Married life is a compromise, sometimes two different ways of seeing the same thing.
We got the RV so that she would not have to go camping, rather we could take a house with us when we traveled in the U.S. This is a just a way of looking at it, it can be camping for you, and something else not camping for her. This worked in my case because I had taken her camping (7x7 canvas tent) for many years and thus the RV to her was not camping.
You have to do some things you want to do, some things she wants to do. Sometimes a vacation for you is not a vacation for her, particularly if you set it up so that she spends all her time taking care of your needs, as she would at home. This is one of the dark sides of RVing, when it is not done right. I've seen some wives fall right into it, playing servant in the home away from home, but not all will see it this way. Some want it to be a vacation for them too, not just the same old housekeeping thing made more difficult.
The weather is what it is. I've been rained on in Rome, Ibeza, Disney World, Alaska, Ireland and the south of France. I've been rained on many times on RV trips, even caught in severe storms, but at least I wasn't in a tent, camping, I was in a RV that I did not have to fold up wet so I could take it home to dry out on a sunnier day.
On retirement, I thought wanted to go "camping." She did not, had enough camping when we were younger. But she did want to go traveling. Thus with a RV, we could travel and she would not have to camp. I might pretend that RVing was camping. I could sit outside, build a fire, watch it burn. She could stay inside and watch TV, as if she were at home. This is about managing the point of view. Camping (pretend) for one, not camping for the other.
Part of what got her into the RV was joining a RV club, going out 3-5 days a month, 10 months of the year with a group of a dozen or more people of similar age and interests. What makes that work is that "camping" is not the purpose of the trip, rather it is something that provides a setting for, and enables, the group social activity.
To help make this work, I am the one who does the housekeeping for these trips, and the RV generally. Otherwise, what you think of as a vacation turns out not to be a vacation for her, rather just another house that she has to take care of for you.
Until she got sick, and much of our travel was for cancer treatment, we would make one or two RV road trips a year, in addition to the RV club outings. Two to four weeks was the maximum for road trips, mostly concerns with what might be going on at home, or what might be going on with our children scattered around the world.
Time had to be made also for getting together with distant family (might or might not be a RV trip) and for the travel she wanted to do, most of it outside North America, some of it best suited to port intensive cruises, some of it working better with escorted tours or just going to a city and staying there for a while (e.g. Rome and Lisbon three times each).
After retirement, before getting the RV, we got some stuff out of the way. We made three trips to England to visit the kids and grandkids, took a 21-day Mediterranean cruise, made a month long road trip down the east coast ending with house hunting in Florida (decided not to live there), and a month in China to visit old friends and travel with adopted "daughters." Then a couple weeks in Alaska to visit one of our Chinese "daughters" who was moving there, and wrapping up the first year of retirement with a cruise on the Mexican Riviera.
I think women tend to be anchored to home. Whether it was RV road trips, trips to visit family, bucket list global travel, it mostly got done with time limits. You might have an idea of just dropping everything, leaving it all behind, hitting the road until you get tired of it. Working towards retirement, starting as early as my forties, I did some of these things in my head. Just hit the road with a sleeping bag on the back of a motorcycle, as I got older rolling the bag out in the back of a minivan, traveling until I got tired of it. This often works into the RV road trip dream as we get older, but it is more often a guy thing. Your woman may be anchored to a home, and it may not be easy breaking her away from that to do a full-timer, hobo, homeless thing, different names for differing POVs.
Tom Test
Itasca Spirit 29B
