From campground hosting in state parks, to helping out at fulfillment houses, to telecommuting from the road, many RVers have successfully juggled work and travel. Here are two contributions to this month’s topic:
Are you a work camper? Describe a job you have had while staying in your motorhome.
After three years of retirement, we signed on for a traveling job with Dometic Corporation. It was to last only for a couple of years, and we thought that probably would be long enough. Dometic then offered us another opportunity: shows and rallies. We moved into the motorhome full-time in the spring of 1987, providing service at shows and rallies all over the country, including FMCA conventions, during the next 17 years. The main emphasis was on information and service. We interacted with coach owners, their manufacturers, and other suppliers and vendors. We loved meeting people, helping them with their problems, and becoming close friends with some. This is mostly what held us to the job. The RV community is 99 percent absolutely great people. After leaving the job 10 years ago, we still have close contact with our many friends all across the nation.
Being a work camper couple can be highly rewarding, but each partner must be compatible and enthusiastic for the venture.
Bill and Deanie Hendrix, F761S
Erie, Colorado
Living full-time on the go as a travel writer requires one to be diversified and nimble, so any form of travel is grist for my mill. When a New York magazine built an experimental boat and asked my late husband, Gordon, and me to leave our motorhome for three weeks and take the boat from the Great Lakes to and through Canada’s Trent-Severn Waterway, it was a dream assignment. This was a chance to check out all things camping, cultural, and culinary along the way: local restaurants and grocery stores, a Scottish festival in Ontario, the adventure of going through locks, recipe shortcuts remembered from my Girl Scout days.
The 22-foot twin-outboard boat, sewn together according to some ancient pattern was, well, interesting. We gathered basic essentials such as sleeping bags and a camp stove, falling back on our first RV experiences in a VW van.
In a motorhome, one can just pull over and set the parking brake when the going gets tough. In boating, safe harbor may lie many hours away. For work campers, such contrasts are part of the pleasure of full-timing. The job may be a joy or drudgery, but the journey is the goal.
Postscript: Leaving sheltered waters and facing the expanse of an angry lake, Gordon wisely declared the boat unready for that leg of the journey. We had our story and returned to our snug motorhome. We left just in time. The boat, we heard, came unstitched.
Janet Groene, F47166
Live Oak, Florida
Future questions:
1. Describe a clever and/or useful organizational trick you’ve used in your motorhome.
2. Do you have an “RV blooper” that you’d like to share?