Читать книгу RVs & Campers For Dummies - Christopher Hodapp - Страница 59

In the beginning, RVing in a motorhome can look very attractive, and you may think you can get by without a car. Maybe you think you can try to structure your travels in such a way that, for example, you always stop at the grocery on the way to the campground. Okay, fair enough.

We’ve seen lots of people in smaller Class C and B+ motorhomes camping without a car. On rare occasions, we’ve seen them have to pull up stakes from a full hookup because they had to go somewhere, and on the whole, they seem to take it in stride.

The thing is, you just can’t foresee everything that may happen when you’re on the road, including the truly oddball stuff, like when our dog, Sophie the Power Poodle, got dreadfully sick and we had to find an emergency animal hospital in the wilds of Montana.

You also can’t anticipate the fun things, like finding out the pretty little town you’re in is having a wine festival that you really want to visit. Of course, the pleasure of a Class B or small Class C is that you can more easily find a place to park it when you head out for that festival. But if you’re planning on a Class A and you’re thinking you’ll be able to find a place to park it in that pretty little town, well, we don’t envy you.

These are the scenarios you need to play out in your mind. Yes, when you’re driving a coach, other options for transportation are usually available: Maybe you can take the occasional Uber or Lyft, and you can always rent a car for the duration of your stay, which is very easy to do in popular camping areas (on the other hand, it can have its annoyances — Enterprise won’t deliver a car to you in the middle of Yellowstone).

The fact is, Americans are very used to absolute freedom of mobility. This country is very spread out, the popular camping states are even more spread out, and it’s difficult to function without access to a car, particularly on a long journey. Be honest with yourself about your priorities and how much hassle you’re willing to put up with in order to leave your vehicle at home.

Before we started RVing, we knew that some people in motorhomes towed a car. Both Class A and Class C motorhomes can tow a car, which they often call a toad (towed, get it?), although RV magazines often use the term dinghy. What we didn’t know until we started RVing was how many people in motorhomes tow a car. We’ve never seen any reliable stats on this, but in the summer months, in hot camping areas like South Dakota and Wyoming, we were seeing about three-quarters of the large Class As towing a car. On more than a few occasions, we’ve seen Class As towing both a car and a very large pleasure boat behind that, just like the Southern Pacific Railroad.

We’ve met people driving Class As who were totally on top of this issue of towing a toad from the moment they bought. Lots of these guys have chosen rigs like a Dynamax Super C with a Cummins engine specifically for its remarkable ease of towing heavy loads. But from personal experience, just talking to other campers, we’ve gathered that an amazing number of people don’t really think through this issue at the buying stage. If that sounds familiar, this section is for you.