Volume 43- No. 35
By Dan A. D’Amelio
Some people call it an “RV.” Others call it a “rig.” Our grandchildren called it “a house on wheels.”
After we retired we lived in the house on wheels for five years, from 1992-1997. In the year we started out, we knew nothing about an RV. We bought one on the suggestion of a friend who had one and my wife Fanny and I thought it would be a good way to see the U.S. At one of the places where we shopped around for an RV, a salesman asked, “How well do you two get along?”
It was a disconcerting question and for a moment, I envisioned our getting a divorce only a week down the road.
As it turned out, Fanny adapted to the rig’s close-quarter environment so well that I teased her that she must have been a submariner in another life. The Paper - 760.747.7119
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August 29 2013
The RV we bought for $23,000 was a twenty-seven foot, threeyear old Fleetwood, Jamboree model, with a powerful 460 Ford engine, which got us up the steepest hills with no difficulty. In fact, our rig got us to the summit of Montana’s steep 7,000-foot Bitterroot Mountain with no difficulty (where we plummeted down a nine-and-ahalf percent grade without screaming even once.) Our house on wheels, like many RV’s, had a holding tank for sink and shower water and another tank for toilet water. (There are facilities at campgrounds for emptying the tanks.)
Our rig also had a 4,000 watt gas generator, as well as an “on board” fresh water system and automatic pump, which allowed us to live comfortably even in the middle of nowhere. It also had many of the ameni-
ties of a regular house: besides a toilet and shower, a fourburner range, an oven, microwave, refrigerator-freezer, a thermostat-controlled furnace (which along with the hot water, worked off propane) and an air conditioner—actually two air conditioners, one in the cab and the other in the coach (living quarters). Living in a coach area that’s about 20 feet long (not counting the cab and motor) and about eight feet wide would seem very confining. It wasn’t. We soon adapted to the RV’s scale; in fact, after living in an RV for a while, a regular home seemed huge. In our first weeks of RVing we stayed at privately owned campgrounds, thinking that was our only option. But then at an information center on I80 in Iowa, we learned about RV camping at state parks. And in our travels, we stayed
mostly at state parks, for two good reasons: the rates for camping at privately owned campgrounds ranged from $18 to $25; the rates at state parks averaged $14 a day. And while rates for both kinds of campgrounds included water and electricity, the state parks had attractive settings (woods and meadows) and a good deal of room between rigs.
In some states there is also RV camping available at U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ parks and recreation areas, located by dammed rivers and lakes, with clean facilities and a fee of $10-$12 a night. In our travels, we relied heavily on the publications of the American Automobile Association (AAA) that publishes a “Camp Book,” which has information about privately owned and state park RV campgrounds in every state, including amenities offered,
“On the Road Again . . .” Continued on Page 2