Camping for the sake of camping, or a portable motel?

[vito55]

I guess I'm lucky or unlucky depending on how you look at it. But my travel trailer is my portable motel room, rather than an end in itself. I read about those that go to a local or distant campground over and over as a means of "getting away from it all". But not being a hunter or fisherman, and being very comfortable in my own home and green backyard, I don't see much appeal in camping just for the sake of camping. I don't use the travel trailer much since I essentially only use it when my wife and I are traveling to a destination, and the camper becomes our portable motel room. It allows us to eat meals of our choosing rather than in restaurants three times a day, sleep in our own bed of known quality, and to never worry about whether or not we can have our dog with us (since not every motel is pet friendly). Being in my camper means not having all of the conveniences that I have at home, including ready access to my motorcycles, workshop, big screen TV, etc, but it sure beats staying in a different motel room every night. So I am not sure if I envy those of you that rush off every weekend or so, out to some state park to spend a few days in the camper, or whether I should be just grateful that I am so comfortable and satisfied in my own home and yard that I don't need to go anywhere to enjoy days of relaxation. Just some musing on this end of the summer weekend as I get the camper ready for a long Fall road trip to visit some grown children and their families on the other side of the country.

 

[SeilerBird]

I don't think many people go camping just to sit in their camper. Most of us have things to do once we get set up in the campground. GEO caching, photography, hiking, animal watching, astronomy, and on and on.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

I don't think you are alone in your opinion, plus there are quite a few people who consider the "portable hotel" aspect to be equally as important as the "escape" capability.  That said, camping isn't just for the outdoors type and many Rvers would not even say they go "camping".  They travel to  places and see & do things, but not really camping out.  That perhaps puts them close to the portable hotel side, though.

 

[Oldgator73]

We rarely go to the same place twice. We enjoy seeing and doing different things. Our travels include staying in State and National Parks and Forests and COE CG?s. We rarely stay in private CG?s. We enjoy camping but we also take a couple of cruises a year and also visit foreign countries. I know there are folks that go to the same place year end and year out. And there are folks that have a place they spend summers at and a place where they spend their winters. It?s just whatever works for you. Different strokes for different folks.

 

[irishtom29]

With us it's a portable cabin or hotel room. We stay in campgrounds but don't do camping stuff like fishing, hiking etc. We take our ease reading outside or cycling, yeah. But no campfires, outdoor cooking and that kind of thing.

 

[BinaryBob]

I know several folks that share your opinion, who view their RV as more "utility" than recreational".
Nothing wrong with that.
I find my RV as more of a getaway. Exploring the area, then sitting under the awning with my grill and a cold beer is my happy place.

 

[Isaac-1]

As I see it as camping means different things to different people, some feel that it only counts as camping if you are out in the middle of nowhere, no facilities, no "campground", often no roads to get there. Others consider the typical state park campground with a motorhome camping.  Personally I prefer not to label it, when I was younger I did my fair share of tent camping, though the vast majority was what one might call car camping, that is set up in a campground setting usually with bathroom facilities or at least pit toilets and being within a few feet of my car, sometimes for up to a week at a time.  Now that I am older I prefer my luxuries like having my own real bed, bathroom, and air conditioning.

Also even though I have plenty of access to nature on family property, (350 acre family cattle ranch 15 miles from my house, and a 150 acre farm (cotton / soybeans) with 1,500+ ft of river front footage on a secondary navigable river 120 miles away in NE Louisiana ) I still enjoy using state / national park, COE, campgrounds, etc. while traveling, though the campground itself is rarely a destination in and of itself, at least not for more than a day or two.

 

[Patnsuzanne]

We live in the woods and can see one neighbor?s house, if you?re on the right side of our property. If we want to sit around a fire and fix s?mores with the grands, we can do it in our front yard. We?ve always said that we?re just hauling our hotel room around with us, and have even named it ?Hampton? since we no longer spend our money on Hampton Inns when we travel. Although we plan many of our travels around hiking and spending lots of time outdoors, we sure enjoy having our own bed, kitchen, food and bathroom wherever we end up!

 

[Prior member]

Used to be both, but now it is just to snow bird.
Six months in the summer in the beautiful high mountains of NC in our own cabin with 600 feet on a native and stocked trout stream, and then six months in the winter in our 40 foot travel trailer on permanent blocks in the warm sunny Florida Keys..
With that said, we do use our little pop up camper as our traveling motel room going to and from the other places

Jack L

 

[Pugapooh]

I suppose ours is a portable motel.  We have not ventured far from home,repeat customers at the beach CG.  A little cooking over the fire.  We sight see,no outdoorsy stuff yet.  Some meals are restaurants.  But we have our dog along,whether she likes it or not.  Lol. We ride around on a golf cart and walk the dog.  Watch tv.  Really,we should call it rving,not camping.

 

[Lowell]

We have used National Forest and state forest campgrounds a lot and commercial campgrounds a few times. We enjoyed both.  But my favorite camping spots was an area in the National Forest where we just pulled off a forest road between the big Ponderosa Pines and Aspens. My son's family set up a big tent next to our TT and we were away from everyone else.  We did this for several years and considered it "our spot".  Unfortunately, a huge wild fire that started 50 miles away made it into our spot and the trees are all gone now but new growth is about 5 ft high.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

Our home is surrounded by a National Forest, complete with a resident black bear and a big Barred Owl who likes to roost in our side yard, so we don't have to travel to see Nature.  Over the course of 20 years we traveled to meet other people and see their backyards, learn a bit about their lifestyle, visit their museums, sample the local cuisine, etc. Back in the day I used to try the fishing in many areas as well. For the last several years of our RV adventure, we were more the hotel suite type, pretty much parking our comfortable home in a pleasant spot and exploring the area.

 

[muskoka guy]

We do it for traveling. We like to see new things. We live in the bush at home, so camping can be done in our backyard. We cant see The Bay of Fundy, the Grand Canyon, Arizona, etc from our house, so we travel to see them. Winter makes the decision easy. Head south.

 

[Larry N.]

We've used our rigs both ways, that is, as a portable motel (actually, I think of it as a mobile apartment) and as an almost camper, almost because camping is actually (to me at least) having fewer amenities, such as with a tent or a pop-up. But it's the base for remote and not so remote trips, whether to see my son in Baltimore or visiting with framily at Quartzsite, or a lot of things in between. We've even just gone to a state park in the mountains within an hour or two drive and enjoy the high country forest. In fact we're headed for exactly that in a couple of weeks at Carter Lake, CO.

 

[UTTransplant]

Like many others, we grew up camping in tents. We started camping in tents when our children were tiny. We tent camped as recently as two years ago on a wilderness canoe trip. We eventually bought a pop up when our second son was 6 months old, and we camped in various pop ups for 20 plus years. To me, camping is living outside - cooking, sitting around a fire instead of a TV, etc. We just slept inside. As the kids started leaving home we ended up with travel trailers, but we still primarily camped. That is easy to do when your trips are mostly weekends. A few years after we retired, we realized that multi-month trips were what we wanted to do, and I just can?t ?camp? happily for more than 2 weeks or so. Now we mostly just live in our motorhome. The fact that said motorhome travels frequently to beautiful places is just an extra benefit!

 

[Oldgator73]

Years ago, when we had our 5th wheel our friends from New Zealand came to visit. They wanted to go to Washington DC and NYC. I took the RV over to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD for them to use as a base camp and then picked it up and took it to a marina in Jersey City, NJ for a base camp for NYC. Saved them a lot of money they would have had to fork over for hotels.

 

[spdracr39]

Everyone does it differently that's why rv's are so popular. We take our 5'er and now our motor home to camp on the other side of town for two weeks at a time and I go to work from there. We do it just to be something different than being at home.

 

[NY_Dutch]

We have a beautiful back (and front) yard at our upstate NY cottage with a large lake and the Adirondack Mountains just feet away from us. Our home though, is our motorhome that we use to visit other people's backyards and their scenic wonders in between visits to ours. I don't care if it's called "camping", "RV'ing", or even "glamping", we just call it "home" no matter where we are.

 

[TheBar]

Until I was 50 camping meant traveling as far as possible and seeing all the sites. I've camped in every state except in New England. I loved the journey as much as the destination.

My last 16 years before retirement I was unaware exactly when I became married to my job. Daily teleconferences even at the airport between planes and on vacation days. I traveled coast to coast or to Canada or Mexico a week or two a month. Never had the time to travel for work with the RV. At first I loved then hated staying at hotels.

A beautiful COE campground 7 miles from our house has terrible cell phone reception so work couldn't call me. It was my escape. Being there with my wife was like cheating on my job with a beautiful mistress. Now after retirement its still our special place with so many fond memories. That campground helped me divorce my job and never look back.

Now camping is all about the destination not the journey. I've traveled enough for 10 lifetimes so the destinations are closer now..

 

[jymbee]

We have a beautiful back (and front) yard at our upstate NY cottage with a large lake and the Adirondack Mountains just feet away from us. Our home though, is our motorhome that we use to visit other people's backyards and their scenic wonders in between visits to ours. I don't care if it's called "camping", "RV'ing", or even "glamping", we just call it "home" no matter where we are.

Exactly-- could not have said it better myself! Our home here in the mountains is a very popular Airbnb destination for guests when we're home, but when we leave for a few months in the winter, we simply take our home with us.