After our big beautiful Ram diesel truck gave up the ghost in May 2024 right before our summer RV travels, we sold our 2022 Genesis Supreme toy hauler and quit RVing. Just like that!
It was a bitter blow to turn our backs on a lifestyle we loved, and it took a few months to adjust to the idea. After all, we’d been just weeks away from a summer of RV travel adventures when we walked away from it all!
But we’d had it with modern diesel trucks and were ecstatic to trade in our now unreliable 2016 Ram 3500 for a trusty little gas powered 2021 Toyota Tundra. It couldn’t tow a big fifth wheel trailer, but it was perfect for hauling a tent.
Above all else, we didn’t want to make an investment in an RV until we’d thought it all over for a good long time. We were willing to think it all over for as many years as necessary!
Periodically we’d notice a trailer for sale on a street corner or we’d peruse the online ads for various types of rigs, but we had no inclination to do any serious RV shopping. The tent was just fine for now…or forever.
As time went on, though, we really began to miss having a rolling weekend getaway home. We began talking about small trailers the Tundra could tow comfortably. We even took a very long look at an ad for a barely used popup tent trailer. But for some reason we didn’t pick up the phone to go see it.
And then, on the very last day of 2024 — New Year’s Eve — everything changed.
Our cute new digs.
Mark had noticed an ad in Craigslist for a small, “NEW” and “NEVER USED” pre-owned trailer.
Huh? How could a “pre-owned” trailer be “new” and “never used” ??
He contacted the seller to see if it was a scam or if it was being sold by a dealership. No, it was for real and the seller was a private party who’d towed it home from the dealership a few months ago and never used it!
In Arizona there is no sales tax levied on private sales of used vehicles, so buying from a private seller would be very advantageous.
I shrugged it all off, though. I was standing by our strategy of waiting to get back into RVing…indefinitely, if need be!
But on New Year’s Eve morning, Mark said, “Hey, we’ve got nothing going on today. Why don’t we go kick the tires on that trailer I saw in Craigslist?”
Aw heck…it was a beautiful sunny day…why not?! So, the three of us hopped into the Tundra and drove 100 miles to take a look at it.
As soon as we stepped inside, we were smitten. It was perfect!!
The funny thing is we’d had no idea what “perfect” was before we opened the door of this trailer. But we knew this trailer was it when we saw it!
Within an hour we were signing papers.
We drove home in shocked silence. We’d had no idea when we woke up that morning that we’d be buying a trailer that afternoon. But we sure were getting 2025 off to a great start!
One of our first shakedown cruises to Canyon Lake.
This trailer is a 2024 Forest River Arctic Wolf 17CB travel trailer. It’s 23’ long end-to-end and it has a single slide-out.
It has an open floor plan with a walk-around queen bed, super comfy wall hugging theater seat recliners, a small but functional kitchen and a big enough bathroom to do what ya gotta do comfortably.
It’s light and airy inside and has a pass-through basement compartment underneath.
2024 Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB. In our unit the dinette was upgraded to theater seats. More details here.
The biggest surprise, though, was that it has many features of a much larger trailer despite its small size.
It stands on two axles and has a cargo carrying capacity of nearly 2,400 lbs. Yet it’s GVWR (Gross Vehicle Weight Rating) is only about 7,000 lbs., a weight the Tundra can handle, even in the mountains (its “limit” is 12,000 lbs.). It can carry 81 gallons of fresh water, has a whopping 10 cubic foot refrigerator and a 15,000 btu air conditioner.
These large capacities are not at all typical in small and lightweight travel trailers!
Basic specs for the 2024 Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB. More details here.
But was it really “new” and “unused” ?? The seller had an interesting story.
He’d owned a huge $200,000+ motorhome outright and wanted to get the cash out of it quickly. But he’d had trouble selling it. It occurred to him that it would be a whole lot easier to unload a super cheap and small travel trailer.
He’d been a car salesman at a big name dealership for 25 years, so buying and selling vehicles was old hat for him.
He traded in the motorhome at an RV dealership for one of the smallest brand new trailers on their lot. He got his cash out of the motorhome, and he also avoided paying sales tax because his net outlay on the transaction was negative (he’d already paid sales tax on the motorhome when he bought it).
All he had to do now was sell the little trailer.
The Tundra and the Alpha Wolf 17CB make a nice and tidy little package.
We lucked out because he did all this during the holidays and he had more trouble selling the trailer than he’d expected. By the time we came along, he was so thrilled to get out from under it that he happily let it go for a song. We were equally thrilled to find such a cute little brand new trailer at a bargain basement price. Win-win!
Best of all, it’s homey and cozy but has enough space for the three of us to move around without crowding each other.
Come on inside and have a look around!
Welcome to our new digs!
When you walk in, the kitchen is on the right (passenger’s side), the bed is up front and the recliners are on the left. It’s surprisingly spacious!
It’s an open but compact layout.
The kitchen is small but it has everything we need, including an oven, which we might use if we’re out for a while and Mark gets a hankering to make muffins or banana bread!!
The microwave is a wonderfully small low energy unit, drawing just 900 watts. It is hard to find a modern RV that has a low wattage microwave like this, as most are residential size and draw 1,500 to 1,800 watts. But this little guy is perfect for warming a small plate of food which is all we’ll ever use it for.
There are only two upper cabinets for our pantry and dishware. However, there are three full-size drawers for everything from eating and cooking utensils to office supplies like pens, paper, scissors and other goodies.
There’s also a very large cabinet under the sink that can hold 9 one-gallon bottles of drinking water. We like carrying our drinking water this way and storing it on the floor of a lower cabinet.
The kitchen storage is modest but we’ve found it is plenty adequate for the three of us.
The bed is a walk-around queen. The mattress is 80 inches long but the platform under it is actually the length of a short queen (75 inches) or perhaps an inch or two longer. The mattress is firm enough that it doesn’t flex a whole lot at the foot end even though it is unsupported there.
“Walk-around” is a little bit of wishful thinking because the bedside tables (which are actually the ceiling and walls of the basement below) stick out far enough that it’s a challenge to tuck anything in along the top of the bed unless, perhaps, you’re over 6′ tall! But it’s good enough if you aren’t super fussy about how beautifully the bed is made!
There are closets on either side of the bed with hanging space for shirts and jackets. Above the head of the bed there are three doors that open to a single upper cabinet that runs the width of the trailer.
Each side of the bed has a closet and a drawer.
The cabinet above the bed runs the whole width of the trailer.
The earlier editions of this trailer a few years ago came with a window at the head of the bed. Many small trailers are built with windows like that and it really makes the interior bright and gives you a cool view of the stars while lying in bed.
However, some people—including a friend of ours—have had the nasty experience of a rock flying up and breaking the front window on their trailer when it was being towed. For our friend, the expense was covered by the trailer’s factory warranty, but the time lost to repairing their new trailer was frustrating.
The wall hugging theater seat recliners stole the show for us. If anything clinched the deal, it was when we both sat down in those chairs. They are super comfortable!!
For us, being able to relax completely in a comfortable recliner at the end of the day is really important.
We had recliners in our full-timing fifth wheel and we actually went through two different pairs of wonderful recliners during our 12 years of living in that RV. We loved being able to come home, kick back and put our feet up, and chat with each other about that day’s adventures or mess around on our laptops.
The theater seat wall hugging recliners clinched the deal.
We didn’t have recliners in any of our other rigs besides our full-timing fifth wheel — not in our popup tent trailer which we owned before full-timing, nor in our 27’ Lynx travel trailer that we used for our first year of full-timing. We didn’t have recliners in either of the rigs we used part-time after ending our full-time travels either…these were a truck camper and a fifth wheel toy hauler.
And we really really missed them in those rigs!!
It is possible to sit sideways in a dinette and put your feet up in front of you, but it’s awkward and not relaxing. We did that in the truck camper and Lynx travel trailer, but it wasn’t great.
Our toy hauler’s Euro Chairs could recline a little bit, but they weren’t anything like truly cushy recliners. Toy hauler furniture has to be easily moved, and we tried replacing those chairs with gravity chairs and thick cushions, but they were hard to lock into position so they’d stay at the right reclining angle. The arms weren’t cushioned either and the chairs were uncomfortable for sitting with a laptop in your lap.
But these wall huggers in our new trailer are absolutely fabulous.
It’s embarrassing to say, but we almost feel like we’re towing around a pair of recliners. The rest of the trailer is just icing on the cake!
We’ve sat in a lot of recliners and these are among the most comfortable!
We aren’t the only ones who love the recliners. Buddy loves them too, especially my side.
Fortunately, the bed is a perfect height for him to spread out and still be part of the scene with us near his eye level. So there’s a place for each of us to relax.
Buddy claims my side of the twin recliners.
“Mine… Don’t even think about it!”
As you can see, the kitchen is compact. However, it works better than the L-kitchen did in the big fifth wheel toy hauler. There’s a flip down top for the stove and a slotted insert for the sink that extends the counter space so we can stand side by side and not get in each other’s way.
We can maneuver side by side without crowding each other
Hmmm…Buddy wants to show you what’s in the bathroom!
“Hi Dada! Can we come in too?”
There is a big stall shower, toilet and vanity. It’s funny, not all stall showers are the same. This one has a long wide shelf for soap, shampoo, razors, etc., that’s very convenient. It also seems larger than some other stall showers.
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There are two things in the trailer that gave us pause, though. But we decided they weren’t deal breakers and thought we might actually appreciate them in the long run.
One is that gargantuan 10 cubic foot 12 volt refrigerator. Sure, plenty of RVs have full size 110 volt residential fridges that are 18 to 22 cubic feet. But we’ve always had a propane fridge that was 8 cubic feet or less, and even though one had to be replaced, they’ve worked well enough and not put any demands on our solar power system.
We like to boondock and were off grid about 98% of the time when we were full-timers. An electric fridge will require a lot of solar power to support it. So, we’ll have a much bigger solar power system than any we’ve had before, yet we have less roof space than ever before too!
The other thing we weren’t crazy about is the “instant” hot water heater. I had an “instant” hot water heater in a liveaboard sailboat in the mid-1990s, and all I can say is that we never had hot water at the kitchen sink even though it was located just two feet away.
You had to waste precious water while it ran cold until it finally heated up, and if you turned the faucet on and off while you did dishes or took a shower, it wasted even more water as it went from cold to hot every time you turned the faucet back on. Frankly, I hated that thing.
While we would have been perfectly happy with an 8 cubic foot propane refrigerator and a 6 gallon hot water heater, that’s not how this trailer or many other 2024/2025 small trailers are being built.
So, we decided to take a “wait and see” attitude…and hope we could fit enough panels on the roof to satisfy the fridge and hope that “instant” hot water systems have improved over the last 30 years!
Let’s head outside again and have a look at the exterior once more.
We got a lovely shot of the trailer at sunset and then another at sunrise!
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We feel a little Like Goldilocks and the three bears with this trailer! When she entered their house, the papa bear’s porridge was too hot, the mama’s too cold and the baby bear’s porridge just right. Then when she sat it their chairs, the papa bear’s chair was too hard, the mama bear’s was too soft but the baby bear’s chair one was just right!
Since we moved out of our full-timing fifth wheel back in 2020, we’ve tried several different types of RVs.
The truck camper turned out to be too small and cramped (among other things).
The toy hauler ended up being too big and ungainly (among other things).
But this new Alpha Wolf 17CB travel trailer may be just right.
We’ve taken it on a few shakedown cruises and have MUCH to report about how those went.
Hint: It wasn’t until the THIRD shakedown cruise that all the systems were fully operational (YIKES!). We even had to cut the second journey short and head home earlier than planned because of a catastrophic failure!! (YIKES AGAIN!!). But we’re still smiling about this trailer because it’s just right!
We’ll have more on our shakedown cruise (mis)adventures coming up!
Our second shakedown cruise was fun but had to be cut short!!
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More info about :
- Forest River Alpha Wolf Trailers in general
- Forest River Alpha Wolf 17CB trailer in particular
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