Is it the People or the the Places?

Our main objection has always been to see the nooks and crannies of this beautiful country of ours. The added perk is acquiring new friendships as we travel.

For traveling full-timers it's amazing how we all seem to go in the same orbits. We've always met someone in another state or place that we've met previously somewhere else . We see them in museums, groceries and even at rest stops and these were unplanned meetings. We've even met folks in Alaska whom we didn't know were traveling there.

We also make plans to meet up with folks we've met while traveling. It's great!

Now that we've settled down once again we have 20+ former RVing friends living in our same area so we have a ready-made wonderful group of friendships.

People change over time. Some, like you, start to place greater value on people and relationships. Some folks may even go the opposite way and become less social.

Wait, there's people?!? I might have to reconsider this camping thing after almost four and a half decades because I'm an engineer. By nature, engineers don't like people! :B

For my wife and I, it's about the time together and away from our careers. We are both professionals with very demanding jobs that require long hours and high stress in a major metropolitan area. Camping is our time to leave it behind, decompress, refresh, and regain perspective. We take our "vacation home" away for 30-45 nights a year and our destinations are focused on the places because time camping is "our time."

We certainly have met many great folks, made new friends, and got friends into the camping lifestyle over the many years, and we even rally once a season. However, I do not believe we personally change the "why" we camp.

Places for us
Which in turn includes the people we have met at those places.
We are hard core kayakers/canoers and seek out good places to paddle.
Over many years in returning to those places we have made good friends with lots of others who enjoy paddling too.

jack L

Now that the kids don't camp with us much (sort of "grown out of it"), wife and I are going more and more into the woods exploring, hiking, site seeing. Prefer no hookup state and federal parks now. We'll see what happens down the road!

For us, and we're retired, it's all about seeing new places and exploring this great country. At the same time, meeting and talking to folks from all around the country is just a great bonus to a lifestyle that we have enjoyed since 1984 when we took our first popup out with our 4 & 8 year old boys!!

It was places for me for the first few years of full timing.

Then I found myself gravitating back to the same ole CG repeatedly during the summer months where I had met some very nice snowbirds that stayed there year after year.

Sometimes it's nice to go where as the song goes 'everybody knows your name'! :B

For us it's the places primarily because we never spend more than a week at any one place; and are gone most of the day in each place.

For me, it's about the enroute adventures plus the destinations. And, it's about the comfort and convenience of the mode of transportation. A large diesel pusher, "the only way to go". Yes, it's all a matter of personal opinion.

Given the number of posts on this forum complaining about other campers and their habits, and the fact that many of those same posters are advocating bad behaviour of their own Me-first isms then I would have to say:

ITS the PLACES hands down....:)