What I Hate About Traveling in an RV
Let me make this clear, we like traveling in our RV. It not the fastest way to go, but you bring your hotel room with you. The bed is always comfortable, the kitchen is right down the hall so you can browse through the refrigerator in your underwear and like home, you have a choice – cook or go out.
You don’t pack for an RV trip, you load it up and go. Suitcases aren’t needed. And, you travel on your own schedule. You don’t have to get to the airport an hour or so before the flight, wait in security and then get jammed into a seat with 150 or more strangers before you reverse the process, pick-up a rental car and check into a hotel..
There are disadvantages. It doesn’t float so you can’t take it across the ocean. Another is that you plod along at 60 – 65 mph. We flat tow a car, so sixty-five is fastest we can go. Our thirty-six foot long Winnebago Class A RV is too big to fit in our driveway, so it has to be stored. Ours is in a facility about three miles away. Last, its like a house or a boat, there’s always something to do on it.
There are two things we really don’t like. One are the idiot drivers in cars who think nothing of cutting an RV or truck off at merges or while we are trying to pass a slower car or truck. Slamming on the brakes in a 30,000 pound vehicle only starts it slowing. It takes awhile for it to stop and swerving isn’t in the cards. Twice on the way home yesterday, we were cut off where construction had the road moving from two lanes to one. A blast from our air horn expresses our frustration.
Number two is unpacking the RV at the end of a trip. We’ve learned how to minimize the clothes we bring, but it still has to be brought into the house, along with the human and dog food, meds, toiletries and other incidentals that one can take when one travels in one’s second home. Once inside, it all has to be put away.
It is like moving! Oh, and the RV then has to be cleaned before it is put away for the next trip. Ours, with the slides out, is a 440 square foot apartment. It doesn’t take long to vacuum, Swiffer the floors, but it is something that has to be done. A friend of mine told me that the end of trip process is why they now live in their RV full time! We’ve thought about it too!
Besides that, it is a very relaxing way to travel and not that expensive. Next trip is already planned and we’ll be gone for a month. More in a later post.
Marc Liebman
July 2018