For the Wendlands, meeting so many RVers during their travels has been an unexpected perk of the motorhome lifestyle.
By Mike Wendland, F426141
November 2015
November 2015
One of the most interesting things about this motorhome lifestyle Jennifer and I have been part of for the past four years is the ease with which we have been making friends. In the culture at large these days, it’s not so easy to do. The world is hectic, way too fast-paced, impersonal. Society as a whole is fractured, polarized even. Sometimes it seems there is no middle ground out there. Bitterness and divisiveness are unlike anything we’ve ever seen in our nearly seven decades of life.
So, it comes as a great surprise to find that those who share the motorhome lifestyle are just the opposite. While we come from different backgrounds, religions, races, and politics, none of that seems to matter out there on the road. We’re all RVers. Fellow travelers.
What we share is so much more important than the things that could potentially divide us.
Take Carl and Bobbi Braun, two of the many friends we have met on the road. The Brauns both retired from the airline industry and were living in Hawaii. It was paradise. Their condo overlooked the Pacific. They saw surfers, whales, cruise ships. They were surrounded by beauty.
But there was a problem, Bobbi said. “We were growing old, aging,” she noted. “Just sitting.”
Carl interjected: “We were deteriorating; that’s what we were doing.”
Not that they weren’t active. They had friends there, and a nice, comfortable retired life. After settling in, though, they realized they were not seeing new things, having new experiences, learning, exploring, enjoying adventures.
So, they decided to travel, and the way to best do that was by becoming RVers, buying a Roadtrek Type B motorhome on the mainland. They decided to spend at least six months on the road.
“When we are in our RV, we are active,” Carl said. “You’re taking your home with you, and you don’t have to worry about where you are staying. There is so much to see.”
They have some rules. No agendas. No reservations most of the time. They stay off the interstates.
They’ve traveled to numerous places within the continental United States, making friends everywhere.
“We feel younger now than when we started seven years ago,” Bobbi said. “We have a network of friends coast to coast and so many memories. We know we can’t do this forever, that this is our last chapter. But it’s going to be the best yet, and we plan to continue as long as we can.”
Then, there are our friends Tim and Carol Mallon from Penetanguishene, Ontario, a couple of hours north of Toronto. The Mallons are snowbirds. Tim retired last year from his job as a school principal. And this winter, they plan to spend several months in their 2006 Roadtrek RS Adventurous, staying in an RV campground in south Texas, not far from the Gulf of Mexico.
Last year, they took their first exploratory trip as snowbirds, spending 101 nights on the road, traveling almost 10,000 miles in 19 states.
“It was a fantastic experience, and we made friends everyplace we stayed,” Tim said.
The Mallons are challenged by the fact that their Canadian dollars are now worth 30 percent less than U.S. dollars. So, their motorhoming lifestyle involves a lot of very careful planning. “I know exactly how much income I have coming in every month in my pension,” Tim explained. “So, we are always figuring how much we can spend in fuel, in camping fees, in food.”
To stretch their budget, the Mallons boondock as much as possible, choosing free places to stay off the grid — in state and national forests, on Bureau of Land Management property, and sometimes in Walmart or Cracker Barrel parking lots.
In their first year, 72 of those 101 nights were spent boondocking, unplugged.
“Our average cost for accommodations last year was $9.77 U.S. per night,” Tim said. “That is pretty darn economical. We saw and stayed in absolutely beautiful places most of the time. It can be done.”
This year their snowbirding will be different. They’ll use the snowbird campground as a base of operations to explore the West, staying put more, playing golf more, enjoying the warm weather. They’ll leave Canada after celebrating Christmas with their grown children, joining the great snowbird migration that sees tens of thousands of other RVers following similar routes.
“Snowbirding is a great lifestyle,” Tim said. “It’s affordable and full of fun.”
Two more of our motorhoming friends I want you to meet: Mark Scotney of Cambridge, England, and Ed Conway from Douglasville, Pennsylvania.
We met these two men and their families this summer at Camp Gulf, an RV resort in Destin, Florida. Both own Type A coaches, and they were parked right next to each other on the sugar-sand beach just a few yards from the turquoise-colored waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
They have been meeting like that for 10 days each year for the past 10 years.
“Our kids have grown up together,” Ed said. “Our wives are great friends. We look forward to this all year long.”
Mark pointed out that for him, it’s ironic. “I live in Great Britain, yet I’m living the American dream. I enjoy this lifestyle so much I bought a motorhome. Then I bought a home in Orlando, Florida, where we have [the motorhome] stored. We come over to the states several times a year, as often as we can, and we take so many trips in our motorhome you’d think we were Americans.”
The two families have traveled other places together over the years, but the beach at Destin is their top rendezvous site.
“It’s a great life,” Mark said. “We’re happy campers