Now that you’ve been RVing a while, how do you feel about the lifestyle? Is it everything you dreamed of, or maybe even more rewarding than you ever imagined?
Or are you disappointed? Did you picture yourself camping in the wide open spaces — along the seashore, by a beautiful lake, or in the desert far from another human?
But did it turn out that you’ve spent a whole lot more time holed up in RV parks, squeezed in with dozens, even hundreds of other RVers, with the scenery pretty much reserved to admiring your neighbor’s lawn furniture?
Let’s see what RVtravel.com readers think. Please answer the poll and then leave a comment. Thanks.
It’s pretty much what I expected except for the high cost of fuel and RV campgrounds. When we were planning on retirement the costs were more affordable. But then covid happened.
Now that both of us are retired, it’s better than ever!
Depends on which aspect of Rving. First memories of trailer camping at Lake Tahoe were 64 years ago. As kids, we loved the forested campground and cold dip in the lake. Today, I think the greed among the RV manufacturers, RV parks, and fuel producers have resulted in the most negative impact on expectations. Getting out into the great outdoors hasn’t changed. We’re more of a rural, NE US forested mountain & big live oaks forested FL, kayaking lakes & calm rivers, hiking back woods trails & biking rails-to-trails RVers. Nor has enjoying sitting around campfire. Those things haven’t changed much through the decades.
I’ve been camping since I was a kid. Camping for me has definitely changed because now I have the responsibilities of making sure everything works and is safe. Also, we use to have a large group that camped together. Now we are down to five couples. Most of us moan and groan getting out of the camping chair and some of us can no longer get down on the ground to check things out under our RV’s.
It used to be that I could get up on the road and go. Just a general direction. Late in the day I’d find a campground to stay at. There was hardly any planning. I had many wonderful serendipitous experiences then. Now you have to plan out your stops days, weeks or months ahead. That’s taking a lot of the fun out of traveling in an RV.
I’ve had an RV my whole adult life, it’s my security blanket, I have to say the new technology in solar has made not finding an open campground space at the end of the day no biggie. I will keep on going down the road as long as I am able.
I expected/hoped that our Snowbird winters would enable us to get away from the cold and see parts of the US that we had never seen before.
Checks all the boxes for me, and then some! Not so much for the better half, but we are learning what works for her and what doesn’t.
I think we just expected to have fun – and we have, for almost 25 years!
Good question and I was curious about the answers. I wish the few who are disappointed wrote comments to explain their feelings. It seems the larger problem is the societal changes and not the RV. The more people who enter the lifestyle, the more we will see those problems we dislike in life. For us, we prefer campgrounds instead of boondocking. The downside for the older crowd is the money grab of campgrounds, overcrowding and lack of respect for others, which results in the loss of spontaneity. .
I knew I wanted to see the US, my husband wasn’t so sure. I asked him to just give it a year. He found a motorhome with the floorplan that he thought he could live with and we sold almost everthing (put a few things in storage) and took off. At the end of that 1st year, he said he saw and did more in that last year than he had ever dreamed of, and “let’s keep going!”, so we did for almost 7 more years. We’ve slowed way down now, but it was the best experience of my life, more than I ever expected or hoped for. Best decision we ever made.
I have been camping more than 60 of my 72 years, tent, pop-up, travel trailer, tiny camping trailer and sleeping bags on the ground. Since retiring our trips have gone from planned destinations to let’s head in this direction and go where the wind blows us. What we camp in now is a 6’ x 8’ camping trailer with stand up height and occasionally our tent. We enjoy it as much now as we ever have. Our next planned direction will be the Appalachian mountains from Georgia to wherever we end up.
We decided to try full timing for a couple years, see how it went. 18 years later still going. Have seen MANY wonderful places throughout North America and Mexico. Met MANY great people and made a lot of quality friends. Beats the heck out of sitting in a house, waiting to die. It’s been quite a ride!
Having been a tent camper my whole life, I don’t think I fully grasped the convenience a Class A represents until we bought ours.
No living out of a suitcase and totes. No shivering while collecting wood in the dark for heat and cooking. No worrying about finding a business that will let you use their rest room. No kenneling our cats, reading by lantern (after pumping it of course) and sleeping on wet pillows in the rain.
I love our RV more than I miss those “experiences”. We boondock where we would have pitched a tent (but closer to the road) and enjoy the time at those locations even more.
The logistics of movement can get overwhelming though. So many things to weigh in.
Spending more time finding a spot and having less time to enjoy it. I choose “slightly disappointed” because I love to boondock and each year the neighbors are closer, if they aren’t already in the spot I was aiming for. Trying to get a recreation.gov reservation in the 0.14 seconds before it is gone is not my idea of a fun online game.
I camped a LOT growing up. I also glamped in my motorhome in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. I can say that today the whole campground thing is not much fun anymore.
I just completed a 1 month trip from WA to AR and back. We found most of the campgrounds catered to full-time/long-term campers. On average, there were about 10%-15% of the parking spaces that were NOT full-time/long-term sites. The prices for a parking space (not a camp space) were really high. KOA was the worst with a parking space at $100 or more for a night. I’m thinking of limiting my future trips to state, county and city campgrounds. These don’t seem to have gone the way of commercial campgrounds, YET.
Been rv camping for 40 years and it’s what we expected. We pretty much travel the states from the Rockies to the west coast. We don’t stay in private rv parks so we haven’t had to deal with all the rules, regulations and price gouging that seems to be happening. City. county, state, and federal parks are still reasonable and that works for us.
27 years and 300,000 miles. Just came back from 5 week trip to INDY500, after being gone 9 weeks in Jan/Feb/Mar annual trip to Florida & visiting our recently moved son & family in Texas. We are getting close to the end of our travels by MH…would not have changed a thing about our travels. We some what expected, but I answered more rewarding as it took us places we most likely would have never visited. 300K doesn’t include 6K in Australia thru the Outback and all around. Trip of a lifetime.