CHANGES SEEN OVER THE YEARS GOOD, BAD, INDIFFERENT

[FULLTIMEWANABE]

I often ponder about "change" in all aspects of our lives over the years. What our parents and grandparents saw versus us, versus what our children will never experience etc. To that end but specifcally ..................

 

Just curious for those of you that are still or maybe very recently stopped Full Time TRAVEL RVing, what changes you saw over the years. Folks like Two Gypsies must have seen a lot of changes for example over the 16 years of actually FT Travel RVing, and I believe have only recently come off the road to anchor down.

 

Thought it might be an interesting subject for many to respond to and for many to read that are just about to embark or started in the FT generally travelling lifestyle RVing.

 

Happy Travels.

 

FTW.

[2gypsies]

I'm not sure what kind of changes you're thinking of because there were many world changes over our 16 years of full-timing.

 

As far as RVing changes the most obvious is communication.

 

When we began in 1995 we joined Escapees for the mail service but we also used their Voice Mail service. They gave us a 800# that we passed on to relatives and friends. They called and left a message and then we called the number and retrieved the message. We spent many cold, rainy times; sometimes a hour or so, standing in a telephone booth dealing with insurance or medical issues.

 

Next came the big bag telephone, then a clamshell and finally, only recently - kicking and screaming, a smartphone.

 

After the bag phone came Pocketmail - an acoustic device for email that we held up to the pay telephone. Many times it was difficult to get a connection and then it would churn and churn and midway through the transmission exchange, it would disconnect and we had to start over - if there was no line behind us to use the telephone.

 

We wrote a lot of letters, sent postcards and mailed out a travel newsletter every two months. We had no computer in the early years.

 

No GPS - relied on paper maps and still use them as our first choice.

 

Fuel prices have now made a complete circle from low to high to low.

 

RV park prices have risen greatly but we've always sought out public campgrounds, boondocking or the SKP parks.

 

A big issue for us toward the end was all the reservations. Although we rarely made them we had to be creative many times because of others making them and not canceling leaving open spaces or us being in a campsite for a couple days and having to leave it because someone made a reservation for one day later. However, we were successful in staying in popular areas without reservations such as the Oregon coast, national parks and Alaska. We just had to be flexible. We also volunteered quite often so we got to live in those special areas.

 

The big surprise for us leaving the full-timing lifestyle was buying another house. We found that we wanted as small as possible in a completely different area of the country than we lived in prior times and because of small, the price was a lot lower than expected. It was a great lifestyle and it turned out perfect, except for the grandkids being highly disappointed that we sold the RV. They grew up with us traveling and taking them on trips or having them meet us in fantastic places to explore together. They have nothing but good memories and they really miss it - as we do.

[Jack Mayer]

We have been fulltime for 16 years. The very biggest change we have seen is in the area of communications. Both phone and Internet have RADICALLY changed - for the better - during that time. Back in the "old days" there was NO Internet at campsites. There was no wifi. There was no going to Starbucks. (In fact, there WAS no Starbucks outside of Washington State .) MAYBE you could get to a modem in a campground office, and some "advanced facilities" even had dedicated modems that campers could plug into. But those were few and far between. And campground offices rarely allowed you to plug in there. So what did you do for Internet? MAYBE you went to a library and used a computer there. Not YOUR computer, you signed up for time on their computer. From a practical perspective, there was NO INTERNET.

 

For email we used a device called Pocketmail. It was basically a Sharp Wizard with an acoustic modem built in. Pretty basic stuff....but it did work well for email.

 

On edit: I just went and looked at our campground log....the average price of the diesel we paid in 2000 was $1.48. In 2001 it was a yearly average of $1.24.

 

This year the lowest I have paid is $1.60. Today it is $1.79.

 

I also note that I stayed at a KOA in VA in 2000 for $21. Try THAT today.

[Pieere]

I remember back to 1995 with a brother and I; We lived in a 1988 27' Cl-C and I drove for employ; my phone was a Motorola brick. Gas was around $1.06.9 gl. Then by 1999 I had a Tracfone at .33.3 a minute prepaid. Gas around $1.99.9 gl. and I had purchased an old 1975 GMC CL-C 20' and restored it and parted from my brother, went on the road to work and camp. I was forced to settle in an RV park in TN in August 2012 from a severe hear attack just before my 61st birthday in March 2012. Have to sometimes take what life throw at one and roll with the flow; just pleased to be alive!

[trailertraveler]

Like 2Gypsies and Jack, since my first solo cross country RV trip in 1966, there have been a lot of changes in communications. Pay phones gave way to the ability to pay by credit card. Then came bag phones followed by smaller cell phones and internet service.

 

Campgrounds have changed too. National Park and National Forest Campgrounds did not have camp hosts at least at the places I visited. Money deposited in iron rangers was collected by park or forest service employees. Many more Forest Service campgrounds were free and those that charged during the peak season were open and free during the off season if you could get to them rather than closed as they are now. At their peak, there were many more KOA affiliated campgrounds than there are today and KOA was not the dirty word that it is today among some RVers. Happy Camper and Passport America did not exist.

 

The GMC and Dodge motorhomes were the most common big boys of that time. I don't remember seeing 5th wheel trailers. If they were on the market, they were not very common. The family station wagon or big sedan was the most common tow vehicle for travel trailers.

 

In 1966, Camping World was a new company. Good Sam Club was mainly a bunch of RVers with funny stickers on their RVs that would stop and help other RVers having problems on the road. Escapees RV Club did not exist. Walmart was a relatively new company. Flying J was founded in 1968. Cracker Barrel was founded in 1969. Blacktop docking was not that common as far as I remember. Folks did overnight at highway rest areas though.

 

Many of the cross country interstates were not completed. I remember taking US-20 from Rockford, IL to Yellowstone a couple of times. I-80 was not completed.

 

Pep Boys and NAPA were the big names in auto parts. UPS was not near as big and Fedex didn't appear until 1971. I remember having to order auto parts for repairs that arrived on the Greyhound bus.

 

In 1966, there was a gas war in the Salt Lake City area. If my memory is correct regular gasoline was $0.13/Gal.

 

Lots and lots of changes.

[rynosback]

I just started fulltiming but I have traveled a couple of times across the US. I saw Delicate Arch in Arches Narional park before it collapsed. I think this is a great time to travel before Mother Nature changes the landscape. As storms seem to be getting stronger and larger over the past 6 years.

[Mariner]

Like the old David Bowie song "Cha-Cha-Cha Changes", they're inevitable. I think back to the changes my parents witnessed in their lifetimes..airplanes, T.V., interstate highway system, cell phones, medical advancements, even man on the moon. And look at the rapid pace of changes that are happening everyday. I sometimes wonder what unimaginable things my grandchildren & great grandchildren are going to see.

[Kirk W]

We saw many things change in RV travels well before we actually went out full-time. We bought our first RV in 1972 after using a tent for several years. Back in those days an RV that was 30' long was huge and motorhomes were very rare and mostly were owned by the wealthy folks. The only diesel motorhomes were bus conversions, custom or home built.

 

While there were fulltimers even back then, there were very few of them and Escapees didn't form until late 1977 and at the time it was mostly folks working in the construction industry. By the time that we joined they group in 1998 they were mostly retired and many of the club changes had already taken place, but even then there were few diesel pushers but diesel trucks were becoming common. The fifth wheel had pretty much replaced the travel trailer as preferred living for a fulltimer but the motorhomes were coming on. In the past 20 years I think the #1 change to the RVs has been the size as what was a large rig then is rather moderate today. If memory serves, there were no RVs that exceeded 40' at that time and only a few which were that long. Slides were growing in popularity but were not even close to the majority yet. There has been a big increase in the number of folks volunteering in return for a site and the result has been an increase in the places to volunteer. When we began to consider the life there were many campground host positions in state and federal parks, but only a few which did other things and only a hand full of national wildlife refuge positions. Work-camping positions that offered pay were almost totally in RV parks and usually involved mostly cleaning.

 

I don't think that the people have changed all that much, although there are more of them and with that has come a small amount of social stratification based upon size or type of RV one lives in. It remains at a low level but is sometimes noticeable. RVs have become more like a house and far more people carry generators and all of the amenities, but the majority by far are still friendly and happy to greet most anyone who shares the love of RV living.

[Barbaraok]

The advent of cell phones has certainly made life much, much easier for fulltimers. When my parents full-timed in the late 80s, mom had one bag of quarters for laundry and one for pay phones. We got an 800 number so she could call us without having to worry about quarters. No blogs, no facebook, so no glimpses of what they were up to, just phone calls. All travel was done with paper maps, etc. Now I have a smart phone with enough apps to let us look, in real time, at traffic when going by cities, call to check on availability from the road, get the feel for fuel prices an hour ahead of us, etc. Snap a photo and my daughter has it on her phone in an instant.

 

Barb

[FULLTIMEWANABE]

Thanks for the feedback folks and for keeping it specific to RVing. Of course we all know things have changed in all aspects of life but just felt it would be interesting to hear folks takes on the changes as FTer's you've experienced and noticed over the years.

 

So generally most of the changes have generally been to the positive and of a tech' nature in less than the past couple of decades. I sure remember when we bought our first vacational fifth wheel in the 90's (it felt a monster then) with young kids, and everyone was encouraging us with pocket mail and thought it was a fabulous tool at the time - albeit frustrating sometimes. At that time, I carried quarters whilst searching the inevitable demise of the payphone, and had an old brown pager that I received my office messages on = and that was high tech (LOL).

 

Information and research is much more readily available today with the advent of the internet and mobile communications for sure. However, a couple of things we've noticed that have changed aside from Tech for us are: When we first started, you'd rarely if ever pass another RVer that didn't put their hand up to acknowledge each other when passing = whilst hubby still does it, very few except the older generations tend to reciprocate today and raise a smile any more on travel days. Also when researching on tourist attractions in an area nowadays, the emphasis is all on restaurants, eateries, shopping and accommodations. There's very little information in Tourism specific media provided today compared to years ago on privately run type attractions in the areas, and even public owned attractions/areas of natural beauty etc aren't written as informatively, or feel as "free" to roam etc as they did back in the 80's and early 90's. Of course affordability isn't what it used to be either as CG's have gotten to the price of some hotel/motel rooms in some areas.

 

I'm sure if this topic was started 3 years or less ago, there would be a deluge of comments about the extortionate price of fuel and how it's impacted folks travel plans etc, as it is we have been blessed for almost 2 years with lower prices recently, albeit we are slowly seeing rises occurring at the pumps this past week.

 

Thanks to all for sharing your experiences, I'm sure it'll be interesting for many to read many of these, and sometimes what appears as "dinosauric" changes specific to our RVing lifestyles.

 

As always, safe and happy travels to all.

 

FTW.

[Kinsa]

This is speculation, but I would assume that with the increasing popularity and acceptance of homeschooling in the past 20 years, along with that comes the realization that families aren't tied to locations and/or schedules due to local schools. The natural result, I would think, would be an increase in the number of families on the road full-time. Like us. *smile*

[sandsys]

I know this is just part of the internet thing but the ability to work remotely is also opening full-timing to more younger people. Which I see as being good for all of us.

 

Linda Sand

[RV_]

. . . Escapees didn't form until late 1977 and at the time it was mostly folks working in the construction industry. By the time that we joined they group in 1995 they were mostly retired and many of the club changes had already taken place, but even then there were few diesel pushers but diesel trucks were becoming common.

 

Kirk, that is amazing! I joined in early 1998 three years after you claim to have joined in 1995.

 

My original SKP number is SKP#:50964 yours is much later and SKP#:60541. How'd that happen?

[Kirk W]

EDIT: Deleted my response.

[bigjim]

Boys, you are making me feel old at Mbr# 46429 > March 1996. But I did not begin accessing the forum until I think 2002.

[coachmac9]

How about the advancements in creature comforts of the current RV's compared to the ones 20 years ago!! Growing up we spent most of our summers and holidays camping in tents, fishing and hunting with uncles, cousins and friends. It was always a large group with lots of kids running around swimming, fishing and exploring. Great time to be a kid and we had no idea how "rough" we had it!! My mom and several aunts would cook over a fire and Coleman cook stove and the food was incredible!! Great times but I sure do enjoy the comforts of our home on wheels now...taking a hot shower,not getting rained on and sleeping in a very comfy bed sure beats the tents any day!!!

 

I'll never forget the first time I saw a real RV...a friend of my uncle pulled up in a real Blue Bird bus conversion RV and I was speechless...I could do nothing but stare in awe at this house on wheels!! I was about 10 or 12 so it must have been around 1965 or 66 and I vowed to myself that one day I would have something like that to travel in...well I didn't quite make it to the Blue Bird status but I fulfilled a boyhood dream and love it!!!

[Jack Mayer]

I joined Escapees in the summer of 1999 and our number is in the signature line. You can figure join dates from there.

[RV_]

Yep Jack, sometimes the old memory fails.

 

Kirk, I am a member of the forums. Being a current or past member of the club and having a SKP number is separate from being a member of the forums. Some will have been or are both. I was a member of Escapees for almost ten years and kept my membership current until three years after I came off the road to care for parents. Back then we had considered some outreach programs to older SKPs that had dropped off the active rolls of the membership in the club not just the forums. The Idea was for us to contact them in our travels and see if they needed anything. I was working with Cathy and Mark on that idea but it never came to pass. From the groundwork for that idea I'd found then that the SKP numbers, like the retired numbers of a great sports player, are never reused. So all reading this know your SKP number, like a vet who does not retire, affords you a place in the long SKP caravan line. Like you only served for 8 years using your submariner insignia in your sig block. Perfectly valid. I'd asked Mark about that ten years ago and he said it was fine to keep using my SKP number proudly as I put my retirement status from the military in my sig block.

 

But a fair question. Kirk since you have, over the years asked the same question several times, as if I were misremembering my status of membership you already knew that answer. What does my membership number in the club have to do with the obvious mistake you made. Perhaps your join date was a mistake, if so you are welcome.

 

But you make me wonder with that response.

 

I choose, like our founders, to make this an inclusive moment and a good opportunity to let other past active SKP members know they are still valued for their part in keeping this great organization for serious RVrs going strong, whether for one hitch or until they retire their keys. If anyone has their old SKP number use it proudly. Like date of rank, date of service in the military, like a college degree, it is a little thing that means so much to the others in the civilian group or branch of service.

 

On the other hand, I have five more fingers.

[Guest Caseyj]

You may be right as I didn't bother to check the date but just guessed from memory. Shall we now compare the expiration dates for our memberships?? When was your membership last current since you claim to be a member??

 

The directory shows my membership as LIFE, but you aren't there at all...........

Kirk -

 

As a moderator you should know that you do not have to be a member of the Escapees Club to utilize this forum. I'm sure that there are many past and present members who utilize this forum via a user name and password only. It has nothing to do with full membership and t is a courtesy of the club to allow past members to retain their original Skp number. Just as I have.

[RV_]

Back to the topic, Changes? When we set out in 1997 we were into computers since the early to mid 80s before we got our first PCs in the AF, Zenith Z-100s, in 1986. While we Officially retired 1Feb,1998 I was we relieved of duty in October but stayed on call in our RV on base to help my successor get settled into the Superintendent's job for the last quarter of 1997 for terminal leave etc. and we already had a newsletter which are posted on my website still. Back then we got extra leave for the number of years served, 27 counting Reserve time during my break in service for college, in my case. We did not have a cell phone yet and used a commercial 800 toll free service called Webley. But we had to be able to connect to a phone line and in most RV parks like the one in Odessa Texas when I asked for an Internet connection did not know what the Internet was! I had already bought an acoustic coupler and thought I was ready to send out my email subscription list which was sent then out to about 200 people but grew so big that later I decided to build a website for rvroadie.com because that dang coupler only worked once. Back then the pay phones were in front of the office and the RVs and trucks going in and out drowned out the coupler from connecting no matter how hard I strapped the Velcro. Here is an article with a picture of an acoustic couple exactly like mine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler Our laptops and desktops all had their own 56k modems back then but getting the park office to let me plug into their fax line was a real bear. They thought we were going to run up a long distance bill. I remember in 1999 when we did Alaska that there was a park in Tok AK that actually had three dial up outlets for us in a room on a desk with partitions for each! That was high tech! We also had no phone navigation or the small portable suction cup mounted affordable Garmins yet so I got the best solution available at the time. An external bright yellow modem that connected with a serial port (Looks like the VGA monitor plug on a desktop) , the company was DeLorme, and they had the GPS hardware solution and the software Their Street Atlas program. We thought it was amazing. But it was only within a mile or so, precise civilian navigation like today did not happen until 2000.

 

Excerpt:

 

"Initially, the highest quality signal was reserved for military use, and the signal available for civilian use was intentionally degraded (Selective Availability). This changed with President Bill Clinton signing a policy directive in 1996 to turn off Selective Availability in May 2000 to provide the same precision to civilians that was afforded to the military. The directive was proposed by the U.S. Secretary of Defense, William Perry, because of the widespread growth of differential GPS services to improve civilian accuracy and eliminate the U.S. military advantage. Moreover, the U.S. military was actively developing technologies to deny GPS service to potential adversaries on a regional basis.[26]"

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System

 

I remember that change and how much easier it was to connect with their new software. For the first time, just after our Alaska trip, the GPS was allowed to be as accurate for civilian use as the military.

 

Back then we had slow Windows 98SE laptops or giant and slow heavy desktops in our rigs if we had them at all. I had a Sager computer. When we were in California doing a stint as a director of operations for a tech Internet start up in 2000, we stayed for six months in California at the Maple Leaf RV Park in Morgan Hill, CA, as the HQ I had to commute to once a week was in Santa Clara. They had something I had not seen before, a phone exchange built into the park but very expensive. The company picked up the tab because we worked on the Internet. In June my employment suddenly ended, and the owner luckily was a senior person at Intel there but I went to Fairfield and cheaper parking to recoup at Travis FamCamp. While there the biggest change happened when Echostar announced the were working on a VSat system for two way ground Internet service! Don Bradner, Lou Schneider and Stan and I were talking about it here on the forums daily looking for the legal and actual difficulties we saw. It was like the early days of Tesla with all the naysaying. I called EchoStar's regional HQ in Sacramento and they had one running and invited me up to see it. It was on a flat roof accessible from the second floor and I got to go out and check it out, and then to play inside on the computer, but the sat was down as they were doing reprogramming of the transponders. It was amazing and before we knew it they were for sale by Motosat/datatstorm using Hughes net? I forget please feel free to add in, Don got busy with Datastorm users.com helping all the fledgling VSAT RV operators. And now with 4 and 5 G even they are slowly fading away because of the cost. I never got one as I could not afford it before we came off the road. Don Bradner went on to form the Datastorm users group and shared his considerable expertise with the rest of us, it is still there: http://datastormusers.com/

 

Many of the top line RV manufacturers that were going strong in 1997-2003 are gone out of biz, or changed and consolidated since from the almost depression of 2007/8.

 

I see that the basic systems are still about the same but the dual pane windows and polar insulation packs are a bit better and sometimes standard as well. In fivers there are new Andersen hitches a that really work well surprisingly. Everything has gotten easier, and more durable. And Trucks have come a very long way in power and comfort.

 

We started with a Coleman Pop up camper in 1978 when we were at the Academy in Colorado Springs but soon switched over to VW Westphalia pop up campers because we were into hot VWs and the campers with tent room and porta potty vented room, refrigerator, tiny propane tank five gallon water tank and sink, with a two burner stove and furnace, were our perfect vehicle for daily driving as well as traveling home and to vacations with our two boys on leave. I restored 7 or 8 of them because when I'd get one done I'd decide I wanted to do things differently I'd trick up the engine and completely redo the interiors including paneling. And double my money because I was building them for me not to sell. But I kept upgrading using my sweat equity. My last one was a water cooled 1995 US specs I bought in Europe. It had Air Conditioning which we came to consider a must have after we were over 30!

 

We came off the road in 2003 and the advances in computers onboard RVs came a long way since to the hand held HD camcorders/cameras/comm devices/text devices/computers/and Internet connector we call cell phones today. Not to mention the tablets and ultrabooks that tuck away anywhere.

 

It has been a fun ride, and the future looks even brighter! (Because of LED lighting)

[rbertalotto]

First of all....... "from a severe hear attack"

 

"hear attack or "BEAR" attack??? Need to know more if it is the latter.....

 

Biggest changes is knowledge.....I remember amazingly overloaded pickup truck campers....and no one passed judgement as everyone did it! Full size station wagons towing huge trailers with rear bumpers nearly dragging on the ground! Couldn't drive at night because lights were in the trees.

 

Roads.....lots of "Highways" but not many "Interstates"........Rt66, Rt50, Rt6, Rt1, Rt101.............Scenic, but you didn't get there fast!

 

Huge improvement in vehicle reliability............ditto for tires.......

 

GPS.........Have no idea how I traveled all over the country for business without one. ......Now it seems I can go from the living room to the bathroom without one!

[RV_]

GPS.........Have no idea how I traveled all over the country for business without one. ......Now it seems I can go from the living room to the bathroom without one!

 

Now that's funny! I don't care who you are!! And because it is near true! We can also tell our phone to remind us what we went there to get when we get there too!

 

I agree totally about the knowledge and weights being ongoing and incremental improvements as RVrs get online before buying.

[rbertalotto]

 

 

We can also tell our phone to remind us what we went there to get when we get there too!

I use the timer on my smart phone to time an egg! Put the laundry in...Set the timer! Wife says dinner at 5pm...Set the alarm clock! And how about photographs...I have a few thousand dollars wrapped up in Nikon gear. Haven't touched it in years. Iphone 5S with post production software and I'm good to go!

[RV_]

Windows Lumia 735 here with the Carl Zeiss lenses and system with full HD. OMG! You are right! We use the alarm and the timer too! you use Siri, we use Cortana and never look for a piece of paper or pencil for an appointment, just tell her to set he appointment with alarm for an hour earlier. Shopping we just scan the codes and save the links or make the decision on the spot. I don't like commercials and have a 64 GB Micro SDXC card in it with 50 GB of my mp3 music. It goes through our Jabra cruisers in each vehicle that retransmits them in FM to our car audio system. If a text or email comes in I am asked if want it read to me and I answer yes or no, then asks if I want to reply all looking straight ahead as the Jabra is on the visor. If it is important I listen to it and reply by voice if necessary. Normal ones I just wait until I get home or to my destination as they will still be there.

 

Dang! I never realized how much I depend on it now. Jack and the rest you can tell me I told you so any time.

[sandsys]

We each keep a shopping list on our phones. When it is time to go we merge the two lists and delete duplicates. No longer do we stand in front of the fridge trying to remember what it was we were supposed to write on the list.

 

Linda Sand