Читать книгу RVs & Campers For Dummies - Christopher Hodapp - Страница 12

Perhaps life on the road as a modern nomad sounds like an exciting adventure you’d like to attempt. Or maybe you want to take your kids on one last great adventure as a family before your oldest goes off to college. Or if you’re older, maybe you want to bond with your grandkids by exploring the country together. Maybe you just saw a magazine photo of a couple gazing out the back window of their RV at the morning sunrise over a bucolic brook and started wishing it was you instead of them.

Despite a commonplace media image of RVers as either a vast platoon of elderly retirees or out-of-work, flinty nomads chasing day-labor jobs like the Oakies in the 1930s, the truth is that RVers come from every age, income, education level, and socioeconomic status.

Whether they intend to use an RV only for a couple of getaway weekends a year, live in one year-round, or anything in between, everybody has their own very personal reason for buying a trailer or motorhome. Over the years, we’ve heard these reasons most often:

 You fondly recall a wonderful summer trip to the Grand Canyon as a child, when your family borrowed your uncle’s motorhome.

 You’re getting close to retirement age and suddenly that three-bedroom house seems like way too much expense and responsibility to hang onto anymore.

 You despise the four months of cold weather and shoveling 10 inches of partly cloudy off your front stoop every time it snows, but you otherwise love your sticks-and-bricks home the rest of the year.

 You realized during the COVID-19 pandemic that you really can work from anywhere with a Wi-Fi connection, and you’d like to see the rest of the country.

 The idea of waking up to a new and different view outside your window every morning seems too romantic for your soul to pass up.

In short, there as many reasons as there are people, and there are literally millions of RV owners on the road today, chasing their dreams and loving the lifestyle.

If statistics are your thing, chew on these: A recent study found that RV ownership has increased over 62 percent since the year 2001, and the record 11.2 million RV-owning households are split almost evenly between those over and under the age of 55. The biggest increase was among 18- to 34-year-olds, who now make up almost a quarter of the market. An incredible 9.6 million more households intend to buy an RV within the next five years. And among existing owners, 84 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds said they intend to buy another RV in the next five years, while 78 percent of them would prefer to buy a new model instead of used.

In the following sections, we walk you through the main groups of people who are RVing these days. Don’t see yourself in one of these categories? See yourself in more than one? You’re not alone!