After traveling for years in a Forest River XLR Thunderbolt, we started looking into options that would fit our family of six on our cross country, full-time RV life adventure.
We needed a little more space and two bathrooms, so we easily fell in love with this Alliance Paradigm 395DS. This 43' fifth wheel includes two full baths, two full beds and a loft. It also includes two love seats and a four seater table. It includes plenty of storage, a pantry, a full-size refrigerator, three tvs, and did I mention storage?
The interior photos are from the day we looked at the camper and decided we needed it. 🥴
I was standing on the steps looking down into the living room/kitchen/dining room here.
Kitchen. You can see the backsplash had fallen off from the Texas heat. We never had an issue with it again after the dealership fixed it before pickup.
This pantry was functional, but we ended up taking out the shelves and putting in an IKEA kitchen cabinet system.
The boys room and bathroom. We added a bunk system in this room. I never got a photo of their bed space.
Boys bathroom.
Eliana's room in the loft.
We lost our old dog Kimber on the left in the summer of 2025. She traveled across the country with us nearly a dozen times and rode over 100,000 miles in the seat of the truck.
Ember 28mbh
Our second camper was meant for taking all of us off grid, but it's also small enough I can haul it myself. At 32', this camper has easily maneuvered into some pretty tight spots (although to some it's still too big) It's set up with solar and a Battleborn battery backup.
In writing this post I realized I don’t have a single photo of the interior. So, here’s the floor plan.
We decided on this plan because I was in grad school at the time we bought it and in the middle of a practicum. I needed to be able to close the door and jump on a zoom for a few hours. It worked pretty well with the pocket door and the Murphy bed setup.
This camper has a Truma hot water heater so we could take hot showers with solar power. It has two bunks in the back, a fold down dining table, two recliners, an outside kitchenette, a rear door so we could (and did) shove 6 mountain bikes in the back and a small, but useful pantry. You can actually fit a little more than you should in this camper.
Driving around out west we often found ourselves in the middle of nothing with no restaurants nearby. If we had 150 miles to go before food, we'd just pull over and get out the grill. We pulled over with about 7 other campers in the middle of Wyoming when a wind storm kicked up and started cooking. We drew quite the crowd.
In this photo we're in Yellowstone cooking along the road. A week later the slide failed in Idaho and stopped our NW trip. We had to drive back to CA and the camper went in the shop for almost two months. The frustration is partially why I bought a house back in Ohio (which I regret, but needed to do to help the boys get established).
Utah in a state park with wild horses. They would just come up to the camper.
Jellystone in Larkspur, CO - we ended up staying for 6 weeks because there was so much to do every day. We got hailed on a few times, but we would go back for a third time.
Although we would never recommend or buy this brand again, it was fun when it wasn’t getting repairs. We still have it and I hope to put the paper weight to use until i decide if I want a van or truck bed camper since two of the four kids won’t be traveling with me because they’ve started their own lives.
