I’ve made no secret that camping isn’t my favourite thing, even over here where camping gets done right: firepits, tent pads, running water, toilet blocks and good access. But I have a dream: Waking up in a campsite without feeling like the cat slept on my head and the tent pad was replaced with orthopaedic rocks overnight.
Yeah, this is how I look when camping. No one needs this in the mornings….
So, just for a laugh, we went along to the Snowbirds RV show in Abbotsford to see how the other half camps. And boy, were we in for a surprise.
Just one wing of the Tradex facility. There were three other areas of equal size – plenty to see.
In the huge Tradex facility there were lines and lines of RVs on display. From humble trailer tents, through the fabulously appointed Rpod…
Small on the outside, but containing a bathroom and a kitchen and double bed…Plus a zip-on shelter out front….
…Right up to the monster coach-sized rolling homes.
The biggest RVs had pop-out sections and living areas larger than the flat I lived in at college.
We’ve looked at the Rpods and trailer tents before, but only online, and this was an opportunity to really poke around inside them. What I found weird was that these smaller beasties were the ones designed for family camping. Once you got above a certain size, the RVs were aimed at the Snowbirds – the seniors who run south during the winter, and are looking for all the comforts of home in warmer climes without being tied to another mortgage. The big coaches I had assumed could hold a reasonable-sized rock band and their groupies, actually were meant for an old couple. One bedroom, no roll-out spare beds, bigger bathrooms, and plenty of day-living space. The appointments were plush, but Oldster plush. The whole place looked like Grandma’s house (in a good way. If Grandma had a thing for leather sofas.)
There was more of interest for us in this model – a converted van…
We’re looking for something to suit our old bones better than a pad on the floor. And a built-in bathroom is more appealing than those late-night treks across a pitch-black campsite that may or may not contain bears.
Bears who would be scarier than these ones. And the weasel…
We discovered the Rpod would be great, but the trailer tents are more in our price range and neither is likely for now, since we still haven’t got a hitch put on the car. That’s the one hitch in the plan! That we haven’t got a hitch! Ha ha ha ha ahem.
So it looks like we’ll still be in tents next summer, unless the books sales pick up and I make my first $20,000 and decide to blow it all on an Rpod. Or unless the Rpod people would like me to write them a glowing review of their product from personal experience? Go on, lend us one and we’ll be ever so careful with it.
The weasels can sleep in the tent outside it…..
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