Basin and Range. An annoying but acceptable compromise for us.
BTW, we also migrated from backpacking, car camping, large tent camping, and now with aging and minor medical issues, to the Trailmanor. Just to throw in some other things that were important for our decision and what we’ve since learned:
King bed is a big deal for us. Not climbing over one another in the night is important. It may not be for you, depends on your physical condition and bladder.
Western camping in the Trailmanor has opened a whole new season for us in Southern Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. We usually boondock, and our night temps now typically range from the mid-teens (Fahrenheit) to low 50s, accompanied by pleasant sunny hiking days in the 50s – 70s. It’s especially nice if you enjoy the low sun photography of winter or have dogs that don’t like hiking in heat. A third benefit is when we do stay at campgrounds, they are much less raucous at night in the western off-season because the cold temperatures calm things down
. I suspect it would be harder to stay warm in a more standard pop-up... although we have a little old dog that requires warmer temps at night than you may need.
Last but very important for many near-desert westerners: I hadn’t realized how amazingly easy it is to ‘winterize’ the Trailmanor compared to most true travel trailers. In Flagstaff it can drop below freezing 8 months of the year, and many of those months are prime camping season in the nearby deserts. I’d need to buy tremendous quantities of antifreeze and purchase an air compressor if I was going to winterize a true travel trailer after every trip! I’d guess that pop-ups are much easier than TTs, but for us the Trailmanor is the sweet spot in-between. There are good posts here for winterizing during and after trips. You probably won’t need it in Las Vegas, but Southern Utah is where we regularly camp well below freezing with some minor precautions described on this forum.
Best of luck in your hunt. We found our perfect TM by religiously checking the Craigslist search engine called Searchtempest and driving 7 hours for it. No regrets on the distance or purchase EXCEPT that we should have bought mirror extenders first! There is also another classified ads setup that operates in Utah that had some good listings, I can’t remember the name.
Jodi