Wanted: Hill to Push Start Bus

It was all very romantic and it was 1971 when we decided to get married. My then future husband, Mark, had given me a paper back copy of John Steinbeck’s “Travel’s with Charlie” and said he wanted to take me cross country on a trip like that. So we made our plans which included borrowing his parents 1964 VW camper, outfitting it with 2 spare tires, and rock guards for the headlights. It was going to be a great adventure, leaving Los Angeles traveling north, catching a ferry in Vancouver to Alaska and then driving back on the Al-can Highway. My mother-in-law made sure we packed everything we would possibly need right down to a picnic basket. We were married and set off, heading north on highway 101. We spent the first night in a rest stop and took off bright and early the next morning, filled with excitement. Shortly before noon in the middle of no where, and only a few hundred miles, if even that, from where we started, the engine suddenly died and we pulled to the side of the road and waited. Finally a tow truck was called and came to our rescue. The driver Marvin, looked exactly like Robert Mitchum with the exception of a missing tooth! He took us to the sleepy little town of San Ardo, Ca. The town consisted of a 9 room motel on the order of the “Bates Motel”, a Dairy Queen, an Arco gas station and a market or two. Marvin took us to the Arco, where PeeWee the mechanic decided we had run out of oil and cracked the block. They would have to... Read more

From Novices to Experienced Campers in Two Weeks

Our first RV experience began in the spring of 1977 with my wife and our two children who were ages 5 and 2. As a young couple, with not much money, we thought that camping would be one way to fight the high costs of vacationing and be good for the boys and us to experience. We bought our first piece of equipment used. It was an Apache solid state pop-up camper. My wife refused to camp in a tent on the ground with the bugs. We left for our first trip to the midwest from the east coast. We had an awning made for the pop-up and I attached it the camper the best that I knew how with brackets on the pop-up. The camper was packed amd away we went. At our first campground in Pennsylvania, I struggled to level the camper. The tongue was 3 ft. off the ground. At that time, I did not realize that you could request a different site, if that site did not work. We flipped over the cabinets and then I went out to hook the water and electric up. As I turned on the water, my wife screamed “There is water leaking under the sink”. I quickly turned off the water and upon inspection, the nipple on the bottom of the faucet had broken and repairs were needed. Because the site being unlevel, the camper now had a bow at the door and the door could not close, without slamming. So off I went with the boys to go and get a leveling jack for the pop-up. Finally, dinner was done and the rest of the eveing was uneventful as we sat back and relaxed. The next day after packing up, we headed down... Read more

The Time My A/C Got Torn Off

I don’t know if this is my most favorite memory but it’s unforgettable. Traded in my 31′ class C gulfstream for a 37′class A. Great. Go to CT. to pick it up and am traveling to the Bridgeport ferry back to Long Island. The RV is only 3 hours old for me. Well the train bridge that I went under many times before with my class C didn’t work. I ripped off my rear A/C clear off the roof. My heart sank. And yes, it started to rain. Disappointed and depressed I brought it to the Gulfstram dealer on Long Island and put a claim in with my insurance carrier. Two weeks later I go to pick it up in a very tight yard of the dealer…and I don’t see the two foot high deck in the way…Yes my rear panel was smashed above and behind the wheel well. I backed it up, looked, cried, and handed him the keys and said call me when it’s done. Then cried some more. Since then we have enjoyed 6 years of good memories. But every time I look at my air conditioner…well you fill in the blank. Submitted by Bob Schiano of Smithtown, NY as a part of the RV Centennial Celebration “Share Your Favorite RV Memory” contest. Do you have a favorite RVing or camping memory you’d like to share? Submit your favorite memory here!  Read More →

Early Days Lead to Career and Back to New RV

Shortly after we were married in 1960, we bought a used 15 ft. Sportcraft travel trailer, which we pulled with our 1956 Chevy. When I added some features on the trailer, my wife suggested I write it up and send it to Trail-R-News, which published it and sent me a $25 check. I recall Art Griffin starting the Good Sam club, and I think Good Sam is a caricature of Art. I continued to write for Trail-R-News and then Trailer Life for several years, even after our family outgrew the Sportcraft. This eventually led me to a successful career in public relations. Many years later, after a long time without an RV, we bought a Southwind 36B class A motorhome in 2004, which we still use to travel from our new home in New Mexico. Submitted by Ray Scroggins of Las Cruces, NM as a part of the RV Centennial Celebration “Share Your Favorite RV Memory” contest. Do you have a favorite RVing or camping memory you’d like to share? Submit your favorite memory here!  Read More →

First Time Out

Due to earlier mishaps, Tom finally arrives home somewhat upset. He looks around the garage and finds a jack. (We have a 5th wheel, remember). And we’re off to Lake Dallas to get our 5th Wheel. We arrive and the RV park isn’t but about 20 miles away. Well, Tom puts the jack on one side and then the other and finally decides it’s not big enough to jack the RV up. So we are off to find a Pep Boys to get a jack. (Remember this. This is a pivotal part of the story.) We’re traveling down I-35 towards Denton and see a Pep Boys. We take the off ramp and come to the street where the Pep Boys is and it’s one-way coming towards us. So we take the first right and drive in and around a neighborhood looking for a street to come in behind the store and up by it. We find a street headed in the right direction. We come up over a hill…..dead end. So, we take a left, go in and around the neighborhood some more and finally end up on the street we had just turned off of. We came back and turned in to Calloway’s Nursery and go through their parking lot and into Pep Boys parking lot. Whew! We get parked, Tom walks to the door and they were closed three minutes earlier. But never mind, there’s a mall across the street and a Sear’s. All is not lost. We go to Sears and find what we’re looking for. Okay, by this time we’re hungry, so we stop and eat. I keep telling Tom, “This is a learning experience. It’s all an adventure.” Back... Read more

Our Most Humorous Camping Trip

The first night we camped at J. W. Wells State Park on Lake Michigan shore. When we asked for a camp site at first we were told there were none open; then we were told there was one so we took it. As we were sitting by the picnic table we soon found out why there was one site left. We were sharing our lot with a mama skunk and her family. The next day, we headed to Wisconsin Door Peninsula. As we were driving along in our old 1972 fixer-upper motor home, it began to back-fire, really bad. Mother had been lying up on the top bunk. After a few good loud bangs, mother descended down to a lower level. I asked why she had come down and the answer was, “I am getting closer to the door in case we have to bail out of the motor home.” We now proceeded to go into a continuous mode of very loud back-firing. As we were passing cows pasturing in the fields, it frightened the cattle so much they began running across the fields with their tails up in the air going full speed ahead in every direction just as fast as their legs would carry them. When we arrived in the Door Peninsula, we looked up a junk yard to try to get a part for the motor home. However the junk yard had had a fire and we were told it would be a few hours before they could find parts. My father got the duck tape out and duck taped up one of our problems. We kept on going and continued to backfire all the way, terrorizing all the cattle in sight. We then visited the rock formations and watched people diving off the high... Read more

Mother’s Camping Trip

My mother passed away last December, at the age of 95. Before her memory was gone completely, she would tell us about her camping trip: It was in the early 30’s and my parents were married but before any of us children came along. My parents had a friend and his wife that had built their own camper, pulled behind the car. The men went about getting the things arranged on the farms, and the two women were to get things ready for the “trip”. The two women had neither one killed a chicken, but the got the job done with a hatchet and cleaned the chickens fried them, and baked pies and cakes and bread, as well as making potato salad. The packed up the car and left for the Black Hills of South Dakota, some 400 miles from the Southeastern corner of South Dakota where their farms were. The stopped beside the road and put down a blanket in the ditch and ate lunch, another time the stopped in a vacant school yard and had lunch or supper. My mother talked about she surely didn’t know how they made it home with the temperature in the triple digits and no refrigeration available and eating all that food for so long and not getting sick. My father used to talk about coming home through the western part of South Dakota and the grasshoppers being so thick that the road was slippery from driving over them. We left MD on May 10, and am sitting on the CHENA River in Fairbanks, AK, on June 21 writing this letter, and the weather is BEAUTIFUL, but we have refigeration on the... Read more

A Water Dump!

My parents purchased a travel trailer in 1968. They got my wife and I, along with two daughters,(8 years old and 2 years old) interested in camping in 1972. We had a 1966 Ford pickup truck with a topper on the back. Before the weekend when we were to go to Lake Lewisville with my parents, we all piled into the truck and drove to the Sears Cataloge Cernter in Dallas, TX where we stood in line to purchase a large tarp, about 15′ square’. We had to wait for the mail order process, picked up our tarp and was back home near midnight. That weekend, we loaded up everything we thought we would need, stove, ice chest, clothes, etc., and headed to the lake with my parents. We set up camp out of the back of the camper topper and stretched the tarp over the end of the camper topper to make a covered porch. Our two girls were to sleep in the camper topper and my wife and I were to sleep on cots under the tarp. All went well for the day and everyone had fun. Shortly after bedtime that evening however, a storm came up and it rained like crazy. The tarp filled up with water, broke the poles holding it and dumped water all over my wife and I. What a mess! We left everything outside covered with the tarp as best we could and spent the rest of the night crammed up in the camper topper. Our first outing was not as much fun and planned. Shortly after that experience, we bought our first camping trailer. Back then, they were very sparce. We had a ice box for a refrigerator, no heater, no... Read more

West Coast to East Coast Adventure

My first RV experience was in a pickup and camper. I was 13 years old. My parent’s sister and I had decided to embark on a trip across the United States to visit our siblings in Louisville, Kentucky and Boston, Massachusetts. The only traveling experience we had up to this point were a few day trips. We had an old Ford Sedan and our Dad had converted the back seat to make into a bed, as kids we were thrilled, as we could sleep while he was driving. We did make several trips this way to visit family in Medford, Oregon. My father worked for the Oregon State Highway Department in Grand Ronde, Oregon and the year was “1964”. Dad was a meticulous and conscientious man who always gave plans much thought. He had a lot of driving experience and learned to be a mechanic in the U. S. Army. Our mother was a homemaker and an excellent cook. So with our parents’ knowledge and combined capabilities, and our plans mapped out, we were all set to embark upon our great adventure. Our first destination was to Louisville, Kentucky to visit our sister Mary. She had married and after moving there had become very homesick and wanted to see her family, so she had been awaiting our arrival with much excitement. She had a daughter who was 3 at the time and a newborn baby girl who had been born a few months before we arrived. Some tears were shed at the happiness of being reunited with our sister and meeting our newborn niece for the first time. We had settled in to visit and see some of the sites... Read more

First Time Disaster

Many years ago in a place rather far away, my parents decided to take a camping trip in my grandmothers 19 foot trailer. This was about 1960 so travel trailers were not the wonders of constriction or features that abound today. We lived in Butte Montana then and about 80 miles away was a reservoir called Canyon Ferry, it’s still there by the way. So parents and 4 kids piled into the Rambler station wagon and off we went. Upon reaching the reservoir it was decided that we would go to the last campground on the east shore. In those days and I guess today still, road designers think that they can save lots of miles of construction by building the road down into the draws and back up to the ridge. This particular stretch of road was worse than most. The uphill portions were really up hill, so much so that we had to help shove the car and trailer up the hills. We ended up with all the people behind us that couldn’t get by also helping. Upon our eventual arrive at the campground, exhausted and covered in dust, we discovered the worst. My grandmother had loaded the cupboards with her everyday plates etc. Those cupboards had no secure latches and all the glassware within was on the floor in a broken mess. So that was my first experience with RVing, which in those days was not RVing. Oh, and I don’t remember how we got the trailer out of there but is was a lot lighter with all the glassware out of there. The next time I was on that road, a couple years later with some... Read more

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