BigFox, One Year In: What I'd Do Differently

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First, What BigFox Is

BigFox is not software. She is our home. The name is a mash-up of BigFix, the endpoint management platform I have built a career on, and Arctic Fox, the trailer line Northwood Manufacturing builds in Oregon. It is a little cheesy. It makes me smile anyway.

I told the long version of how we got her in “What the hell is a BigFox?” the day we went full-time. This is the one-year look back: what worked, and what I would change if I were starting over.

The Rig That Taught Me What Not to Buy

Karen and I lived tiny for the first time between 2018 and 2019, after selling our home in Hidden Valley Lake. Then we spent two years in what we thought was our “sticks and bricks” dream house, and figured out we missed living small. We sold it in mid-2021 and moved back into our 2018 Keystone Montana High Country 385BR fifth wheel.

The Montana was a decent camper and the wrong tool. Over 40 feet long, 13.5 feet tall, four large slides, and a 16,500-pound GVWR. That size made national and state parks almost impossible to get into, and it was about as aerodynamic as a Lego brick, which is exactly as bad for fuel economy as it sounds.

How We Found Her

Our first idea was to commission a custom coach from ATC Trailers or a builder like them. Then we saw a rough price, and that idea ended. So I went looking for something different: a used bunkhouse travel trailer with the bones to be converted into what we actually needed.

I found an RVTrader ad for the one and only Northwood Arctic Fox 31D for sale in the entire lower 48, at Broadmoor RV Superstore in Pasco, Washington. We paid for an independent third-party inspection before we committed. Then, in December 2021, I made the 4,700-plus mile round trip to Washington and back in five and a half days to bring her home. It was daunting and exhausting, to say the least.

What We Changed

The factory 31D is a family bunkhouse. We are two adults, a cat, and a full-time remote job. So almost every change was about turning kid space into sleep, power, and work space:

• A king-size bed platform that doubles as storage and houses the off-grid power system: batteries from Battle Born Batteries and components from Victron Energy, ordered during a Battle Born Cyber Monday sale.
• Cabling kits from the Explorist.life store, because they break out everything you need to install an expensive, shiny, new power system correctly.
• A custom dual-desk office in the secondary slide, replacing the sofa and a bunk.
• An IT and storage center across from the office, where another bunk used to be.
• Three ways online: Peplink routing, Starlink, and T-Mobile for Business, because a full-time job does not care where you parked.

All of that happened around a spinal fusion. I had my L4/L5 fusion on September 30, 2022, recovered, and we went full-time on December 30, 2022.

What I'd Do Differently

1. Shop on length, height, and weight first. Floorplan second. The Montana had a great floorplan and the wrong dimensions, and dimensions decide where you can live. A shorter, lower rig opens doors a bigger one cannot.
2. Buy the bones, not the finished interior. Nobody sells the layout two remote workers need. A bunkhouse with slides and open floor space is what made our conversion possible at all.
3. Design power and the office before pickup day. I had the bed platform designed and the batteries ordered before I left for Washington. I would do that again every time. The rig is the easy part to shop for. The systems inside it are the part you live with.
4. Give the long drive the days it deserves. Five and a half days for 4,700 miles got her home. It also wore me down. Next time I budget more days.
5. Put water and the bathroom on the list before full-time day, not after. On the day we went full-time, the next project on the list was a partial bathroom remodel and a composting toilet, for more shower room, less water use, and longer stretches boondocking. That belongs in the first round of work, not the second.

One Year In

She is still a work in progress, same as the day I first wrote about her. The follow-up posts and pictures live under the #BigFoxTravels hashtag.

Sources & Further Reading

• Casey Cannady: “What the hell is a BigFox?” December 30, 2022, the original account of the search, the pickup trip, and the conversion.
• Northwood Manufacturing: northwoodmfg.com and the Arctic Fox 31D factory tour, the builder and the stock layout.
• Power: Battle Born Batteries, Victron Energy, and Explorist.life.
• Connectivity: Peplink, Starlink, and T-Mobile for Business.
• Dealers and builders we considered: Broadmoor RV and ATC Trailers.

Sourcing note: everything in this post comes from our own records of buying, converting, and living in the BigFox. The companies linked above are the ones we actually bought from or priced, not sponsors. Revised September 2026: this page previously carried an unrelated placeholder draft about a software project that never existed, and it has been replaced in full.

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Casey writes about economic policy, nomadic life, cybersecurity, and navigating the world as a late-diagnosed AuDHD adult. New posts drop on my professional website.