Embarking on a road trip across the United States in a recreational vehicle offers adventurers an exceptional and engaging experience of unique landscapes, cultures, and local attractions. If you have the time, you can enjoy everything from the beaches of the coastlines, the national parks of the American West, the awe-inspiring vistas of the Grand Canyon, purple mountain majesty of the Rockies, small towns and farm country in America’s heartland, and everything in between.
Embarking on a cross-country expedition is obviously a time-consuming undertaking. Options would include doing it piecework over a number of years, or devoting weeks, months, or even longer for extended trips. There are of course advantages and disadvantages either way you choose. The point is you should do it whichever way allows you to enjoy it the most. To relax and take it in, rather than put yourself under pressure to “get it done”. More likely, those of us who have reached retirement age will be more in a position to travel over extended periods of time.
Committing to a lengthy road trip presents travelers with a choice: touring in an RV or opting for more traditional hotel stays. It’s worth taking some time to compare of the benefits of each option in order to make an informed decision based on your preferences and travel objectives. If you are reading this article, I think it is safe to proceed with the expectation that you have made or are leaning toward making the decision to travel with an RV.
Touring the USA in an RV provides the opportunity to customize and amend your itinerary – as much and as often as you choose. You have the freedom and spontaneity to go wherever you want, stay as long as you want, and do whatever you want. All. The. Time!
An RV can also be used for short trips that don’t require a lot of planning. Once my wife and I made the commitment, we found that we used ours more than we thought we would. We had horses and were involved in trail riding and 4H. We took our RV to camp and ride trails with friends. Sitting by the campfire, swapping stories after a day in the saddle. Priceless memories.
One funny thing happened that I have to share with you – during one of our fireside gatherings our teenage daughter was sitting in a lawn chair, petting a cat that had come into our camp. After a few minutes, she happened to look down, and only then did she realize that the cat was in fact a skunk! Fortunately, nobody got sprayed.
You need a plan for each trip. And each trip is different.
For short trips such as our trail rides, you can get by just fine without water and sewer hookup. You can bring bottled drinking water, and your black and gray tanks should be sufficient to hold the waste until you can get to a suitable dumping station on the way home after you leave the campground. Electricity, if you need it, can be supplied by an installed or portable generator.
Other short trips, such as when we lived in Indiana and took our RV to the county fairgrounds for a week or longer, did require at least an electric hookup. Depending upon your RV, you can probably do just fine with a 30-amp hookup, but if you have a big one with two air conditioning units, you will need 50 amps, or learn to live with only one AC unit in use at a time.
Our county was big on 4H, and our daughter was showing one or more of our horses every night during fair week. Our RV was nothing short of a Godsend during fair week. It was a place to cool off, rest up, clean up, change clothes, and eat food we brought from home. In the evenings we would gather at someone’s RV to visit – Many of these people were friends that we rode trails with. I can’t imagine doing without it.
We lived about a hundred miles from where I worked in Ohio. Normally, I would go in, be gone for about a week, and then come home for a week. There were times when I was on call and had to be available on short notice. I found a campground and parked our camper there year-round, saving me the expense of a hotel. Other times I used our camper while I was going through company training that extended over a period of several weeks. When we needed the RV for a trail ride camping trip or for the 4H fair, I would haul it home, then take it back again to the year-round campground when we were done. It worked out great.
We owned, over the years, a number of RVs. Both trailers and motorhomes. I mentioned the campers we owned in Indiana. After we moved from Indiana to Florida, we kept a 42-foot bungalow trailer year-round at a campground on a lake near where my wife and I grew up in Illinois for a few years. We would drive up from Florida, pulling our boat. The camper was there, ready and waiting for us. We would stay anywhere from a month to six weeks, enjoying the lake, visiting friends and family at our leisure. Our granddaughter would always come with us (along with her dog) and she got the opportunity to know her cousins and great grandma, go to the county fair, ride on and drive the boat, fish, swim and go to Bible School with them. When it was time to go home, we winterized the RV and hauled the boat back to Florida where we could use it all winter.
A few years later, after my wife passed away, I traded the bungalow in for a motorcoach. It proved to be a nice way of traveling. My granddaughter and I – again, along with her dog – took it to Niagara Falls and from there to Buffalo, New York. When I moved to Colorado, I brought the RV with me and used it on a trip back to central Florida.
Obviously, I am sold on the convenience of RVs, because they have served me and my family as both a means of transportation and accommodation. And it is worth mentioning that if you are in your RV, you can travel with your pets without any additional hassle or restrictions that staying in a hotel might (justifiably) impose upon you.
This self-contained environment fosters a sense of home-away-from-home comfort, allowing travelers to maintain their routines and preferences while on the road.
Traveling in an RV allows you to travel in comfort. A motorhome makes it possible for passengers to have the conveniences of home while rolling down the highway. If you are the driver, you obviously need to pull over for a bathroom break or a meal. I personally have found that if I’m traveling alone, I can pull into a rest stop for a nap whenever I feel the need. But if I traveled with family, they tended to nap whenever they felt like it but it was impossible for me to nap if they were awake. So plan accordingly. If you can coordinate it so that you all sleep at the same time, that’s good. Or, if you need to keep moving down the road, take turns with another driver so one can sleep while the other drives. The main thing is don’t drive drowsy. It’s as dangerous as driving drunk, in my opinion.
Some people choose to go full-time into the RV lifestyle. Everyone does it differently, but it is not uncommon for these full-timers to establish residency in a state that does not have state income tax, such as Florida, Tennessee, or South Dakota. They make arrangements for mail to be forwarded to them as necessary and go wherever they want. It’s not unusual for them to do this in a motorcoach with another vehicle in tow. That allows them to pull into a campground, hook up the RV, and then use the other vehicle for local transportation during their stay.
For those who are full-timers, your RV is your home, and you will decide what you do and don’t bring with you, keeping in mind that your storage space is limited. For everyone else, our RV is your home away from home, meaning that what you bring along will vary from one excursion to the next. Plan to do some fishing? Bring along the gear. Want to play some golf, make room for the clubs. ATV enthusiasts will opt for the “toy haulers” – RVs that have loading ramps for storage space in the back. These storage rooms frequently have beds that are folded up and secured during transport, then dropped down if needed for extra sleeping accommodations.
Beyond the logistics, RV travel is acclaimed for its ability to foster connections and create lasting memories.
Sharing stories while roasting hot dogs or marshmallows over a campfire, connecting with family and friends at RV parks, the sense of kinship that flourishes is a defining benefit of the RV experience.