RV Campers for Every Pocketbook

Whether you're renting an RV to try it out, buying an RV or already own one, you're counting down the days until you can hit the open road in it. If you enjoy primitive camping in the "wilds" with nature as your companion, a tent or a popup camper may be your idea of heaven. Have you found a fishing hole where the trout are begging to be caught? A pickup camper or truck camper as they're called might suit you.

There truly are RV's to suit almost any lifestyle or pocketbook. Travel trailers are reasonably priced and self-contained. Self-contained means they have cooking, bathing and sleeping accommodations. A real bed, a TV and a stove and refrigerator are a must for some RVer's. Travel trailers can be bought in all lenghts and weights. The size and weight determines whether your car, with a towing package, or a small truck will be needed to pull the trailer.

Motorhomes travel under their own power. It can be a gas engine under the hood or a diesel pusher. As the name implies, a diesel engine is located in the rear of the motorhome and provides extra power. There are different classes in a motorhome. Class A motorhomes are the most expensive. They are completely self-contained with a seperate bedroom and bathroom. The most expensive are priced above one million dollars. They are luxurious homes on wheels. Class C motorhomes usually have the sleeping quarters extended over the cab. Some now have a bedroom included. Class B motorhomes are usually converted vans that are outfitted with the neccesities but on a much smaller scale. In a full size motorhome it's useful to tow a car behind for outings rather than drive the motorhome everywhere you go.

Fifth wheels are trailers with an extended overhang that has an apparatus called a pin that fits securely into a hitch mounted in the bed of a truck. The extension usually houses the bathroom and bedroom. The trucks that haul the 5th wheel must be heavy duty to withstand the load it has to pull. A tractor-trailer eighteen wheeler operates on the same principle. Fifth wheels come in all lenghts and weights, too, but are less expensive to buy because there's no engine. Once you factor in the cost of the truck though, the cost is high. When you arrive at your destination and the fifth wheel is set up with the proper supports, the truck becomes your transportation for sightseeing or shopping.

The kind of camper you buy doesn't depend solely on what you can afford. It depends on what you plan to do with it.

In the mid 1980's my husband and I bought our first RV. Looking back, I still can't believe we did it. Neither one of us had ever camped as a child. In fact, my dad always said that if you can't go first class, don't go at all and that definitely didn't include camping. So when we vacationed it was very nice. My husband's family couldn't afford vacations.

As a young woman, my first husband and I traveled quite a bit. We flew, cruised or traveled in a luxury car to our destinations. My current husband traveled with his wife and family by air or car also. So whatever possessed us to buy a motorhome? In retrospect, I think it was the pressure of a new marriage, each working fulltime jobs and running a small business. We needed downtime alone.

I confess to being the one to come up with the idea of a motorhome. Oh, I painted a rosy picture of us leaving on Friday afternoons and heading to a quiet campground not too far away. None of the hustle of airports, hotels and crowds of people. Surrounded by bucolic vistas, we'd sleep late, eat a leisurely breakfast and stroll hand in hand through nature's wonders. We'd commune with God's creation and each other and arrive home Sunday evening refreshed, replenished, renewed and ready to take on that other world of making a living. Boy, did I sell it! Boy, did he ever buy it!

First we bought a campground membership that gave us free access to their fourteen campgrounds and for a couple of dollars a night access to a multitude of other campgrounds. Then we bought our first class C motorhome. I think we should have done that the other way around, but we didn't.

I spotted the eight year old Winnebago on a used car lot while covering my sales territory by car. It was love at first sight. You see, I had totally bought into the dream I had spun for my husband.

Never buy a motorhome from a used car salesman if you don't know the first thing about them. It wasn't even an RV dealer's used lot. There they may have seen how new we were and taken the time to explain how things operate.

We were ecstatically blissful in our ignorance. In the evenings after work, we cleaned and polished until it shone inside and out. Then we packed it. Clothes, toiletries, linens, dishes, silverware, food, books and games. Yes, we packed cards and two-player games. We knew that we couldn't gaze adoringly into each others eyes for a whole weekend. We never thought about water hoses, power cords, sewer hoses and leveling blocks. A ladder to climb up to the bed over the cab would have been nice too.

Finally, the weekend arrived and we were off on our first adventure in our new (to us) motorhome. First rule: Try never to arrive at a campground after dark. That's especially true if you're a "newbie" to the world of camping. It was dark when we got there. The man who checked us in was helpful. He directed us to the campsite, wished us a good evening and then left us alone. Somehow we knew that it was important to have the rig level so the refrigerator would work properly, not to mention the comfort of not having to climb up hill from one end of the rig to the other. Second rule: Pick a spot that's as level as possible. Ours wasn't. Old Winnie didn't have levelers on it either and we had no boards or ramps to use. Oh well, one night couldn't hurt.

Lights, you know, those things that allow you to see in the dark when you turn them on. Sure, we had the 12 volt lights that work off of the vehicle's battery. They grow dim fast. We had packed a flashlight. We got the flashlight and fumbled around outside in the dark. Sure enough, part of the campground fee included electric and water if you only had the proper items to hook them up. We found a power cord in one of the compartments and a hose that had seen better days. It was better than nothing.

At last, exhausted, we prepared for bed. Hubby hoisted me up into the queen size bunk and then climbed up beside me. Head clearance? Maybe eighteen inches. No sitting up in bed and don't turn over too energetically or you will smash your body on the ceiling. We settled in. Within minutes, I had to go to the bathroom! He's off the bed, I'm down, then I'm back up and he's up beside me. Say a prayer that you can last until morning.

The next morning we're up, showered, dressed, eat and take that long-dreamed-about stroll around the campground hand in hand. Why do all the other campers have that long stretchy hose hooked up to their camper and why is it running into the hole beside their RV? If you want to know something, you have to ask.

People who camp are, for the most part, friendly and helpful. They didn't smirk or laugh out loud to our faces. I don't know what they did after we left, but it's okay because they taught us so much in a very short period of time. They walked around our motorhome, explaining as they went where to hook up the sewer hose and what all the levers are for. They discussed the advantages of a 50 amp site as opposed to 30 amps, where to change fuses if one blows and other things that were foreign to us. They got us up to speed fast and we learned quickly.

There was no sewer hose in any of the compartments. We unhooked the water and electric and headed into town to an RV dealer that carried what we needed. We probably could have spent the night in a five-star hotel for what it cost us to get up to speed, but by golly we were now honest to gosh campers. Maybe fledglings but at least beyond the complete idiot stage.

We had fun on that first trip even though it was frustrating, and we continued to have fun in our Winnie.  We'd load the old girl with our friends and head to State College, PA for a football game.  Mostly we explored on our own.  We went to the Jersey shore for some entertainment on the boardwalks in the shore towns that line the New Jersey coastline.  We even visited the Atlantic City casinos. One time we joined a group of people who were hawk watching on a spit of land next to the ocean.  After six months we concluded that we loved the lifestyle and wanted to continue doing it.