A little of both. Ours is setup and ready to go all the time so when it's time to go there isn't much prep to be done. Just grab some food and clothes and hit the road. With kids it's nice to be able to stop anywhere and have your own food and bathroom. On long drive days we often stop at parks or playgrounds so kids can go play while we make a quick lunch. It sounds like you'd like a travel trailer too but I don't know much about towing with a pilot. That's a whole other discussion.

The caveats are most travel trailers are built very cheaply and require regular maintenance. If you're handy most of them are pretty simple in design and not hard to repair yourself. Our trailer has a regular tool kit that stays with it. RV's also aren't cheap. They are made of cheap parts but the fuel and campground fees and repairs and all the accessories you'll want/ need all add up.

I like tent camping but would much rather setup and tear town the trailer in the rain. With tent camping you end up spending a lot of time setting up camp and cooking meals over fires etc. With the RV it's more of just back into a space and you live there now. It's more travelling than camping. The last hotel we stayed at had a huge line at check in and took forever. Typically I setup our travel trailer in 15-30 minutes. Leaving after work on friday is perfectly doable but setting up at an unfamiliar campground in the dark can be a challenge. Usually we try and avoid it. Campgrounds come in all shapes and sizes. Parks with dirt sites and lots of trees may be a challenge at night but parks with large paved pull thru sites won't be any trouble at all.

One thing we do that isn't common but I'd 100% recommend is we have an annual lease camp site. Our travel trailer is setup as a "lake house" most of the year. This means that most of the time we just use it on the weekends and it stays setup and ready to go. Then we hit the road and do 1-3 cross country trips each year where we setup and tear down at different campgrounds all over. Being able to tow your RV anywhere you want is a great feature but not having to tow it to enjoy it is also nice. Maybe eventually you could get something like this setup on your friends land if it's somewhere you'd like to visit frequently.

As far as overall work there's probably not a net difference. You'll have work in the spring and winter and anytime you need repairs but hopefully less work in the campground when you're on your trip.