Why By a Motorhome or RV?

[brin]

LOL ~ Too Funny !

 

[Dr_Zinj]

KOAs have two nice advantages, they have hot showers, and they're cheaper than most motels.
Other than that, I'd rather avoid campgrounds entirely.
Either backpack in the rough country away from everything, or stay in motels along the way.
By the way, I've never picked up bedbugs from the back country. Unfortunately, can't say that about all the motels I've been in.

 

[CliffordK]

I don't own one, and may not ever own one. If I'm going "camping", I'd be happiest hiking a few miles from the road and finding a nice quiet place to settle down, although I have on occasion raised a tent in a campground.

I must admit that I have slept in my car at rest areas more than once, and it is always uncomfortable. But $10K+ worth of uncomfortable?

Mom, however, pulls her horse trailer with a very nice small camper-van type of motor home. Big enough to have the bathroom/shower, but small enough to be reasonably economical and easy to deal with. She can either go on day trips, or on an overnight camping trip, and always have a nice warm shower when she gets out of the woods.

Pure economics? I don't know. It is far better than a time-share which forces a person to always vacation in the same place. And, if one is pulling the horses, one has to have a vehicle to pull them.

 

[caps]

Why buy an RV?
Because we enjoy the traveling and hate noisy uncomfortable hotels.
We have a Roadtrek 190. It is a class B and is built on a Chevy Express 3500 van chassis and gets 18 miles per gallon (driving across Oklahoma and North Dakota where it is flat, we got 21 MPG). It fits in a regular parking place and is comfortable to drive. It has a queen size bed, Toilet, Shower, Gas stove, Gas Heater, microwave oven, TV, stereo, heat pump/air conditioner, 2.4KW generator, water tanks, holding tank, table, cabinets, sink, inverter and other stuff. It is a perfect fit for two people who are not so big but would be really cramped for 3 or more. We have been on trips lasting up to three weeks and have crossed the country several times and have driven to all states (less Hawaii and Alaska). Yes, it was a ton of money and yes it does require maintenance but sleeping in your own bed and making your own meals in your own kitchen and having your own bathroom with you is priceless. only downside is that after three weeks or so of being in the same vehicle together we start to get on each other's nerves.....

 

[MotorSeven]

Why buy an RV?
Because we enjoy the traveling and hate noisy uncomfortable hotels.
We have a Roadtrek 190. It is a class B and is built on a Chevy Express 3500 van chassis and gets 18 miles per gallon (driving across Oklahoma and North Dakota where it is flat, we got 21 MPG). It fits in a regular parking place and is comfortable to drive. It has a queen size bed, Toilet, Shower, Gas stove, Gas Heater, microwave oven, TV, stereo, heat pump/air conditioner, 2.4KW generator, water tanks, holding tank, table, cabinets, sink, inverter and other stuff. It is a perfect fit for two people who are not so big but would be really cramped for 3 or more. We have been on trips lasting up to three weeks and have crossed the country several times and have driven to all states (less Hawaii and Alaska). Yes, it was a ton of money and yes it does require maintenance but sleeping in your own bed and making your own meals in your own kitchen and having your own bathroom with you is priceless. only downside is that after three weeks or so of being in the same vehicle together we start to get on each other's nerves.....

 

[creekbend]

When we were younger, my Wife and I had a 25 foot camper that we towed behind our truck. It was a Holiday Rambler, but I always wanted an Airstream, but We couldn't afford it.We went off the "Beaten Path", camped next to rivers and lakes, built a campfire, cooked our own meals over the fire in cast iron, and watched the night skies and Falling Stars without the glimmer of City Lights around. Our Children simply loved the experience. And, last but not least, We didn't have to worry about "Lice and Bedbugs". Yes, even high quality motels and hotels have had these critters in the linens. Just my thoughts.

 

[dmccarty]

Tom,

TBN scares me sometimes. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

I have been reading the RV and travel trailer threads with great interest. Those discussions were excellent and I learned quite a bit. Some great posts. I thought about making a post similar to yours in one of those thread but felt it would be better to start a new thread. And then you went ahead started the thread. Scary that. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

The wifey and I, along with my dad, talk about buying an RV or trailer every few years and we can never see the money sense in buying one. I think it was Bird, who said years ago in another RV/trailer discussion, that it was about the lifestyle and not the money. A year or so ago a family member had a nice pusher diesel for sale cheap. Great shape too and low miles. We went through the math and figure we could stay at hotels cheaper. Much cheaper. I guess we are too cheap to pay for the lifestyle. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

In the RV discussion, the OP has requirements from the wifey that make the RV a perfect solution.

Monday night I was up late looking at travel trailers and RVs! :laughing::laughing::laughing: The wifey and I have talked about this for two days but the RVs just do not make money sense for us. I am lucky to get off more than a week at a time and while we would love to go out west for months of traveling that simply is not possible. Then there is the money. I was looking at an RV site and it looked like the size RV we would need/want would cost $200-300K! :shocked::shocked::shocked: Now that is list price of course and what I have learned from the TBN threads was to buy used. But lets say I could get a used RV, like in the other thread, for $130k... Ouch, it hurts just saying $130K. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

We bought into a Disney time share(DVC) years ago for about $16K. That was a bunch of money but we knew we would be going to WDW so we thought it made money sense. At this point, that 16K was money well spent. If we had gone to WDW as we intended, and did do, we easily would have spent FAR more than $16K. We have used DVC to pay for over 50 nights at Disney resorts so far. The places we are staying at cost $400-550 a night. If we were paying cash we would have spend $20-25K on rooms! We just stayed at a Disney beach resort that was far better than the beach houses we have rented in the past. The room cost us, as DVC members, about $80 a night, while non DVC member were paying around $500 a night. DVC has saved us a boat, errrr, RV load of money.

The rooms we are renting are single rooms but larger rentals are available for more money/points. If we doubled the number of points we own, we could double the space we rent. We do need to do this as the kids get older so eventually we might spend another $15K some day. At that point, we would have spent a bit over $30K and we would have yearly fees for about $1,600. From what I could tell in the RV models we were viewing, the single rooms we are renting are about the same size as the RV or maybe a bit smaller. If we doubled our DVC ownership, we would have far more space in the rental than in the RV. The RV would cost $130K at best vs $30K for DVC.

Depending on the resort, the DVC ownership lasts 30-45ish years. At some point, almost certainly after I am dead and gone, the DVC ownership is gone but in our case it is over 40 years down the road. Can we get 40 years out of an RV? I don't think so. At the moment, we can easily sell our DVC property for about 60-75% of what we paid which is just gravy as far as we are concerned.

If we spent $130K on DVC, we could stay at the beach resort we just visited for 84 days. :laughing::laughing::laughing: Every year. They yearly fees would be horrible though. :shocked::shocked::shocked:

With DVC we know the yearly costs. With an RV there is always going to be a problem that requires time and money to fix. I have neither. Having to pay for four new tires a few months ago for the SUV about caused me a heart attack. I would hate to have to buy 6,8, or 10 tires on an RV! :shocked::laughing::laughing::laughing: The RV would also require a pole barn for storage.

DVC points, sounds like I am selling the stuff :laughing::laughing::laughing:, can be used at other places as well. The are DVC beach resorts at Hilton Head, Vero Beach FLA, and HI besides the resorts at WDW. The points can be used at other hotels for an extra fee as well as on Disney Cruise Lines and Disney tours. From crunching the numbers I don't know if it makes money sense to use the points for the cruises and tours but it likely depends on the person/family. For us, spending money on DVC saves us a bunch of money for vacations. I just don't see how the RV or trailer can have the same savings. The big advantage of an RV/trailer would be going somewhere for a long period of time but we don't have the time to spend, and even if we did, I don't think we would make such a trip more than a few times, so renting rooms or an RV, would make more money sense for us.

Later,
Dan

 

[cletus99]

We've managed to weed out all the campgrounds on our routes where the spaces are tight, plenty of them around with lots of room. (Seems the ones closest to the interstates and attractions are the worst) Last month we pulled down to Eglin AFB which has very, very large spots, spent one night going down at a campground outside Birmingham that had a lot of room, spent one night coming back in an extremely nice (out of the way) campground that was absolutely beautiful.

We also take our dog, she has to go with us, so hotels/motels are out. There are cheaper campgrounds out there, especially if you belong to one of the groups. We use Passport America, most of the time we stay for $16 per night, or less. Many campgrounds offer a military discount (the one in Alabama only charged us $10 for the night)

I'm also in the crowd that doesn't like elevators or hauling all your stuff up the stairs to get to your room. Hotels typically require you to eat all your meals in restaurants, we always eat breakfast at the campground, pack a nice lunch to go with us, then dine out at good restaurants in the evening. Lots of money saved right there.

It does require more gasoline and more time to haul a camper, but on our trip to Florida, by staying at a military base and using the discounts at the other two, even with the increased gas consumption, by my calculations, we saved over $500 on a two week stay versus getting a decent hotel on the water. We could have saved quite a bit by getting a room 30 miles up the road, but the campground we stayed at was right on the bay. Our front door was less than 90 feet from the shore! Spectacular sunrises, nice breezes and very nice viewing during the times we were at the camper.

Buying groceries against eating all our meals in restaurants also saves a lot of money. Then, a hotel room is a strange place, our fifth wheel has become a second home to us, we're comfortable with and in it and it just feels good to be in "our place".

Yeah, the travel times increase a lot (we usually drive between 60-65 mph while towing, makes it much easier to let other traffic pass us instead of trying to keep up with traffic), but this is a beautiful country and we always enjoy the sights we see while we're just cruising along.

I do agree that RV'ing isn't for everyone, but we really enjoy it. We normally spend two weeks a year in Florida, a week at a state park for her family reunion, then several two or three day camps during the rest of the year. There's no way I would live full time in an RV, but (for us at least) I wouldn't vacation any other way.

Eglin is very nice. I was stationed there from 2000 to 2008 while I was in the Air Force. I loved it there. You were staying on Postal Point I'm guessing. They have two camp grounds. They built a new one while I was there. Did you ever rent a boat from MWR and ride across the bay to Crab Island?

 

[fordmantpw]

Here are several of our reasons. We have moved up from a pop up to a travel trailer, to now a fifth wheel.

• We know that we are the only ones who have slept in our beds. My wife is a clean-freak.
• If the kids need to go to the bathroom, we just pull over and use OUR OWN bathroom. See the note about my wife in the first item.
• No bed bugs.
• We stay in places where there are no hotels. We like state parks with lots of room, where we can sit and enjoy the campfire.
• We can take our own food and we cook everything outside. This leads to probably the most important part for us. Our son is on a special diet, and it is IMPOSSIBLE to eat out on his diet. So, this gives us the ability to go places and not have to worry about food, we take it with us.
• We don't have to pack clothes in and out of hotels. It's all right there in the RV.
• We can take our dog along with us.
• We just plain enjoy it, and I think it is a great experience for our kids.

 

[NY_Yankees_Fan]

Thanks for all that have replied to my question, it certainantly has given me something to think about. Did you change my mind, nope, do I understand your point of view.....sure do I guess if you can afford to travel and see our beautiful country that is all that matters.