Just finished up a blog post by Nick about being a “camper” or an “ RV’er”. Essentially he boils it down to “
“There is a difference between campers and RVers. I define RV campers as people who have an RV of some kind, anything from a pop up tent trailer to a motor home, who spend a few weekends a year in a campground or state park, and maybe take a week or two vacation with their RV.
RVers, on the other hand, are those of us who either live in our RVs fulltime, or else spend several weeks or even months at a time traveling and living in our homes on wheels. Because to us, that’s what our RVs are, homes on wheels. Some of us travel around a lot, while others may go to a favorite RV park and stay for an extended period of time. Hopefully, we did a lot of homework before entering the RV lifestyle, and did some advance preparation before hitting the road.” You can read the rest of his blog here: campers-and-rvers .
I on the other hand must be a “tweener” – someone that has spent a lot, 60years and counting, of my time doing both. I do not remember the first 3 years of my life but I am told that we lived in a 20+ ft trailer in all the towns of NW Oklahoma while my father was a “lineman” for “the phone company”. I think that we actually started out living in hotels and rented rooms as they had a picture of me sleeping in a drawer made out to be my bed. I also have a picture of where I am maybe 2 playing out front of our trailer in some western Oklahoma town. So I started my life as an “RV’er” although back then I think we were called “transients”. Somehow I like the newer term.
As we transitioned from living on the road to living on the farm, when Dad took an installers job, we still continued the travel but then it turned into “vacation weeks”. Some of our finest memories were traveling in the “home-made” covered wagon. Dad and several friends that we traveled with had made masonite ends for the pickup beds and the bought tarps to stretch over the hoops they put in the stake holes and that was our home for those travel weeks. Of course that, over time, progressed each year to more elaborate digs. In the 60’s we built a large box for the back of the pickup that we could put in and pull out when we were ready to travel. It was larger because the family was larger now. One of us slept in the cab, two on the floor of the bed and Mom and Dad had a mattress laid across the bed at the front. During all these years I guess I was a “camper”.
We continued this style until I went away to college and during my first year of college the farm was nearly wiped clean by a tornado. This disaster causes us to revert back to “RV’er” as the only thing we had to live in was a borrowed, converted school bus. Granted it didn’t move from the farm but that was our living quarters, just like RV’ers we lived in the Bus, had meals cooked there etc until we could get a few things working int he house – first up was the bathroom for showers then the kitchen for meals but sleeping and most living, if you could call it that, was in the “BUS”. This lasted for a few months until the insurance company came up with a trailer house – about 14 by 70 for us to live in while we re-built. All this going on while we also tried to run the farm, harvest the crops, get the fields ready for the next year, etc.
It was during the next years that I really moved away from home and did very little camping as I was busy trying to prove my worth in a summer intern job that had a guarantee of employment when I graduated. I was also trying my best to graduate to get that job. I got that job and moved on and then out of Oklahoma to Colorado. Once there we were in the land of constant vacation, at least to me.
Once in Colorado we made it to our first summer with out anything more than Saturday ski trips (with packed lunch as we were still poor). But in the first summer, actually early spring we gathered enough cash to buy a tent and sleeping bags so we started “tent” camping when ever we could get away. That moved to – back of the “ramcharger” camping then I found a used 18ft camp trailer that I bought for not much and we were moving up. We camped in that trailer every weekend we could get away, which was a lot back then. So we were “campers” again.
At a critical point in this I was given a manager job (still low pay) in a town about 150 miles from where we had a house. No problem, just take the camper up there and live in it. Which I did, although with a small child my family did not live with me all the time. That worked for about 4 months until a “blue-norther” came through, blew out the pilot lights in the heat and water heater while I was away for the weekend. When we got back to the trailer and found it cold I ran around and light all the pilots and went off to work. About 2 hours later my wife comes to the office and says there is water running everywhere. That ended my “RV-er” living for a while. Shortly after that I transferred to another office that was only 50 miles away and I commuted daily to that one and we went back to “camping” after I fixed the frozen pipes and water heater.
As with all things, life changes and so do jobs and I ended up taking a job that transferred me out of Colorado to Texas and we continued the “camping life” but had to go through a progress again. From borrowed pop-ups, to back of the pickup, to having our own trailer again. We used the 24ft trailer almost as much as the old 18ft one and then it struck again. I was moved from one location to another that was about away. When you moved out of a depressed area your house will not sell and you can’t afford to just buy another one so you do what you have to. I again became and “RV’er” as I found a spot,moved the trailer to it – full hookups – and lived in it for 6 months while we waited on the house to sell. Granted the family did not move down right away but after the first of the year we moved them down to start in school at a break. From that point on it was 4 people, a dog and a cat living in the 24ft camp trailer for a little over 3 months. Fortunately, we had moved south enough that the winter was not brutal and with some prep we were cozy and secure in our very limited home.
Once the old house sold we bought a new one and went back to “camper” status for several years progressing through the trailer to a used gas motor home and now to a nice diesel pusher motor home but we are still “camper” status. The plan when we bought the pusher was that at some point we would be “extended camper” or “RV’er” in that nicer unit for our retirement. I am not sure we will ever move to “full-time” now, as we tend to like the place we have landed to live, and only want to be away for some extended trip times to see things we have not seen. With a base to call home and a place to come back to we seem to be most happy. Although being full-time would not bother me at all for the next ??? 20 years, I have to agree that family things, doing some things that you like and want to do, etc. weigh heavy on what your life-style will or should be. So our future is going to be as “TWEENER” for we will live in the RV on extended periods when we can, but will always have a spot to come back to when we need to. – WD0AJG