I have always been a camper. It started when I was young with my family. We went camping quite a bit. I even camped in Boy Scouts. I was able to get my girlfriend/fiancé to go tent camping with our church college group, and even when we were first married we still went camping fairly often, but when the NAVY moved us to Virginia, there just was very little draw to go camping.
When I was little, my family owned a "Tent Trailer", that was similar to a pop up but without a hard roof. Eventually we had a couple of travel trailers and then an old motor home. We took lots of trips and weekend getaways to get out of the Phoenix heat. It wasn’t too far to go to get some elevation and a cooler outdoor temperature even if just for a couple of days. Once my wife and I moved to Virginia Beach it was just too far to drive to be able to get out of the summer heat and easier to go to the ocean to get cooled off. Same was true when we got moved to Corpus Christi. We then got moved to Jacksonville and I got my son started in Cub Scouts, and that group went camping fairly often. They would rarely leave the Jacksonville area but it was usually still getting out into nature. It was also a very Family atmosphere with a Cub Scout's whole family going camping together. I was excited to start camping again, even if it wasn’t getting out of the heat of summer, but thankfully some of these campouts were in the winter also.
Unfortunately my wife was not as thrilled. My wife was apparently not the woman she was back when we were dating or just married and wasn’t interested in camping anymore. I even had just bought a huge tent for the whole family, including the dog. Even though my son and daughter loved it, it just wasn’t for my wife. I got her to tent camp one time with help from my kids begging her to stay with them, but after that it was only camping for me and my two kids. Mom would come out for the day, but then go home to sleep. She liked the nature part of it but sleeping on the ground and not in a comfortable bed was not happening any longer. I tease her now that I was tricked by her when we were dating into thinking that she liked camping, but she will admit now that she liked getting out of the heat and away from the city, but really only put up with it cause she wanted to be around me.
My parents on the other hand, after I had joined the Navy and a couple years latter when my sister got married, decided to sell their house and buy a Fifth Wheel Trailer. There plan was to semi-retire a few years early, and start living full time in their RV while Work Camping if they wanted to supplement their retirement income. They went everywhere. They were even able to come out to Virginia Beach where we were at and work camp a whole summer and be able to see their grand kids many times that summer. I was totally jealous as I heard the stories and read their e-mails of all of the places they had been.
I started toying with that idea as a possibility for us when I retired from the Navy (hopefully with a pension). When I started throwing around the idea of retiring in an RV like my parents were doing, my wife would shoot it down pretty quickly. I kept bringing it up in a fairly joking manner several more times over the years, trying to feel her out but the results where always the same. She had been in my parents Fifth Wheel and couldn’t see how it could work for a family (our kids would only be 12 and 15 when I would retire). She also remembered my parents old Winnebago Chieftain, that she had a good time in when we used to go camping with my parents, but we still ended up sleeping in tents outside as it was also small (by today’s standards) and couldn’t possibly work for long term. I gave up on ever becoming full timers and started on at least trying to give my kids a once in a lifetime, quick trip around the country, as soon as I was retired from the Navy.
When I was a teenager, my family had done a great trip in that Winnebago, from Arizona all the way up to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, and looped it through California and several other states along the way for a one month trip that I will never forget. I was hoping to do something similar for my family. I started researching the costs involved with taking a trip from the east coast (where I was expecting to be when I retire) and going all of the way to the west coast and back in a big loop, over a two month time period. I wanted to hit Yellowstone of course, but also Carlsbad Caverns, the Grand Canyon, and Yosemite, with a few more sprinkled in to be determined later. I looked into the cost of doing it as a car trip, staying in hotels or with friends and family when possible. Although price wise this was doable it was a horrifying idea for my kids to be in a car that long and so often and to be eating out so often was adding up and kind of a sickening idea. I also really loved the camping aspect of the trip I took long ago. I then looked into the possibility of renting a Class-C motor home (the ones that look like a camper put over a van). I wasn’t as shocked by the price to rent the RV as much as I was at the fees that are applied for every mile that you go after a 50 mile limit per day. As this was going to be a traveling trip and not just a sit and camp trip, the costs were adding up quick. At least we could make our own meals and save a little that way. I then started seeing that some of those Class-C motor homes were for sale at a reasonable price once they were about seven to ten years old, and I started wondering if I could buy one and then do our trip and then sell it without loosing too much value after adding probably 10,000 miles to the thing. It looked like I was on to something and I started doing motor home research on the internet. I even found that some of the larger Class-A motor homes had started putting bunk beds in them, but those were still too new and expensive for me to consider for just a two month trip. My wife wasn’t too put off with the Class-C as she saw it at least had a place for all of us to sleep but she was not happy with the small size. I kept reminding her it was only for a couple of months.
My retirement was still about 5 years off so I figured I had a plan and I just figured I would put it on the shelf for awhile and work on it again when retirement got closer. A short time later though, when we were on a highway my wife was noticing several large Class-A motor homes (the ones that look like busses) going down the road, towing their cars behind them. We hadn’t talked about our trip idea or camping or RV’s for a few months when out of the blue she says "If we could have something like that (pointing to a huge Class-A) I would consider going for a year" (Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiight Buuuuuuuuuuuulb). I was driving and thankfully didn’t crash. Did I really just hear her say that? A Year!? Due to my research before I knew that there were some available with bunk beds but they were hard to find and more expensive. I started calculating that if we did do a trip for a year we could actually rent out our house to help offset the higher cost. Was this possibly happening? More research but now directed towards Class-A’s. Maybe by the time I was retiring and the RV’s get a little older, they might come down in price. Even after a few days I was still in shock that my wife was even entertaining the idea. I could see the floor plans on the internet and was getting excited. My wife however has a harder time visualizing from pictures and floor plans, and I wanted her to see one to really find out if she had any idea about how tight they still might seem. I didn’t want to waste a bunch of time doing more research on something that I still didn’t think she meant to say out loud.
When I was little, my family owned a "Tent Trailer", that was similar to a pop up but without a hard roof. Eventually we had a couple of travel trailers and then an old motor home. We took lots of trips and weekend getaways to get out of the Phoenix heat. It wasn’t too far to go to get some elevation and a cooler outdoor temperature even if just for a couple of days. Once my wife and I moved to Virginia Beach it was just too far to drive to be able to get out of the summer heat and easier to go to the ocean to get cooled off. Same was true when we got moved to Corpus Christi. We then got moved to Jacksonville and I got my son started in Cub Scouts, and that group went camping fairly often. They would rarely leave the Jacksonville area but it was usually still getting out into nature. It was also a very Family atmosphere with a Cub Scout's whole family going camping together. I was excited to start camping again, even if it wasn’t getting out of the heat of summer, but thankfully some of these campouts were in the winter also.
Unfortunately my wife was not as thrilled. My wife was apparently not the woman she was back when we were dating or just married and wasn’t interested in camping anymore. I even had just bought a huge tent for the whole family, including the dog. Even though my son and daughter loved it, it just wasn’t for my wife. I got her to tent camp one time with help from my kids begging her to stay with them, but after that it was only camping for me and my two kids. Mom would come out for the day, but then go home to sleep. She liked the nature part of it but sleeping on the ground and not in a comfortable bed was not happening any longer. I tease her now that I was tricked by her when we were dating into thinking that she liked camping, but she will admit now that she liked getting out of the heat and away from the city, but really only put up with it cause she wanted to be around me.
My parents on the other hand, after I had joined the Navy and a couple years latter when my sister got married, decided to sell their house and buy a Fifth Wheel Trailer. There plan was to semi-retire a few years early, and start living full time in their RV while Work Camping if they wanted to supplement their retirement income. They went everywhere. They were even able to come out to Virginia Beach where we were at and work camp a whole summer and be able to see their grand kids many times that summer. I was totally jealous as I heard the stories and read their e-mails of all of the places they had been.
I started toying with that idea as a possibility for us when I retired from the Navy (hopefully with a pension). When I started throwing around the idea of retiring in an RV like my parents were doing, my wife would shoot it down pretty quickly. I kept bringing it up in a fairly joking manner several more times over the years, trying to feel her out but the results where always the same. She had been in my parents Fifth Wheel and couldn’t see how it could work for a family (our kids would only be 12 and 15 when I would retire). She also remembered my parents old Winnebago Chieftain, that she had a good time in when we used to go camping with my parents, but we still ended up sleeping in tents outside as it was also small (by today’s standards) and couldn’t possibly work for long term. I gave up on ever becoming full timers and started on at least trying to give my kids a once in a lifetime, quick trip around the country, as soon as I was retired from the Navy.
When I was a teenager, my family had done a great trip in that Winnebago, from Arizona all the way up to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, and looped it through California and several other states along the way for a one month trip that I will never forget. I was hoping to do something similar for my family. I started researching the costs involved with taking a trip from the east coast (where I was expecting to be when I retire) and going all of the way to the west coast and back in a big loop, over a two month time period. I wanted to hit Yellowstone of course, but also Carlsbad Caverns, the Grand Canyon, and Yosemite, with a few more sprinkled in to be determined later. I looked into the cost of doing it as a car trip, staying in hotels or with friends and family when possible. Although price wise this was doable it was a horrifying idea for my kids to be in a car that long and so often and to be eating out so often was adding up and kind of a sickening idea. I also really loved the camping aspect of the trip I took long ago. I then looked into the possibility of renting a Class-C motor home (the ones that look like a camper put over a van). I wasn’t as shocked by the price to rent the RV as much as I was at the fees that are applied for every mile that you go after a 50 mile limit per day. As this was going to be a traveling trip and not just a sit and camp trip, the costs were adding up quick. At least we could make our own meals and save a little that way. I then started seeing that some of those Class-C motor homes were for sale at a reasonable price once they were about seven to ten years old, and I started wondering if I could buy one and then do our trip and then sell it without loosing too much value after adding probably 10,000 miles to the thing. It looked like I was on to something and I started doing motor home research on the internet. I even found that some of the larger Class-A motor homes had started putting bunk beds in them, but those were still too new and expensive for me to consider for just a two month trip. My wife wasn’t too put off with the Class-C as she saw it at least had a place for all of us to sleep but she was not happy with the small size. I kept reminding her it was only for a couple of months.
My retirement was still about 5 years off so I figured I had a plan and I just figured I would put it on the shelf for awhile and work on it again when retirement got closer. A short time later though, when we were on a highway my wife was noticing several large Class-A motor homes (the ones that look like busses) going down the road, towing their cars behind them. We hadn’t talked about our trip idea or camping or RV’s for a few months when out of the blue she says "If we could have something like that (pointing to a huge Class-A) I would consider going for a year" (Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiight Buuuuuuuuuuuulb). I was driving and thankfully didn’t crash. Did I really just hear her say that? A Year!? Due to my research before I knew that there were some available with bunk beds but they were hard to find and more expensive. I started calculating that if we did do a trip for a year we could actually rent out our house to help offset the higher cost. Was this possibly happening? More research but now directed towards Class-A’s. Maybe by the time I was retiring and the RV’s get a little older, they might come down in price. Even after a few days I was still in shock that my wife was even entertaining the idea. I could see the floor plans on the internet and was getting excited. My wife however has a harder time visualizing from pictures and floor plans, and I wanted her to see one to really find out if she had any idea about how tight they still might seem. I didn’t want to waste a bunch of time doing more research on something that I still didn’t think she meant to say out loud.
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