Camping Fan

How do you choose and when is it time to upgrade from a tent to an RV? 

That question is probably the one question I am asked the most by my friends that we go camping with.  

What I tell them usually is that there are a whole lot of things to think about when you are trying to make that kind of decision. Here is just a brief list? 

Can you afford the payments?Can you afford the gas?Can you afford the insurance?Can you afford the larger site required?Do you need it?Can you drive it?How often would you use it?What type of camping do you do?Do you have somewhere to store it? 

And that’s just the short list! 

My family and the family of a close friend of mine were camping in the Spruce Run Recreation Area in Northern New Jersey (a beautiful state park facility, by the way) a couple of years ago and on Friday night while sitting around the campfire the 2 couples debated the topic for a couple of hours. 

Our conversation covered just about every one of the questions I posted above and several others. After a little while we all realized that this is actually a fairly large decision because of the variety of things it affects in your life. 

Let’s talk about a few of these: 

The first one is actually pretty obvious but a very important one: can you afford the payments? RV’s, pop-ups, hybrids and trailers are not free. They can cost anywhere from a couple thousand dollars for a used pop-up to about fifteen grand for a new hybrid  to thirty or fourty grand for a new trailer to well over a hundred thousand dollars for a brand new fully outfitted RV. 

Since most of us don’t have anywhere near that kind of money just laying around not being used, it means we have to take out a loan and pay for it over time. So back to the original question can you afford the payment? Only you know the answer for sure. 

As gas prices continue to rise (currently well over $3 a gallon) can you afford to fill up the tank on the RV (several hundred dollars a pop) or the truck/suv to haul the shelter around? A buddy of mine ended his camping season two months early this year because he can’t afford to drive to a campground! 

Don’t forget about the insurance, you have to have insurance on it since it’s basically a motor vehicle! In and of itself not too expensive but when you add it in to the rest of the bills it adds up. 

As you probably know a site with hookups (Water & Electricity) is more expensive per night then a site without. A site with full hookups (Water, Electric, Sewer & Cable) is even more expensive. I have seen campgrounds that almost triple the price between a tent site and a full hookup site.  

When you think about whether or not you need it, you will probably also think about what type of camping you do. Camping in winter time or in the dog days of summer make for real good reasoning as to why you would need a trailer. If you only restrict yourself to spring and fall camping then the case is not as strong since the evenings are pretty cool usually during those times of the year. When thinking about this remember that there is a real big difference between “I NEED this” and “I WANT this”. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you need it if you don’t. 

How often have you been camping in the last two years? Five years? This is a pretty big factor in my opinion. I would be really ticked off if I spent twenty grand on a trailer and watched it sit in my driveway or backyard and rust because my life got too busy for me to be able to use it. If you look back at the “trend” of your camping over the last couple of years and you see that the number of trips is increasing and you look ahead and don’t see any reasons why that would change (such as your children getting old enough to enter local sports) then I think you can make a case for buying one. If you see that your trips have decreased and/or that your life is going to change due to another factor then you might want to wait awhile and see how things play out before you commit to something like this. 

During my conversation with my friend and our wives that night this last issue was something the wives raised that us guys never even thought about and too be honest didn’t initially have a whole lot of sway in our opinion. Boy, were we wrong! The ladies got really intense and involved in the conversation at this point. They felt very, very strongly that having a 22 foot or 30 foot RV or trailer sitting in their driveway or out front of the house 12 months of the year was completely unacceptable.  

They didn’t want to have to look at the thing every time the walked out the door or looked out a window. Us guys could have cared less until the ladies basically said that it isn’t going to happen. So when you are thinking about purchasing one you need to make sure that if you are married or have a significant other of any kind that you discuss the storage location topic with them and make sure that if the only place you can store the thing is in the yard next to the swing set that they are okay with this. 

I hope that this little bit of information will help you make a good decision that you won’t regret at some point in the future. Luckily, my wife and I were able to avoid a lot of the really hard parts of the decision when friends of ours gave us their old camper. It’s older then I am (it was built in 1959!) but still in really good shape. It sleeps my wife, my two boys and myself without too many problems and keeps us dry and warm.  

Good Luck! 

 ‘Till Next Time…

Eric

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