Experience can make future travels more enjoyable.
By Mike Wendland, F426141
March 2016
March 2016
This month starts our fifth year of traveling across North America in our motorhome, an adventure that now has taken us about 110,000 miles across 38 states and three Canadian provinces. It’s been quite a journey.
After all those miles, our excitement and enthusiasm for the small-motorhome lifestyle remains as high as it was when we began RVing back in March of 2012.
Every year is a learning experience. But for us, the past 12 months were like a graduate course. Looking back at the year, here are five of the most important things we learned from our travels.
1) Stuff is just stuff. Last May’s break-in and the theft of pretty much everything we had in the RV was a real shock. It happened while we were eating dinner at a restaurant in an upscale shopping center in Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. It taught us that things can be replaced and, yes, bad things can indeed happen. To be certain, it was no fun being burglarized. But insurance eventually took care of most of the loss, and everything we needed was able to be replaced.
The lesson we learned? When bad stuff happens, it’s how we react to it that determines how bad it really is. We decided not to let this incident stop our plans or steal our joy.
It didn’t.
2) Health is the most important thing we have. When Jennifer came down with a case of bacterial pneumonia in June and had to be hospitalized for three days while we were camping in the Beartooth Mountains of Montana, we learned that you can’t ignore warning signs. Her worsening cough as we traveled through the West should have prompted us to seek medical help a lot sooner.
But even in the middle of the mountains, we found first-rate health care in a great little hospital in Red Lodge, Montana. This taught us that health emergencies on the road are not cause for panic. Excellent medical care is available pretty much everywhere.
3) RVers are the most friendly, caring people you will ever find. When Jen was hospitalized, two members of our group who were boondocking in the mountains generously took Tai, our Norwegian elkhound, and spoiled him rotten so I could be with Jennifer as much as possible. When Tai died in July, we heard from literally hundreds of FMCA members and other RVers who expressed condolences to us and offered comfort.
As we’ve traveled, RVers have offered us places to stay, shower, and camp. Many have invited us to dinner. At campgrounds, we’ve had readers and podcast listeners drive out to visit us or park their units near us so they could hang out with us.
The lesson? This is so much more than a community. It’s a family, and wherever you travel, you have family.
4) When things break, they can be fixed. Mobile RV repair services operate all across the United States, and RV service shops can be found in many places.
When a fitting on our motorhome’s fresh-water tank fill broke loose while we were in Florida in August, a mobile RV service technician was on scene 15 minutes after I called. Within 10 minutes, he had installed a new part.
In September, we were in Pennsylvania when the Mercedes-Benz engine in our motorhome blew a gasket. The emergency towing service we use had a truck out to our location in an hour. They towed the motorhome to a town 35 miles up the road, did the engine repair for us (under warranty), and came back to where we were staying to pick us up and take us to the dealership to pick up the coach.
When some teenagers tossing a football missed and shattered the side window on the motorhome while we were traveling in Georgia in October, Roadtrek sent replacement glass to a local glass dealer, and the window soon was repaired.
What did we learn from these setbacks? They were really just inconveniences, and help is a phone call away.
5) The RV truly is our home. We’ve long noticed how well we sleep in our motorhome. This past July, while on a vacation trip with two of our three adult children and their families in Maine, we actually chose to sleep in the coach rather than in the bedroom we had available to us in the 125-year-old house we had rented on the seashore.
In the motorhome, we had our own bed. Our own private en-suite bathroom. All our clothes were there. It was private and familiar and more comfortable than a strange bed in a strange house.
During the day, we enjoyed the beach, hung out on the porch, and played games in the parlor of the big, rambling house with the family. But when it came time to turn in, our coach was right there in the driveway. That old saying really is true: Home is indeed where we park it.
And now, as you read this, the first hints of springtime will be prompting us to think about the start of the 2016 travel season. As we do most every year, we’ll make a trip west and south, and then east and north.
The lessons we learned this past year will result in less stress and give us more security, and they have us excited about the people and places we’ll come to know this year.
It really is a wonderful life, isn’t it?