Hi Everyone,
This is my 1st post here! Sorry for resurrecting this thread but I found it due to a google search for astronomers who RV. My Wife and I own an astronomy B&B 6 hours south of San Diego in the mountains of Baja California. Here is our website: www.bajadarkskies.com
We have been doing this (off grid so its a good start for full time boondocking!) for about 7 years now and are putting our place on the market in order to be more free to travel and see other places.
Once we sell the place we plan on getting a Fleetwood Expedition DP, which is the only one we have found that has sufficient exterior storage for all my telescopes (18" Starmaster truss dobsonian and 152mm Hydrogen alpha solar scope), we ruled out a toy hauler since its overkill in terms of storage and not so suited for full timing.
What we would like to do is explore different parks which are in dark skies and share the views through my scopes with as many people as possible, maybe working with park staff to do some volunteering. There are also a number of very worthwhile star parties such as the TSP (Texas) and Nebraska and Oregon star parties!
I have been an amateur astronomer (part of the Ottawa chapter of the Royal astronomical society of Canada) for a few decades now and think that RV'ing to different areas would be a fascinating way to share the night sky with lots of different people.
The OP asked about a good stater scope, my opinion would be to get a 10" goto dobsonian such as the Orion Skyquest, it will be very user friendly and the learning curve is not very difficult at all!
http://www.optcorp.com/orion-skyquest-xt10i-computerized-intelliscope-telescope-27184.html
Best thing would be to find your nearest astro club to see if someone would show you the ropes once you get it. Best thing is to buy a couple eyepieces at first, one being a very wide field ep so you can find your way around the night sky with greater ease, then get yourself a medium power ep to do closeups of the moon and planets.
CamperAl: you mentioned about perhaps organizing a small group of people who own scopes and RV's, definitely count me in for that!! Hey I also found an RV resort in northern Ca that specifically caters to the amateur astronomer market since they are in some of the darkest skies left in N America! They have an open field for setting up scopes along with powered concrete pads for those that need power for their imaging!
http://likelyplace.com/
Also wanted to make those who have an interest in astronomy aware of a very cool tool for finding the best dark sky sites. This link is to a website that overlays light pollution maps with google earth satellite imagery. You can zoom in and find the least light polluted areas of the SW (forget anything east of Missouri since its all horribly light polluted).
http://djlorenz.github.io/astronomy/lp2006/overlay/dark.html
There are some super dark skies west of Tonopah Nevada, that look interesting and is home to a starparty as well!
Anyway sorry for the long post but if anyone needs an astronomy question answered I would be happy to help. My specialty is high resolution imaging of the moon, planets and sun. You can see some of my pics on our website and sometimes in Sky & Telescope magazine.
hope to meet some of you on the road someday!!
cheers
Mike Wirths