Motorhomes serve as multipurpose vehicles, as the Wendlands and many other families have discovered.
By Mike Wendland, F426141
May 2013
One of the most surprising discoveries during our past year of traveling across the country is how many other uses exist for our Type B motorhome besides camping.
A few weeks back, we drove down to Georgia to visit my son and his family, and we took the motorhome to a grandson’s soccer tournament. It was one of those weekend-long events, with a series of games played over several days. Those tend to be entire family affairs. Mom and Dad, grandparents, and little brothers and sisters are packed up and are in it for the duration. Long hours between games result in lots of downtime with not much to do to help the time pass faster.
Our motorhome ended up being a kid magnet, especially when two of my grandsons told their friends that Grandpa’s motorhome had a bathroom, food, a DVD player, and a place to charge the depleted batteries of their assorted iPods, iPads, and video game players.
The kids loved it. They sprawled all over the coach, watching movies, hanging out and, naturally, eating. I made four bags of popcorn, which were consumed almost as soon as they came out of the microwave. They guzzled down pretty much a case of bottled water and devoured every snack food, cracker, and cookie that we had packed for our trip to Florida, where we were heading as soon as the tournament ended.
Our dog, Tai, loved the attention, getting pretty much nonstop pets from kids — his favorite type of human.
Several moms and dads from the team also poked their heads inside and were duly impressed by how many conveniences we had in our little motorhome. But I think what they liked most about it was they knew where their kids were.
Me? I had a ball being the unofficial weekend babysitter of every bored little brother and sister. After all, kids are my favorite type of humans, too.
When I later wrote about it on my blog, I heard from other motorhome owners who had stories about the ways they use their RVs.
At the same time I was babysitting the kids at the soccer tournament, Charles Cowles of Sylvester, Georgia, had his Type A Coachman Freelander in the parking lot of a hospital in Albany, Georgia. His wife was in the intensive care unit after suffering a minor stroke. Fortunately, she experienced no serious side effects and was discharged after a weekend of observation and treatment.
“Instead of making the 65-mile round trip from home to walk the dog, I had her in the RV,” he said. “I just had to go out to the hospital parking lot to walk her, have a snack, and have a familiar, comfortable bed.” The hospital had no problems with him temporarily staying in his coach as his wife was being treated.
I also heard from Allison Brady, a reader who had just used her Type B Roadtrek during a different time of family stress. “We used the Roadtrek last week for a hangout place at a family funeral,” she posted. “It gave Mom, age 93, a napping place between visiting hours. This was very helpful during an emotional event.”
Many RVers use their units as extra bedrooms when friends and family arrive. Janine Fields of Ridgway, Pennsylvania, said, “Ours makes a nice summer retreat for our daughter and grandsons when they visit. It gives them a little space of their own.”
Lorraine Kenter from Toledo, Ohio, says her RV provides “an extra oven when cooking for a crowd or holiday meals.” And Gabe Cyr from Olympia, Washington, found his motorhome was a welcome sanctuary. “When our daughter’s family moved into my home for a couple of months, my RV was my new bedroom and quiet place. Love them all, but I need a bit of alone time,” he said.
Peggy Lemmey Borell is a teacher in Sylvania, Ohio. She’s used her motorhome as a portable study hall where she could write lesson plans for her students without being bothered by the rest of her family. And in the summer, she says she “loved having our RV for a midday break when we took the kids to Cedar Point, America’s best roller coaster park. They had lunch, went swimming, changed, and went back to ride.”
Type B users especially seem to be major multitaskers with their motorhomes.
Jennifer and I spent a week along the Emerald Coast of Florida’s panhandle in March. The weather was beautiful but chilly, made even worse by stiff northerly winds. At Gulf Islands National Seashore just west of Fort Walton Beach, we drove our motorhome to what has to be the most beautiful stretch of beach we have ever found. Parked right next to the sugary white sand, our Roadtrek E-Trek motorhome served as a daylong wind break. We put out our beach chairs and, lounging in the lee of the motorhome, found all that sunshine without the wind made for just-right comfort.
At the same spot, we met Les and Kathy Shanteau from Erie, Michigan. They were in a Roadtrek 190 and were doing pretty much the same thing we were. But what made them particularly interesting was that the couple owns a condominium in nearby Fort Walton Beach. Yet there they were in their motorhome.
“We stay nights in the condo,” Les explained, “but use the motorhome as a base camp. We can visit any attraction, any beach, and spend the whole day. We have everything we need with us. We can prepare our own lunches, have soft drinks with us, grab extra clothes if it’s chilly, or change into something cooler if it’s warm.”
His wife, Kathy, is equally enthusiastic. “We really haven’t used our RV very much for camping,” she said. “We use it as a second vehicle that just happens to have all the conveniences of home.”
As I am finishing this column, I’m sitting in my motorhome, parked on Okaloosa Island in Florida, literally 10 feet from the 27-mile-long Choctawhatchee Bay. It’s a half-hour past sunrise and too cold yet to sit comfortably at my computer outside. There are whitecaps on the bay. My fishing pole is propped up against a low fence right outside my window, and I’ve had to stop writing a couple of times to go check the bait.
On one of those checks, I found a 14-inch sea trout on the hook.
Life is good today . . . in my mobile fishing camp.
Later this afternoon, when Jennifer has me drive to the big outlet mall in Destin, the motorhome will be used as a place to nap while she shops.
Tonight, when we pull into the Destin West RV Resort — which is so deluxe its literature notes that it offers the “glamping” rather than the “camping” experience — we’ll hunker down for the night and use it more as an RV.
I’m lovin’ this lifestyle.
You, too?
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