I’ve been RVing for most of my life. As I was going through some of my mother’s old photographs a couple of days ago I came across a few from some of our family’s campers over the years, starting when I was a pre-schooler in the early 1960’s in a canvas tent and a VW bus. My parents graduated from that to a popup camper, travel trailer and then a couple of motor homes in the late 80’s and early 90’s. We had a lot of fun camping, traveling to a lot of places my family would’ve been hard-pressed to visit any other way. When we were older Mom & Dad were kind enough to let my brothers and me borrow their RVs to take our own family trips when they weren’t camping. We all really appreciated that and that there were never any recriminations when the inevitable minor (and a couple of major) mishaps occurred.
In the late 90’s my wife and I wanted our kids to get the experience of camping and we bought our first RV, a 24-foot travel trailer that was followed by our current home on wheels, a 25-foot Class C motor home. I thought it’d be interesting to take a walk back through some memories of these RVs that I’ve known over the years.
Canvas Tent & VW Bus
I couldn’t find any photos of the bus, but remember it well. Being a rear-engine vehicle it had a shelf in the back where my brother and I would sleep as we traveled. This was before seat belts were in most cars and car seats weren’t designed to do much to prevent injuries so having a couple of loose kids in the car probably wasn’t such a big deal. We survived.
This was basic camping, no frills, but we loved it! Big trips were to the Finger Lakes region, Niagara Falls and Ausable Chasm in New York as well as a lot of weekends around New England.
Pop-up Camper & Station Wagon
In 1968 my parents decided to upgrade to a popup camper towed behind our Dodge Monaco wagon. It was about the most stripped-down version of a camper you could get – the only feature it had beyond the beds and a dinette it had from the factory was a furnace. My dad built his own pop-up kitchen with a hand pump for water from a 5-gallon water jug with a three-burner propane stove. No fridge, we used a coleman icebox that was conveniently small enough to fit in the camper with the beds pushed in. Power was through an extension cord through a gap in the canvas and it had no bathroom facilities. It was a step up from sleeping in a tent, but not luxury by any means.
We put a lot of miles on that camper, taking it from Connecticut to Florida in July the first year. The Dodge didn’t have air conditioning and I remember stopping at nearly every rest are on I-95 for sherbet coolers at Howard Johnson. The next year was another long trip to Cincinnati and back via Niagara Falls both ways. Mom and Dad had upgraded to a Pontiac Safari station wagon that year, our first car with air conditioning. Made it a lot more comfortable.
I remember a couple of times having some issues with the cable mechanism that raised and lowered the roof on the camper and Dad compensating for a broken pulley by cutting a stick to support the roof. That’s probably when I first learned about the flexibility and resourcefulness needed to successfully camp. Other things that stick in my mind is how easy it is to cool a popup without A/C. They tend to have 90% of the canvas able to open so that natural cooling is pretty easy.
22′ Travel Trailer & Suburban
In the mid-70’s came another upgrade, this one to a small (used) travel trailer, first towed by the Pontiac wagon (amazing how much those old cars could tow) and later by a Chevy Suburban. This was the first rig we had that had both electricity and plumbing. It was a big upgrade. It had a kitchen with an LP stove with an oven, a fridge that ran on gas, 120 volt AC or 12 volt DC and a “wet” bathroom – the whole bathroom was a shower. It also had air conditioning. One other thing I remember about this was that the 12 volt and 120 volt systems were separate. Each light had a 12-volt bulb and a 120V bulb with separate switches for each.
We took this on a couple of trips to Niagara and several trips to Saratoga, New York. By this time us kids were in high school and it was getting harder to travel as a family with all our school activities.
28′ Argosy Motorhome
As us kids went off to college and started our own families, Mom & Dad decided to buy a used 1978 Argosy motorhome. The Argosy was made by Airstream, which you could see in the distinctive rounded design. It was a well-built rig on a Chevy chassis with the classic Chevy 454 V8 engine. This one also had a wet bath and a generator. One interesting feature was tambour (garage style) doors on all of the upper cabinets.
My parents took several trips to Florida in it as well as a trip from Connecticut down to Texas and back through Illinois to visit friends. I only used this one once, my first time driving a motorhome when took our kids (a five year old and twin one year olds) to southern Maine. We didn’t think through the sleeping arrangements too well and the first night was pretty much sleepless with the little ones unable to adjust to sleeping on a bed instead of a crib. The next morning we figured we either needed to find a better soluton for sleeping or go home, so we went into Portland, found a Toys-R-Us and bought a portable crib/playpen that would fit on the bed. Worked like a charm.
36′ Pace Arrow Motorhome
The next rig we camped in was a 1994 Pace Arrow motorhome, Mom & Dad’s next rig. The Pace Arrow was in the middle of the Fleetwood RV lineup and was fairly nicely equipped with a full bathroom (no wet bath any more!) and a nice kitchen with a microwave. Being a bit larger it had room for a couple chairs and a couch, making it fairly comfortable for my parents’ winter stays in Florida for a couple of months.
We took it out a couple of times, once to the Gettysburg area and another trip to Lake George. It drove pretty well, but with a gasoline engine engine (about 6 mpg) I remember spending quite a bit on fuel. They later upgraded to a diesel pusher which got closer to 8 mpg, but by then we had moved to Minnesota and weren’t able to borrow that one.
24′ Coachmen Trailer & Dodge Durango
In 2000 we decided to get our own RV and purchased a 24 foot Coachmen Futura travel trailer. It had an RV (short) queen bed in a separate bedroom up front and a pair of bunks in the rear. With a dinette that folded down into a bed it was perfect for our family of five. It had a pair of 30 pound propane tanks mounted on their sides behind a panel in front, making for a fairly neat appearance.
We towed it with two different Dodge Durangos, the first a 1999 with the 5.9l V8 and the second a 2004 with the 5.7l Hemi. I learned a lot about towing with that rig about sway control as well as the value of having mirrors mounted far enough out that you can see straight down the sides of your trailer. We upgraded to an Equal-i-zer weight distributing hitch from the dealer-included one and that really took the white knuckles out of driving. Door-mounted mirrors were also a big improvement over the original clip on extensions we had originally bought. It makes a big difference when you can see down the whole side of your rig when you’re changing lanes or backing up.
We took a lot of weekend trips around Minnesota in this rig with the kids and long trips to Yellowstone and South Dakota’s Black Hills, the Grand Canyon and southern Utah as well as to Rocky Mountain National Park. We also drove it home to Connecticut to visit family a couple of times. Memorable moments include getting maybe 4 miles to the gallon going across South Dakota into a nasty headwind on the way to Yellowstone as well as my dad “helping” me back it into the gutter on his garage. Maybe that was payback for the nicks and scrapes we had put on his RVs.
25′ Forester Motorhome
As our own kids went off to college the family trips started to dwindle to the point where it didn’t make sense to keep the trailer. We sold it with the intention of getting something that better suited our current situation. Our first thought was to get a smaller fifth wheel trailer, but after looking at the prices of 3/4 ton pickups we started looking at other options. We really wanted diesel for better mileage and started to notice the Mercedes Sprinter-based Class C motorhomes on the market.
We bought a 25 foot Forester motorhome in 2016 and have loved it from the start. With just the two of us it has all the amenities we need and just enough room – and it fits into a lot of places in National Park and other campgrounds where others will not. Oh, and it gets about 13mpg (12 towing a car). It’s easy to drive too. In 2022 we bought a Buick Encore GX AWD, one of the few cars that can be flat towed without modifications beyond adding tow bar connections. Being able to bring a car along has really made our camping trips more enjoyable.
We’ve made a lot of upgrades and modifications to the motorhome including solar panels, lithium batteries and a complete overhaul of the kitchen and dining area.
We’ve taken it to many campgrounds in Minnesota as well as Yellowstone, the Black Hills, Glacier National Park, Grand Teton National Park and a couple of trips to the East Coast to visit family. We’re now planning a couple more trips for this year, an early spring trip to New Mexico and west Texas and a summer trip to Alaska.
It’s All Been Fun
I hope you’ve enjoyed my trip down memory lane. There’ve been a few scrapes and close calls over the years, but we’ve really enjoyed the years of camping and are looking forward to many more.
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