Taking a large RV down a narrow, unpaved road raises the same concern as flying an airplane through a mountain pass in marginal weather: you want to be able to turn around if conditions deteriorate. Having been in both situations many times, I can testify that waiting too long to retreat is scary.

Often a back-country road starts off smooth and easy.

RVers with large units drive on narrow, unpaved roads because they want to dry camp in isolated areas close to nature, and such roads are often the only access. A truck camper is the ideal RV for getting into the back country, but its small size and capacities limit its livability, especially for those of us whose home is an RV. So balance is in order: an RV large enough for comfort, small enough for dry camping. My wife and I, who are working fulltimers, chose a 30-foot fifth wheel with a 100-gallon water tank, four batteries and an inverter, and we added a generator, solar panels and a third propane tank.

That gave us the comfort and the capacity. But we sacrificed some accessibility, for even though we have the smallest trailer we could tolerate as fulltimers, 30 feet is still a lot of bulk to haul down those narrow, unpaved roads into the boondocks. Determining whether a back-country road is suitable for our rig can involve as much guess work as research. Maps typically depict these roads as squiggly broken lines with little indication about condition. Local residents who can provide condition reports may not know if the road is RV-friendly. And the regional office of the government agency that oversees a particular boondock-access road may be closed or located miles away.

Of course, scouting the road first in the pickup unhitched is always an option, but it’s time-consuming and inconvenient. If the start of the road looks okay, we prefer to just venture onto it, like pilot and copilot poking our noses into the mountain pass, with the understanding that we’ll turn back if necessary.

That’s how we occasionally get into trouble. As so often happens, the road becomes narrower and rougher, the turns sharper, the grades steeper. Soon we throw up our hands: Uncle! But the last adequate spot to turn around is a quarter-mile behind. Do we try to back up to it, or keep going and hope for an imminent pull-out?

A few times when we proceeded, we wished we hadn't. Three years ago we were inching our way up a gravely road towards a wildlife-viewing area off Route 722 in Nevada, the pickup in first gear and four-wheel drive. When potholes and ruts began jarring the rig, we decided to abandon the effort. Rather than back down at least a half-mile, we opted to continue and use the next pull-out we saw. But there was no pull-out. On and on the truck lugged the 12,000-pound trailer. Eventually we smelled something burning. A seal in the transmission had melted, and hot fluid was draining out. We spent the next week in the town of Fallon, waiting for a new transmission to be installed.

Since then we've added a transmission-temperature gauge and switched to synthetic transmission fluid, which allows for a slightly cooler operation.

We're also more conservative these days. That occasionally means fashioning a makeshift turn-around space on the spot by moving rocks and logs and filling in depressions. Even then, getting turned sometimes takes a half-hour of frustrating, painstaking maneuvering. Once, in Arizona, we had to unhitch and reposition the truck to finish the job.

Unpaved roads can lead to beautiful settings.

So why not do it the easy way and buy a truck camper for trips that will include dry camping in the back country? Our fifth wheel is our home, our only home, with all its virtues and limitations. For us, the appeal of RVing is taking that home on the road to explore interesting, beautiful places. In our fifth wheel we might have to pass up a road that a truck camper could handle, and we might white-knuckle a road we do take, but wherever we sleep that night, it'll be in our home.

Learn more about RV travel in a fifth wheel trailer at RV Travel's Fifth Wheelin Blog.