It’s no secret that RVs are flying off dealers’ lots and manufacturers are hard-pressed to keep up with demand. This also means that more people are taking to the road in RVs. In this article in the Las Vegas Sun, Tom Gorman interviews RVers of all sorts that have done just that, and why they do it.
The recreational vehicle industry is flourishing, thanks to folks like Tom Adams, a retired Air Force pilot flying for Southwest Airlines out of Las Vegas, and Elizabeth Fuentes, a construction project coordinator for the city of Henderson. Their contrasting styles are emblematic of the evolving world of RVing.
Adams and his wife, Yong, are in their 50s and cherish their 45-foot-long motorhome. It has slide-out walls to accommodate a king-size bed, two bathrooms, leather couches, big-screen TVs, a ducted air-conditioning system, a well-equipped kitchen, washer and dryer, temperature-controlled storage bays and a windshield that’s more like a 4-foot-by-8-foot picture window.
Fuentes, 40 and single, shuns such extravagance. She wants to take advantage of her four-day workweek by traveling around the Southwest in an RV the size of a van that can take her deeper into forests on narrow dirt roads. But she still wants some niceties to provide a glamping (that’s glamour camping, for the uninitiated) experience “with everything I need, including a TV and a clean bathroom.”
Across that spectrum, the RV industry is enjoying an unprecedented eighth consecutive year of growth. Who are these RVers? They love the beauty and solace of being outdoors, abiding by no one’s schedule but their own, favoring two-lane highways over interstates and country stores over suburban malls. They relish wildlife and visiting places of historical prominence, embrace the nighttime quiet and find that friendships with total strangers can be forged over a campfire.
Read more RVers’ stories and how you can also do it here.
I still say most of these RV’s will end up sitting in storage lots with their usage slowly declining from inconvenience.