Missing the RV

I never thought I would say it, but I miss living in an RV. Maybe not our old RV, but a different, larger one, would certainly be nice right about now. The reasons we didn’t like it are now turning into reasons we actually did like it in hindsight.

Our old RV had no slide outs, but was 33 feet long, which is pretty big for a Class A of its time. We had a bedroom in the back, a non-working bathroom, a closet crammed to the doors with stuff, a tiny kitchen with a stove we never used, a dinette that had been replaced with storage and a freezer, and an uncomfortable couch facing a large TV way too closely.

But, it was ours. When something broke, it was our responsibility to fix it, and that’s just what we did. When rent was due, which was just electric since I was working at the campground at the time, it was paid. When our neighbors were smoking in their site, we closed the windows and it didn’t bother us.

We had a small yard, full of trees and our own fire pit. We had an outdoor grill, charcoal, where we could cook if we wanted too. We had flowering plants and herbs in our own little garden. It was a pot garden, but it was still a garden.

While we had less space inside, we had more space outside.

One of the most important things though was, we were never afraid. People didn’t sign yearly leases, so if there was trouble, management kicked them out. Just outright told them to leave because they were no longer wanted or welcome. Without a lease, it wasn’t required to get the courts involved to invict someone, though most never intended to stay there that long anyway.

We could take trash out in the middle of the night without worry. We could walk home from the fire pit late night without issue. We didn’t worry about going to the front office to pick our mail up at any time of day, nor going to the pool and being bothered by kids who don’t live there. It was secure mostly by its remoteness from anything at all. But it still felt nice.

I will say, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows though. We had some neighbors we didn’t like. We had some neighbors we’d prefer to never see again. We had a manager that was sometimes great, sometimes pretty rude and didn’t take to suggestions very well. We had rough roads that needed work, occasional power outages, thunderstorms that made us wonder if we were going to find a new leak.

But all in all, it really wasn’t that bad. Being minimalist was really nice, having less stuff was really nice.

I don’t know that we could raise a child there, or at another campground, but maybe it would be good for him to meet lots of new people all the time and get to know some diversity. Maybe it would be bad, who knows. I don’t know that we’ll ever go back to one, or that campground, but right now, compared to the neighbors we do have in our apartment, I’d take it in a heartbeat if I could afford it.