On a recent walk through a state park I stumbled across this Volkswagen camper van. It immediately brought a smile to my face and brought back memories of seeing these on the road as a kid in Southern California. On my drive home I started to remember outdoor excursions, how I was invited to travel to Lake Shasta by a family that owned a large camper with the overhead sleeping bunk with the window looking out on the road. Along with the RV experience, it was the first time I camped and water skied (or actually, water plunged:). A few years later in the Boy Scouts I had great camping trips to canoeing on the Colorado river, traversing Death Valley and a full week of fun and torture on Catalina island.
It’s been decades since I thought about it, but this VW camper van provided a nudging reminder of what I used to truly like and enjoy. Throughout my life I have been quite fortunate to travel extensively, from 5 months in Europe on Eurorail pass, to Asia, the Caribbean, Hawaii and Mexico. These were trips with the proverbial planes, trains, hotels and rental cars – where every day was planned to squeeze-in as many activities and places and sightseeing experiences as possible. Sometimes I wore my family members out, but I kept marching on….
So the deep dive, rabbit hole YouTube and web foray began shortly after returning home. Originally I just wanted to see if these VW vans were still around, but I quickly uncovered an RV community who are out there exploring all parts of the world, and doing so in vans, campers, converted school buses and travel trailers. The internal dialog began… “what if I could rent one of these and try it out?”, “what if I could find one to buy?”, “what if I shut the door on my condo and hit the road for a couple of months?”
As you can see, the momentum of this quest moved quite quickly. As Bob Dylan once sang “I gotta head full of ideas, and they’re driving me insane” – the myriad os possible RV formations and options and opinions swirled ceaselessly in my head. So I needed to take a look around and see what all the options are for potential RVers like me, and here I am blogging about it….