We have always loved to travel and have been known to book trips on a whim. After living in Colorado for 30 years, we moved to Raleigh, North Carolina partly because we hadn’t seen much of the east coast. We knew living in Raleigh would allow us to take short trips to various nearby cities by car or by plane.
So that’s exactly what we did. We took road trips to Washington D.C., Savannah, Hilton Head Island, and more. We loved having the opportunity to finally see parts of our country we had always dreamed of seeing. But it was on one of those road trips that we realized how much better traveling around the U.S. would be in an RV. And that’s when our love affair with RV life began.
We are now RVing full-time and it has become our favorite way to travel for so many reasons. We know that in the future, when we are back to stationary life and living in a house again, we will still continue to take frequent RV trips. The benefits you get with traveling in an RV are hard to beat.
Here’s why we believe RVing is the BEST way to travel the U.S.
It’s much more affordable
When we would book a trip in the past, before we began RVing, we would always be amazed at how quickly the costs would add up. Even if we drove instead of purchasing flights, we would have to pay to board our dogs, pay for hotels, eat out every meal, etc. We really could only afford long weekends which was never enough time.
Now, with our RV, we just hop in and drive somewhere and stay as long as we want. We can even find free places to park! Otherwise you can find many good RV parks for around $30/night. We cook in the RV to save money and get to bring our dogs along to avoid those boarding costs.
Let’s say you have a family of 6. Taking a flight costs you per person and would be extremely expensive, especially when you factor in parking or transportation to the airport and checking bags. Rent an RV and you have a one time fee, regardless of how many people. Even AirBnB can’t save you the same kind of money. And if you do fly, what about a rental car or the cost of Ubers and taxis? The difference in cost is astounding.
You can bring along the comforts of home.
Vacation is great, but there’s a reason people always say, “there’s no place like home”. You can pack a lot more of your belongings in an RV than a suitcase. You can over pack all you want with an RV (well, sorta, you can’t bring everything from home). But you can bring a lot more of your favorite items to make you feel more at home. Can’t stand the coffee at hotels or most breakfast restaurants? Bring that french press from home! Can’t sleep without a specific pillow or blanket…no problem. Even just renting an RV, after a few nights in it, it’s pretty amazing how cozy they become and how much they start to feel like home.
You can travel as fast or slow as you want
Typically when you travel, you’re constrained to the flight times, check in and check out times of hotels, etc. When you travel in an RV, you can leave when you want and even drive through the night to free up more day time to explore. Same goes for the return trip home. If you want to stop along your route, you can do that too. Check out a couple spots in one trip! You can tow a car or detach the trailer and be free to drive around and explore as you please. The itinerary is truly in your hands!
It allows you to be right in the action
Some of the best spots in America are our national parks. So why not stay right inside the parks in an RV? Or how about attending a festival or special out of town event? Wouldn’t it be better to stay right in the action? Many events centers have spots for RV parking, making it super convenient. Before RVing, we typically couldn’t afford the hotel rooms that were right in best parts of town. Better yet, we could NEVER afford rooms with ocean or mountain views. So we would have to stay farther away and waste our precious vacation time driving or finding transportation to get where we wanted to go. Now we can typically find an RV park or campground in all the most popular spots around the country. The views from our back window are typically amazing too!
Fido can go too!
We love traveling but we also love our dogs. RVing allows us to combine the two. We used to hate leaving our dogs behind to take a trip. They have pretty bad separation anxiety and most of our family is unable to care for them while we are gone. The cost of boarding is really high and the thought of them being in a cage for the majority of the day doesn’t sit well with us. We would spend a lot of our vacation time worrying about them.
Our dogs love RVing! There are so many pet friendly destinations to take them. Many RV parks even have on site dog parks! They’ve become much more accustomed to new places and get extra walks. Since most of the activities we enjoy while traveling are outside, they get to tag along just about everywhere.
Traveling is something that everyone wants to do more of. But there are always reasons why most people don’t do it as often as they’d like. Many of those reasons are the reasons listed above. So, we can’t recommend RVing enough. It makes traveling so much easier, more affordable, and all around more enjoyable. So, what are you waiting for? We’ll see you on the road!
If you have never traveled in an RV before, be sure to read all the the tips in the articles written by and for RVers in our Never Idle Journal. Tell us below where you want to go on your next (or maybe first) RV trip?
