I just paid our yearly state registration fee for our travel trailer and realized we have had it for 10 years. Ten years of use for any piece of equipment, backpacking or camping gears is my threshold for a thorough product review.

This model is no long made. On the other hand, many companies make very similar trailers, so a review might be valuable for those in the market for a new travel trailer. Especially important is the fact that most of the components used by trailer manufacturers are sourced through just a handful of vendors — often just two or three vendors.

So here are some of the things we like about our trailer and some things we do not.

Some Trailer Statistics

In ten years we have towed our Milan 25,453 miles. That doesn’t sound like much with a yearly average of 2,545 miles. But it represents just over 1,000 nights of camping. Many of our trips have been under 200 miles round trip. Our average camping stay is two weeks and some have been a full month at a single campsite. I use the term campsite because we often camp in dispersed areas and not at a developed campground. Almost 100% of the campgrounds we do stay at don’t have hook-ups nor dump stations.

This kind of camping offers one large challenge — fresh water and holding tank capacity, which leads to my Number 1 Like.

100 Gallon Fresh Water Tank Capacity

We have 100 gallons of fresh water capacity (two tanks connected together), which was a factory installed option. Joyce doesn’t really pay attention to this as it is my responsibility on trips to monitor our water needs. This much capacity allows for those long campsite stays.

Two 50 Gallon Holding Tanks

One for gray water and the other for black water. Like our fresh water capacity, this makes long camping trips possible.

Tank Level Monitor

Like most people, I just hated the factory installed tank monitor. After 9 years of fighting with this, I found a partial solution for the fresh and gray tanks — here’s the write-up:

RV Tank Monitor Solution: Mopeka Sensors

A Room With A View

Before buying our travel trailer, we had owned two tent trailers. One wonderful thing about tent trailers is a 360° view with all the windows opened. On the other hand, it can get pretty dang cold inside a tent trailer in winter.

The lack of windows in most the travel trailers we shopped was a real deal killer. We found that many trailers which came with large slide-outs had plenty of windows. Plus our Milan is much warmer inside during cold nights than a tent trailer.

Slide-Outs

This is a love/hate option. Yes, it provides the desired open feeling and a lot more living space. But the thing is heavy! Not to mention the mechanical aspect of something going wrong, as I shared in the post,

It’s Probably A Bad Day When Your RV Slide-Out Breaks

That disaster happened about 8 years ago, just two years after we bought the trailer. “Knock on wood,” it has been fine since I made the repairs.

Walk Around Bed

A “RV” Queen size bed with room to walk around it. We saw a lot of floor plans where there wasn’t open space on each side of the bed.

There are cabinets and drawers on each side of the bed too. However, it would have been nice if the manufacturer has incorporated some sort of night stand or cubby to store things that might be handy to grab at night.

To be honest, it isn’t a big deal, otherwise I would have made modifications to it.

Bathroom

We wanted a shower. The bathroom is really kinda dinky. Not a big deal. If I remember correctly, the bathrooms with a bathtub were a little larger. But we didn’t need a tub. Given that, one can use a tub as a shower only.

On the other hand, our bathroom is in the perfect location. Just in front of our bedroom and out of the way of the living area.

Aluminum Siding

For us this is huge. We live and mostly camp in a warm climate. The common laminated siding often delaminates in our climate. We don’t have this problem. I wax the trailer at least once a year, plus it is stored in a covered parking space.

Outside Storage Compartments

Overall the outside pass-through storage area, which is one long cavern, is accessible on both sides via a door. Very convenient.

On the other hand, whoever designed the trailer might not camp a lot. On the curbside of the trailer, the cargo door cannot be opened if the rear camper door is opened.

It isn’t a major deal, but sometimes a tad bit inconvenient.

We Kept Finding Loose Screws On The Floor

I guess it is a common malady in RVs. A few years ago I was talking to the owner of a top-of-the-line Airstream that they didn’t have to put up with this. She said they have the same problem.

Summary

That wraps up most of the Good and Bad of our Milan 26RLS. After ten years we are still pleased with it and have no intention to replace or upgrade it.