Truthfully, Is RV'in becoming less enjoyable
Need truthful opinions based on experience. My wife and I have been investigating traveling after I retire in two years. We were about ready to pull the trigger on a travel trailer than my wife go...
Forum Discussion
I agree with most of the replies, particularly TomG2, georgelesley, jfkmk, bucky, and DEB and Ed M's. We have been camping on and off for over fifty years, I know this because our youngest is 54 and we started camping as a family when she was 4 yo.
In the beginning we tent camped because we couldn't afford motels and destination resorts. For nine years we upgraded our tent and bought and set aside things that were just for camping. My DW and I loved it and slowly we fell into the habit. Then the Teens:W and BOYS:M came along and the girls wanted something other than a one inch pad on the ground and coin operated showers for summer time.
For years we dreamed:Z about RVing and owning a Class A. We spent a lot of time and money visiting the world and when I retired we finally bought an "A". I had been planning for about ten years my DW just couldn't commit to the plan. Loosing several thousand a month in expendable income had scared her and we were now on a more or less fixed income:).
I had been retired for about three years and the DW was still hanging onto the job security thing , when I gave her the only ultimatum I have ever given her. I told her I was going to buy an RV and travel so guess what, she retired, WE bought a used "A" from her cousin and we have never looked back. We never really thought about full timing and still don't but we're still on the road.:B
From 1998 until this year, we were Journey Oriented RVers. We camped in a lot of parks, we drove a lot of miles and we saw a lot of this amazing Country. As we drove around spending only one or two nights and back on the road, we saw a lot of areas that we wanted to revisit. Our comment was "Someday, I'd like to come back here and spend a few days", well guess what.
This year we stopped driving and started SEEING all those places we had wanted to go back and explore.:) Actually we started a couple of years ago when it took us 10 hours to drive 90 miles. We had our granddaughter with us and driving Hwy 1 and 101 up the CA coast to Florence OR. Between Eureka and Crescent City there is a lot to see if you get off the highway and sometimes off the pavement. It had been driven a hundred times on our trips to visit my older brother in Florence OR but we had never seen it. Now we have.
We have slowly become Destination Oriented RVers. We have been to all 49 continental states in ONE RV and Now all but one National Parks, excluding the two outside of the US. We spent a week at a County Park on the OR coast, partly to visit family and partly because we just needed to escape the big city. When our reservation ended, we asked about and got another spot in the same park for a couple more days and then did that again. We took the towed and explored, even took a 8 or 10 mile long logging road out to another beach, found an on the beach dry camp, not to our liking but neat to see, watched the folks scurrying around on Saturday and Sunday to cram as much into their week end as possible, while sat back and watched.:B
We are breaking with recent practice of before Memorial Day and after Labor Day travel and we're planning on July and August in the cooler Northern reaches of the US and maybe even Canada, spending a week or more in most places, no written itinerary and no time schedule and to add to the interest, no reservations.
Our daughters have already planned out the care and feeding of our stick and brick, everything will be turned off except for the AC which will be set on 85 or 90 degrees and the landscape watering on our normal summer setting. They are not interested in us telling them where we are going just in receiving our daily log of people and places.
The DW is no longer worried about income, kinda about outgo however, but not wanting to be moving everyday, just wants to travel leisurely where ever the roads take us. On the big blank white space on the back of the Adventurer is a new decal of mountains, trees, and water with a big compass rose and an almost quote from J.R.R. Tolkien, "NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST", we think he would approve.:B
In the beginning we tent camped because we couldn't afford motels and destination resorts. For nine years we upgraded our tent and bought and set aside things that were just for camping. My DW and I loved it and slowly we fell into the habit. Then the Teens:W and BOYS:M came along and the girls wanted something other than a one inch pad on the ground and coin operated showers for summer time.
For years we dreamed:Z about RVing and owning a Class A. We spent a lot of time and money visiting the world and when I retired we finally bought an "A". I had been planning for about ten years my DW just couldn't commit to the plan. Loosing several thousand a month in expendable income had scared her and we were now on a more or less fixed income:).
I had been retired for about three years and the DW was still hanging onto the job security thing , when I gave her the only ultimatum I have ever given her. I told her I was going to buy an RV and travel so guess what, she retired, WE bought a used "A" from her cousin and we have never looked back. We never really thought about full timing and still don't but we're still on the road.:B
From 1998 until this year, we were Journey Oriented RVers. We camped in a lot of parks, we drove a lot of miles and we saw a lot of this amazing Country. As we drove around spending only one or two nights and back on the road, we saw a lot of areas that we wanted to revisit. Our comment was "Someday, I'd like to come back here and spend a few days", well guess what.
This year we stopped driving and started SEEING all those places we had wanted to go back and explore.:) Actually we started a couple of years ago when it took us 10 hours to drive 90 miles. We had our granddaughter with us and driving Hwy 1 and 101 up the CA coast to Florence OR. Between Eureka and Crescent City there is a lot to see if you get off the highway and sometimes off the pavement. It had been driven a hundred times on our trips to visit my older brother in Florence OR but we had never seen it. Now we have.
We have slowly become Destination Oriented RVers. We have been to all 49 continental states in ONE RV and Now all but one National Parks, excluding the two outside of the US. We spent a week at a County Park on the OR coast, partly to visit family and partly because we just needed to escape the big city. When our reservation ended, we asked about and got another spot in the same park for a couple more days and then did that again. We took the towed and explored, even took a 8 or 10 mile long logging road out to another beach, found an on the beach dry camp, not to our liking but neat to see, watched the folks scurrying around on Saturday and Sunday to cram as much into their week end as possible, while sat back and watched.:B
We are breaking with recent practice of before Memorial Day and after Labor Day travel and we're planning on July and August in the cooler Northern reaches of the US and maybe even Canada, spending a week or more in most places, no written itinerary and no time schedule and to add to the interest, no reservations.
Our daughters have already planned out the care and feeding of our stick and brick, everything will be turned off except for the AC which will be set on 85 or 90 degrees and the landscape watering on our normal summer setting. They are not interested in us telling them where we are going just in receiving our daily log of people and places.
The DW is no longer worried about income, kinda about outgo however, but not wanting to be moving everyday, just wants to travel leisurely where ever the roads take us. On the big blank white space on the back of the Adventurer is a new decal of mountains, trees, and water with a big compass rose and an almost quote from J.R.R. Tolkien, "NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST", we think he would approve.:B
