The success of owning a recreational vehicle lies in what “He”, or “She”, is named. No Name? Then ReinVent how you think of your motorized self-propelled bedroom/kitchen/dining room combination. No matter how grandiose, or grotesque, a lady she is. Read that as length, which dictates overstuffed king sized mattress, or that of a svelte queen.
If planning for a full time retirement, and are shocked by the amortization costs of purchasing a declining asset to drive south (still trying to keep up with the Joneses) to a parking lot in Southern California, or Florida, for the winter, and then back north again to visit the grandchildren, perhaps you should consider leasing a tacky 399 square foot park model used in Arizona to circumvent land-use laws enabling short-time occupancy at RV resorts.
We think of our self-contained Jedidiah as a land yacht, sailing out to explore the world. The fourth vehicle in our evolution upward from sleeping under canvas, then nylon, then pick-up camper, to a VW pop-top bus (Mariah Dove), to a 27’ foot Class A, GMC 454 powered adventure mobile (Charley Horse). Jed is a husband/wife compromise 33-footer, with a class A advantage of an open view of the road, and slideouts, for the room to live 24/7s, together.
Our on the road experience taught us to buy, used, over the Internet, as most Class A motorhomes only have 6,000 gas guzzling miles per year on the odometer. We also know that the only warranty that counts already covers a superbly engineered, long lasting engine and chassis. And that, copycat oversized boxes-with-beds have become a global warming embarrassment of planned obsolesce, so that salesmen can suggest trading-up to a washer-dryer model when your carpets get dirty.
The advantage the “industry” has over hapless consumers is the knowledge that many “big rig” RV parks located near freeways capable of handling 40+ foot motor coaches, have a ten-year old rig rule, honoring county zoning suggestions, to exclude “trailer trash.”
Buy any low-mileage look-alike machine built in 1997—even if a diesel pusher with a salesman promise of a “built-in $100,000 resale value advantage” — and you may find yourself in a game of artificially restricted, yet undeclared, game of musical chairs. Or worse, being one of those, “rednecks that are so cheap they camp in a $100,000 rig, at a Wal-Mart parking lot!”
Oh, I am sorry. I didn’t realize you already have an un-named machine in your driveway (attracting your good neighbors jealous complaints) and after driving said un-named motor vehicle home on the freeway you almost feel confident that the great breakaway dream will soon come true.
Problems. If your RV training consisted of Steve Martin demonstrating silly design flaws of a black water system, and you know the wife is not going to buy, “Well you are the one most experienced with bathrooms,” and Chevy Chase proved that free parking in front of a Loss Vegas casino, really didn’t work, take a shake-down cruise to a commercial RV park that hasn’t joined in the scarcity feeding frenzy of prices escalating far past CPI guidelines. Ask a traveler trying to exist on an Enron/SS depleted retirement how to manage black water. Most likely he will set up everything where all you have to do is pay attention. Ditto, if you had asked me where to go that was worth the time and money.
In Northern California a good place to train for driving skills needed to opt off hanging onto an elephants tail in a long line of trucks on a freeway, is just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Exit that circus and wind your way on back roads to Bodega Bay.
We dropped anchor in our land yacht in a park enlightened county commissioners use to attract what is left of the RV tourism amortized dollar. We were very willing to pay for the best use of a breakwater spit created by dredging a harbor for the benefit of wealthy yachters.
As permanent structures with an electric/water/sewer infrastructure would be at risk on these waterfront public lands, a very wise commissioners question of — why not extend the paved access road to the day use (read: voters) parking lot, to continue on with a rustic gravel road to a self-contained RV boon docking choice of “bay side, or ocean view, or both?”— was answered by us as, “thanks for the invite.”
As I have hopes of influencing readers to venture forth into the spirit of freedom of the road world, I also need to caution not to be greedy. As grandparents, unless we are home schooling special visitors for a week or two on important stuff, we usually avoid tying-up a campsite absolutely needed for working family’s weekend outings at the beach.
It was no surprise, in our world of ever changing neighbors, that at Bodega Bay we bonded with the family of a San Francisco fireman. As with so many “little people” keeping windfall oil profit funded land developers alive, and as the mom was a full-time home schooling professional, the only inflated values house they could afford on his salary was a commute of 120 miles. When gas prices shot up to make the bottom line of the Mobil-Exon-Texaco-Shell multinational monopoly more acceptable to Wall Street analysts, the only way this family unit could survive was to spend some time at the beach (not that far of a commute) as fifth-wheel trailer campers.
How am I doing with our corporate mission to, “entertain, inform, and delight?” If the written words are sounding as if imitating an absent minded professor who loves to hear himself talk with a practiced degree of sardonic wit, then click to pass me by — after the video has loaded and played. On a slow connection? Thank you for reading to the bottom of an explanation that sometimes video-photography does not need narration messing up the multimedia delight of “words are pictures / pictures are words.”
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