buy the biggest you can pull, with the largest bathroom available with as many slideouts as possible with plenty of storage space. and at the beach, 2 a/c units is a must!!!

I am opposite of most, I moved from big, to medium, to pop up. My pop up has a slide out and a shower. It sleeps 7 but you would not have a lot of room for storing anything inside, if on a long trip we leave the bulk of our items in the vehicle until needed. I wouldn't go if I had to mess with anything else and when not in use my pop up stores under roof easily.

Sorry if this has been stated already (didn't read all the comments).

First of all, what will you be pulling it with? I see way too many people pulling campers that are not safe to pull with their vehicle.

If you have a vehicle big enough to safely pull a larger camper then make sure you use the load leveling hitch/distribution bars (assuming you are talking bumper pull), and maybe even an anti-sway on a larger trailer for when those pesky 18 wheelers pass you on the interstate. (Helps to eliminate the pucker factor of 10 when your trailer starts swaying around)

I would personally go for the largest camper that I can safely pull that you can find a really good deal on. You should be able to find a pretty nice used camper in the 8k or less range. I bought one that needed some work on the slideout for 3k and put 1500 in it and it is a really nice camper now that the job is done.

The one thing that I can't state loud enough, never buy one with a super slide. My slide is 20' and that is too long for a slide because there is no real good way to support the opening above the slide, and it will sag over time. I had to add a 1/4 of plate steel to mine to beef it up. I would rather have two smaller ones(14' or less) than one extra long one.

After we sold our 29', we figured if we bought another it'd be smaller. If I'm going camping with it somewhere, basically all I need is a reasonably secure place to lay my head out of the weather...anything beyond that is gravy.

After pulling an old 33' Airstream...and I mean this thing was in BAD shape, I got it to strip to the frame...I decided that our next would be an Airstream. Trailer brakes weren't working on it, but pulling, accelerating, and slowing/stopping, you couldn't tell it was back there! I've never towed any trailer that pulled as sweet as that thing did, and if it was in even just a little better shape, I'd rehab it instead of stripping it.

We have always had slide toppers installed to keep leaves,dirt,water etc. from entering the inside when rolled in.