Have you ever wondered what it’s really like?  After 35 years in the tourism industry and with a desire to complete my Master of Arts degree in Tourism Management, I chose to research and write an ethnographic graduate paper on the recreational vehicle (RV) lifestyle. In order to immerse myself in my topic, I became a fulltime RVer as I travelled North America for 14 months. This third and final installment of my research into this fascinating and trending tourism perspective explores feelings of camaraderie and closeness felt by participants of this way of life.

Finding Community and Acceptance

The social culture of the RV community provides a landscape diversity that cannot be attained in the everyday existence found in urban centers. RVers experience a spiritual journey through feeling that they belong to a special group of life adventurers. Rituals within the setting of this community consist of repetitive behaviors that become habitual and normal within the cultural landscape that reinforces this behavior. These routines unfold in appropriate codes of behavior as RVers assume actions that will integrate them into the RV community.

My journal records an example of the above theory in the RVs arrival and check-in procession that occurs with regularity each day before dusk.  RVers in their motorhomes arrive, check in at the campground office and then go to their site. The large lumbering vehicles have a parade-pace as they enter. This provides the perfect introduction for the new arrivals to existing community members. Everyone watches as children spill out to race for the playground after travel time confinement, moms follow suit to supervise, pets are leashed for their needed walks and dads park the ‘home’. These routine behaviors prompt neighbourly reactions such as a hand wave or big smiles and hellos. RVers welcome friendships through introductions such as “where have you come from” or “you’re a long way from home” – vehicle license plates tell their own story. The normalness of these actions is akin to the same ritual of watching the new family move into a residential community; however in the context of the RV lifestyle, it happens every day several times over.

My journal records how I was walking through the early morning campground under a pink lemonade sky in the Florida Keyes, preparing to move on to another campground that day and already missing the peacefulness and the people I had met here. I was listening to the hum of soft conversations, watching the routine of RVers pulling out awnings in anticipation of the noon-day heat. I realized that this quickly visited community had become my own. I felt territorial and concerned for the inhabitants, their children, their pets and even the campground staff. This personal experience had been felt in other communities and would be felt again. I had come to understand that RVers, not unlike me, socialize and build relationships sincerely, intensely and quickly, knowing time is limited. They, and I, were acutely aware of life’s fragility and were desirous of leaving generous and good-deed footprints behind. This was aptly expressed by Phyllis when she stated “We can travel more places and step into more lives as RVers.” Phyllis and Lamont are RV lifestyle enthusiasts and travel writers whose business, The Cooking Ladies, is operated full-time from their RV as they drive the roads of America.

When discussing community acceptance, I recount the poignant story of Cindy of St. Augustine, Florida. Cindy is a religious, single and lesbian woman who admitted that the community of the RV lifestyle allowed her to have “special women friends” without her hometown “knowing all my business”. While her previous community had exacted a way of life from her that did not always include acceptance of her choice of a lesbian lifestyle and that restricted the ways in which she could express herself without rebuke, Cindy had found the RV community to be non-judgemental. Cindy had found a community she could belong to without reproach.

Ted and Joan of Woodstock, Ontario, shared the story of an elderly male snowbird RVer and campground neighbour who had recently passed away at their campground. In his final bow to life, he had chosen to stay in his RV rather than return home because he had more friends in his RV community that cared about him than at home. His illness and declining health was accepted here and he was visited daily by campground friends and the resident pastor. He had expressed to Ted and Joan that if he returned home, visitation would have been relegated to health care providers and the odd surviving family member. In the RV community, he was an aging man with unique stories from a resplendent past; in his hometown he was a health care statistic.

In conclusion …

RVing is not a novel idea, but it is proclaiming an evolution to the tourism industry through redefining traditional North American values.  RVers shirk the image of continuous asset gain, leave behind lives of large responsibilities and commitments, and embark on a quest for adventure in a self-reliant and mature manner. A youthful independence engulfs thinking, and personal control of life’s journey has supplanted former rigidities of personal and professional direction. RVers want a slower pace and more time with loved ones.

RVers are now advocates of meaning and authenticity in the quality of their lives. They are in tune with the wonder of their environment and hold it dear, wanting to preserve it for everyone to enjoy. Participants with a willingness to leave behind identities that held challenges through their very existence have come to a place that provides healing. For some, it is the leaving behind of a society’s expectations; for others it is a cancellation or “holiday from” emotional enmeshment that held them rigid to certain codes of behavior. Certainly, the new set of clothes they were able to don provided relief from a previous categorization of a certain behavior or type of individual. Through the RV lifestyle, if only temporarily, participants are able to reinvent themselves and they are happier for it.

Rose Nadon, MA
Tourism Management
250-228-5552

To read all three installments of The RV Livestyle: Part 1   Part 2

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