Did your parents own an RV? If so, do you believe that’s where your love of RVing comes from? Or did they acquire their first one many years after you had moved out, perhaps to enjoy their retirement?
We know from your comments and from past surveys that many of you were introduced to camping by your parents, often on summer weekends or on family vacations. Probably more often than not, those first trips were in tents. But then your parents graduated to travel trailers, truck campers, and some even to motorhomes.
Today we want to dig a little deeper into this subject — to learn more about your parents and their RV(s).
Please leave a comment along with your poll response. Share the story of your parents’ RV and your childhood memories camping with it. We’ll print some of your stories in a future issue. Thanks, and happy camping!
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During World War II my parents lived in one while my father worked for the Quartermasters Depot in Jeffersonville In. I was born in 1946.
1955, a 46 or 48 Nash 18′? and a brand new Plymouth Plaza 2 door sedan with a flat six and three on the tree. I was 5 and the oldest of three at that time, #4 came along in 1960 and the Nash was replaced by a 1960 Nash 16′ in 64. I loved those days camping.
When I was a teenager, my parents picked up a very used tent trailer, which had to be really babied to keep the canvas intact. When we got married, we used it for our honeymoon. Later, we “inherited” it, and it lasted until we lent it out to a relative who didn’t know its quirks. It came back with the canvas irreparably torn.
We went from a tent to a Hi-Lo and then to a travel trailer.
My father researched and inspected plenty of travel trailers and brought home a 23′ Holiday Rambler. At the time it seemed so big and it probably was by the standards of that era.
My first travel trailer was a 27′ Sunline. I remember my father standing there looking at it and saying “That’s a lot of trailer to be towing.”
1967 my father had an RV. Consisted of a sink, two burner stove and an ice box. The back flipped up and supported on poles. Eventually it ended up permanently on a piece of land on a large pond in Maine.
We had an old original- I think- teardrop trailer.
My parents didn’t own an RV. What they DID own was a lot in an old tobacco farm that fronted on the Chesapeake Bay. Western Shores Estates-and 4 6lb eiderdown duck fill sleeping bags my dad brought back from the Aleutians. There was an OLD farmhouse whose only source of heat was a fireplace we would “camp out” in winter and summer.-until it burnet down. He had a a brother who camped with his family and every time I’d ask to go camping he would tell the tale of the time some campers collapsed their tent on them, saying it was too dangerous. I did some camping with my GS troop in high school and a LOT of camping during my tenure of 20 years with BSA. Bought my camper at age 66
My mother and father bought their first RV in early 1963. It was a 25′ Holiday Rambler. In 1966 they sold it and bought a 25′ Barth travel trailer. Sweet camping memories.
My parents bought a 1967 VW camper around 1970. That was also our daily driver.
pickup truck camper- I was still at home when they bought it, but barely (attending college). My parents borrowed one a couple times when I was a younger teen.
My dad built a tent trailer . All wood box on a salvaged trailer frame. I remember my mom sewing the fabric on her sewing machine. We used that when I was a child to camp for a few years, before he sold it, and bought a used Winnebago motor home. A Brave I believe it was. After a few years of that he bought a new Pace Arrow motor home. We used that every week either camping, or showing animals in 4H and a week at the fair. When us kids were grown he sold it all. Great memories.
When I was growing up in the 50’s in Chicago, I’d never even heard the term RV. Our family didn’t own a tent either. Vacations were trips waaaay up into northern Wisconsin to a fishing camp (true log cabins). I think it was on Pickerel Lake.
My Dad bought a 9′ pickup camper around 1965. We had tents before that.
Some time in the mid-50s our family of 6 camped in a little camper trailer that the front dinette turned into a bed and it had bunk beds in the rear. My parents slept in the station wagon with the seats folded down into a bed. These were some of my earliest memories.
Thank you, RV Travel. No RVing or camping in my family. DW’s family camped all her life. As kids they slept in a van or tent (boys one place and girls the other, alternating locations each night). Her dad was a scout master for more than 10 years, so lots of tent camping there. DW’s parents bought first RV (fifth wheel) about 25, 30 years ago and RV’d until the last one came apart after rolling off the Richardson Highway in Alaska while going over the Thompson Pass leaving Valdez in June 2019 (no injuries, but truck and RV were totaled).Thanks again, have a great weekend, safe travels, and safe stays!
My parents had a teardrop trailer before I was born. I was the second of three kids so they had stopped using it before I came along. They eventually bought a van camper in the mid 80’s after dad retired.
We started camping in 1995 (41) when our friends took us along. We stopped on the way home and bought a pop-up. We now have a 26′ camper. Wouldn’t go on vacation if we didn’t have it.
Dad bought his first trailer around 1955, no name that I recall, just gray tin. Next about ’58 was a Friendship, like the stepdown Scotty Sero, and finally in late 60s a Shasta with wings.
My dad bought a new Banner Trailer in 1959 when I was 6 years old. Before that, we camped in an old Army Surplus tent so I’ve been camping all my life. I introduced my wife to RVing the first year we were married so my kids grew up RVing.
My parents “lived” in a 19ft. trailer when they first got married in 1942 while building our home. The first I remember camping was sleeping in the back of a 1946 Ford woodie wagon. Well, I had the front seat and my parents and sister slept in the back with the seats down. We moved up in 1960 with a new Chevy pickup with an 8ft pickup camper. They owned a couple of class C motorhomes after I married. My wife and I purchased our first “Scotty” trailer in 1969 and have owned over 20 different RV’s since, so my boys grew up camping and all have owned their own units as well.
My parents were married in November 1945, drove to Florida pulling a camper for their Honeymoon, I was born 1950.