RV Generations – Seeding a Legacy
One of the great things about RVing is that it is a family-friendly way to explore new places while bringing along the youngest adventurers in your life. As you’ll read in the following memoirs, the experiences you share with children have the capacity to foster life-long loves of travel, nature, learning, and so much more.
RVing Memories of Argentina
My story begins as a little girl growing up and traveling with my family in Argentina. I have fond memories of summer road trips in a light blue 1974 Argentine Ford Falcon that also matched the stripes on what would now be a beautiful vintage, tow-behind camper trailer. I remember beautiful landscapes, small villages and close call adventures. I recall traveling through narrow dirt roads in the mountains and in an instant my mom pulling me out of the car while she helped my dad keep the trailer from falling off a cliff. What I didn’t know then was that all these beautiful and exciting moments would add to a feeling that I would need to recreate later.
I have faint memories of dew filled chilly mornings and owl sounds to start the day. My parents would drink mate while me and my brother would drink chocolate milk and cookies. Now I love going through old photos and try to imagine what some of those trips must have been like back in those days. From the undeveloped roads we took, to the rustic campgrounds where we stayed and how it was enough finding new remote places using only paper maps back then.
Those memories made me who I am now and are the main reason why I could never shake off that wanderlust for travel and adventure. I am so happy and grateful to say that I get to relive what was planted in me many years ago as a child. And now able to share with my husband and adventure partner, Denny Winkowski, together we have chosen and built a life a life on the road that we get to learn from and enjoy (and together we are known as RV Outlawz).
We took off November of 2013, and years later there is no looking back, only what new adventures are lying ahead. We try to keep a balance in between work and play. We also try to enjoy nature and new places as much as we do friendships. I couldn’t imagine a better lifestyle or a better adventure partner and also happy to know where these ideas and inspiration began.
Veronica Ibañes #124732
Memories of Our 1968 Shasta Camper
I started camping in a 1968 Shasta long before my memories were stored for long-term retrieval. I was born in February 1970, adopted in April and began RVing by June. The love of this lifestyle started with my father. He was introduced to camping as a Boy Scout. Quickly, he discovered that camping increased his opportunities to fish, so he began tent camping with friends as a young teen. They’d spend weekends at a pond, sleeping by the banks and fishing most of the night. He continued to find joy in camping and introduced my mother to it when they met and later married.
Before I was born, my parents and big brother, Dan, tent camped. Sometimes they even brought Momma’s parents along. When they started thinking of growing to a family of four, they bought the Shasta. Daddy made a crib for me that kept me well contained in the bunk bed above the couch-bed where he and Momma slept. From the time I was born until high school, that Shasta was part of me. We camped at a local state park on long weekends and then spent the same week each summer in Myrtle Beach. My parents and I loved meeting new people from all over the U.S. and Canada.
We’d reunite with some of the same families each year and stay in touch as pen pals. Between outings, that Shasta was parked but still in use. When the weather allowed, I spent hours and hours playing house and imagining I lived in it. I suppose it really came as no surprise when I told my folks I was going to be a full-time RVer. My parents planted this seed when I was still an infant.
Porter Palmer #127874
Grandma's Travel Logs
In 1943, my grandmother and a few of my cousins made a travel-trailer trip from Iowa to Washington State and back. She kept an entertaining journal and logged information regarding gas/tire/food rationing, etc. When I added up the “incidents” from my grandmother’s big trip, the score was:
- Radiator trouble—13+
- Tires/blowouts—too many to count
- Carburetor adjustments—2
- Fuel pump—4
- Fan belt—1
- Rattlesnakes—2
Over the years, she took more trailer trips with me and my parents. Even during her final years, she lived in a park model on my uncle’s property. My parents always had an RV. After their retirement, they spent over 20 years as part-time and full-time RVers traveling through Mexico and the West. At times they made money as work-campers until they hung up the keys.
My Hawaii-raised husband, Michael, had never traveled in an RV, but in 2002 we took our “trip around America” while in our 40s, still maintaining a home base. Afterwards, Michael worked as a traveling registered nurse specializing in wound care and I picked up odd jobs along the way.
When headed to faraway places like Alaska, we stayed in an apartment if necessary. Although our RV travels are much different from those of my parents and grandmother, our longing for adventure and desire for travel has remained the same.
If I could add to my grandmother’s log list, this is what I’d add:
- Grandma’s journal—priceless!
Janet M. Sugino #94261
Do you have a beloved memory of RVing with your family? Tell us about it in the comments below.
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My family moved from New Jersey to California in 1959 when I was 6 years old and my sister was 4. After we were settled in our new home near San Francisco, my parents decided we should see all of the sights California and the western US had to offer.
First we started taking tent camping trips on the weekends to places like Lake Tahoe, Big Sur, Yosemite, etc. My dad only had two weeks vacation a year and we’d rent a 15 ft. Aristocrat trailer for the school Easter Week holiday and take longer trips to the rest of the west. He’d take another week off in the fall and we’d rent another trailer and do the same over the Thanksgiving school break.
After a few years as my dad accumulated seniority his vacation time increased to three weeks a year and my parents decided to purchase a new 16′ Aristocrat Main Liner trailer with an actual toilet. No shower or hot water heater, but at least it eliminated the midnight runs to the campground facilities.
When I was old enough to get a drivers license in the late 1960s my first RV was a VW Bug. I modified the passenger seat so it would lay flat and make a bed along with the back seat, loaded up a Coleman stove and ice chest and used it as a camper. That lead to a series of buy’em cheap and fix’em as they broke RVs that gradually increased in quality over the years.