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"Make it so."
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard
We were boldly going where no one had gone before ...
Well, in a way no one - or none of us, anyway - has gone before.
We were going north. Our two-month mission: To explore the spine of our beloved Rocky Mountains, as far as we could
get (and back) over the summer.
How we were going, though, was the real adventure: In an RV. Specifically, in a 24-foot camper trailer to be pulled
by our trusty Chevy steed and its stable of 350 horses.
RVs ... I know. I curse them, too. Living in a mountain town that panders to tourists, vacationers, and
silver-haired, white-knuckled retirees driving Greyhound buses converted to homes nicer than I was raised in, I, too,
have suffered. I have been damned, dammed behind these tin-can condos as they've labored up Coal Bank and Lizard Head
passes like mastodons running a marathon. I've watched with a perverse mix of dread and lurid anticipation as they've
wobbled unsurely down U.S. 550's sheer switchbacks into Ouray like poodles trying to run with the wolves. And I've
displayed stunning restraint dodging their weaving ways as they've negotiated our city's downtown streets and
intersections, stopping, starting and turning awkwardly like whales schooling with mackerel
The source of my arrogance is that my wife and I have long been outdoor purists: backpackers, car campers, river
runners and commercial guides. In all those decades, we've always slept - and, for several summers, lived - under
either canvas or the stars, and the biggest "motor coach" we've employed has been a 1981 Jeep Wagoneer. And we have
endeavored to raise our two children - now 10 and 12, backcountry brats and river rats themselves - the same proudly
primitive way.
Yet here we be. We be RV.
We knew going into it that this summer would be about more than adventure and travel, it would also involve a
cultural leap as new members of RV nation. So we went into it with the only attitude we could: we wouldn't just
explore strange new worlds, we would also seek out new life, and a new civilization.
Nonetheless, there is some history here. When she was a kid, my wife's family spent many summers touring the West
with the aid of a pop-up tent camper. (Think: two parents and five kids in a little nylon box. Even we're not that
tough.) My parents, meanwhile, sported a pickup camper for our family's many New England forays on weekends and
vacations. For four of us it was crammed - the kitchen had to be dismantled into a bed every night - but it worked.
Even though we both later swore off camper-aided camping, these family RV epics are treasured memories for Sarah and
me. So when we decided to make some epic memories with our kids, for the first time an RV started to make sense. It
would be four of us out on the road for eight weeks, covering a lot of miles and moving our camp a lot. We would be
in grizzly habitat frequently and for long periods of time, so the hard shell around us was comforting. Given those
parameters, what we ended up with was a used 24-foot Fleetwood Mallard camper trailer. (The name is important here:
Something inside me - perhaps that manly part of me that refuses to wear Lycra or walk around in clogs - wouldn't let
me drive an enormous vehicle called what some RVs are named: Swinger. Wilderness. Cherokee. Zeppelin. Chateau Sport.
Frolic. Slumber Queen. To name a few.)
Inside the Mallard's thin tin walls are the usual RV amenities: gas stove, small refrigerator, kitchen area, battery
(or plug-in AC) power, water and a good amount of storage space. Getting an RV of such length also offered us a
toilet with a separate wash area (we were, after all, traveling with two pre-teens), a "master" double bed, a couch
that converts to a bed and another fold-out berth-style bunk. These sleeping options made it so we didn't need to
break down the kitchen table to sleep all four of us, so I could keep up my habit of getting up early and brewing
coffee and scribbling. It's tight, but it also provided enough space so that we didn't end up living out an RV
version of The Shining.
It worked. With the help of our RV, we spent this summer exploring our home mountains - visiting our national parks
and honoring our public lands (before the Bush administration turns them into Six Flags Over Yellowstone, McGlacier
and DisneyCanyonlands), and we got to do it in a way that was fun and functional. Not that we couldn't have done it
otherwise, but covering that much ground in such varied terrain and through all kinds of weather was made much
easier, faster, safer, and more comfortable.
Over two months and thousands of miles, we were always able to pull up to a spot - a campsite, a side road, a
pull-out in the woods, along a river or on a grand overlook with a sweeping view of the Rockies - and immediately be
there. Rain or shine, cold or hot, all we had to do was park, balance the "foundation" with four jacks, turn on the
hot water and water pump, and we were home. (Or more like "at the cabin," anyway. Same cabin, new cabin site each
night.) And then, if we wanted, it took just five minutes to unhook the truck, and we were off exploring our new
terrain. And on those rainy nights - or when the mosquitoes were thick as rain - we gathered inside, dry and chipper,
playing cards or reading.
Comfortable, but this has also been a deeply humbling experience. Actually driving an RV, and not just
pointing and cursing, has imparted in me a surprisingly elevated stature for my fellow RV jockeys. As we all know,
you don't have to be an astronaut to pilot an RV, but it ain't for sissies, either. (Although, being an arrogant
adventurer, our shake-down cruise was to tackle Red Mountain Pass the day we left. Our mantra as we hooked up the
trailer to our truck was, "If we make it to Ouray, we'll make it all the way.")
Even as a commercial river guide, I have to admit that, for generation of sheer fear, whitewater has nothing on
hauling a small house on wheels over a mountain road. Think of hours and hours of non-stop class III - no pool-drop
rush-relax cycles on the highway - interspersed with frequent, unpredictable class IV pitches: hills, narrow roads,
other drivers, potholes, etc. Even walking through grizzly country is less dangerous than sharing a winding and
narrow road with tandem tanker semis and ancient overloaded logging trucks careening toward you - like sharks in a
swimming pool, they know they'll win any confrontation
In the spirit of full disclosure, I also have to admit that while driving this beast through city streets, I came to
understand for the first time the value of The Box Store That Must Not Be Named - let's call it Valdemart - for the
RVer. It's with great relief that an RV captain spies that huge pavement harbor for throwing out anchor, knowing that
this is the one port required to gather the provisions needed to set sail again.
Still, even if I have come to appreciate and empathize with my RVing brothers and sisters, there are some places
that, after sharing campgrounds with all sorts of RVs and RVers, my Thoreauvian conscience (and, lest we forget,
Thoreau passed his Walden wilderness adventure in a cabin about the size of our RV) won't let me go:
? I will never camp in a Valdemart parking lot.
? No generators. There's nothing more suburban than the camper that pulls into the campground slot next to you, then fires up a whiney engine so the occupants can sit inside by themselves all night watching TV.
? Also for us, no TV. Some campgrounds have cable-TV hookups, and some RVs even have their own satellite dishes that rise from the roof like Eyewitness News vans covering a prison riot. But even in campground, we're still there to see the land and meet the people.
? No road hogging. When I drive, I always pull over when there's more than three vehicles stacked up behind us. It's a way of "paying it forward" for when I return to my RV-following life back home.
? And we refuse to get one of those spare-tire covers for the back of our camper that says "Easy does it!" or "We're the Wrights! from Durango, Colorado!" Ours instead says, "Hayduke Lives!" Hey, I haven't changed that much.
Aside from those who indulged in those nasty behaviors, I have to say, I really liked most of the fellow RVers we've met on the road and in campgrounds up and down the great Rocky Mountains. The retired couple (okay, it appears everybody driving around in an RV is retired) who carried their Harley in the back of their RV, using their camper as a base camp. Greg and Katy, hot springs addicts from Vancouver who, after giving us guidance on springs and spas all over the region, left us with these solemn, sincere parting words of RV wisdom: Don't hit a moose. Bob, Mirna, Roger and Sue, who shared many beers and many rounds of their home-made beanbag-toss game. The guy who helped build the Alaska Highway who knocked on our door to talk for an hour about how I handle pulling a trailer with an automatic transmission on mountain passes (I shift it like a manual), then left us with maps and his insider insights on camping and fishing spots.
While these are not people we would normally run into camping the way we usually camp, they were still fun. They were
friendly. They were interesting. They were ... well, travelers, just like us. And I think we found with these folks a
deeper connection here than I, in my mountain-man machismo, was ever willing to admit before.
Look, even though I'm now officially an RVer, I still don't think RVing as worthy of the term "camping." No, this is
more like ... cabining. But if you think about it, the RV and its lifestyle comes from a longer lineage than
perhaps we backcountry snobs care to admit. While Europeans tend to idealize exploration in unexplored terra
incognita in small (and generally male) parties, the fact is that primal people really did most of their
traveling and migrating in family groups for millions of years, carrying their complete homes along known trails to
re-visited and shared camping areas, which minimized impacts, offered security and guaranteed amenities.
I would like to posit that the RV is a modern-day technological version of that ancient form of travel, reflecting
the nature of the "trail" system we have today. Today's RVs run like wagons or travois or carts or pack animals
across the landscape - their occupants something like Bedouins, or gypsies, or the American prairie horse cultures.
And RVers then rendezvous nightly in campgrounds, on back roads, remote byways and roadside turnouts in tight little
self-protecting circles, sharing company and amenities and company
Perhaps the RV, seen in this new light, is just the evolutionary step between the tipi and the starship. I mean,
isn't that exactly where were are as a culture? Aren't we all just a little RV?
Ken Wright is parked in Durango.
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