Increasing
Pessimism about RVing
Over the past two months I have seen eight articles stating that the
current costs of fuel has killed RVing. And I have seen many more
articles that hint at this attitude. If you can afford to own an RV
and have it sit in your driveway (it's still costing you even if you
don't use it) there is no reason you cannot still enjoy it -- if
that's why you bought it in the first place.
Vacations using your RV can be much less
expensive
If you take family vacations even without children
— just the two of you
— a vacation using your RV will
almost always cost less than that vacation using public
transportation (Air or Amtrak) and paying for a hotel room
— even if it is a cheap one. Here's
a real-life example of a trip we took last summer, with two
children, to New York City. The total trip took two weeks, one week
of which was spent touring New York City.
Charlotte to New York City
We picked up the children, ages 10 and 8, at the Charlotte NC
airport, drove east on I-85 to I-77, north on I-77 to I-81 and
followed I-81 all the way to I-78 near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Then east in I-78 to Elizabeth, New Jersey where we signed into the
RV park on the west bank of the Hudson River. On weekdays you can
take the ferry to Manhattan (about 15 to 20 minutes) and on weekends
there is always the subway (also 15 to 20 minutes). Once you park
you don't have to move your vehicles again until you leave for home.
Fringe
Benefits: The Stops along the Way
We made many stops along the way, e.g., Endless Caverns in Virginia,
Hershey’s Chocolate World and the other venues in Hershey,
Pennsylvania and just about every rest stop (the children need
frequent breaks and the driver should). We have an upright freezer
(in addition to the refrigerator) in the 5th wheel and we stock it
to the brim including plenty of ice cream. Note that, while it is
legal to carry passengers in the fifth wheel trailer in North
Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, we rarely
do that unless it is nap time (in which case my wife is in there
with them. In that my wife and I each have our own individual cell
phones, we use them for communication rather than investing in an
intercom system. (With Verizon, the calls are free if both phones
are Verizon.)
Touring New York City
New York has a lot of thrills for 8 to 10 year-olds (actually for
all ages). They could spend a week in the Museum of Natural History,
all day in fascination at the Panorama of the City of New York at
the Queens Museum of Art (a 9,335 square foot scale model of the
entire 320 square miles occupied by the five boroughs of New York
City with over 800,000 true-to-scale buildings
— the largest scale model of any
city in the world). See:
www.what-where.info/new_york.htm.
Advantages of the RV Park
Touring New York City requires a lot of walking and, frequently,
standing. Little legs get tired. So we made a few extra trips across
the Hudson on the ferry so they could eat and take naps (New York
restaurants can be expensive and we do have a refrigerator and
freezer full of food.) This allowed us to revisit the Big Apple in
the evening with the children fresh and full of energy. The entire
week-long stay cost us $380 at the RV park, $236 for fares and $160
for admission charges (many things are free in New York),
— a total of $776 for the week. The
least expensive hotel in midtown Manhattan is $250 per night for
just one room. And we didn’t have to worry about picking up bed
bugs! With the two children you really should have two rooms (we
have two bedrooms in the 5th wheel).
Return Trip and Dutch Wonderland
Although the children would have loved to revisit Hershey,
Pennsylvania, we returned by a different route. I-78 takes you to
Lancaster, site of Dutch Wonderland —
a kids' paradise — and connects
with I-83 which takes you to I-95 and Washington, DC. We think all
kids should get a dose of our nation's capital -- but not an
overdose. We parked in College Park, MD, and used the Metro subway
system (it's really great!). Still there was a lot of walking. Then
it was back to Charlotte and their return home to California on the
plane.
What the Costs could have been
The cost of the trip north was $433 which includes $313 for diesel,
$90 for RV parks and $30 for admission fees. Of course, if we had
flown or taken the train the kids would have missed these sights and
thrills and it would have cost at least $600 by train and at least
twice that by air (plus parking fees, of course).
What the Real Costs were
The cost of the return trip was a little less than $500 which
included $270 for diesel, $180 for RV parks and $48 for admission
charges. We spent a total of $607 for fuel (including 6 gallons of
gasoline for the Onan generator); the grand total for the whole trip
was only $1,731. The hotel room in New York would have cost more
than that!
Don’t Forget the 'Fringe Benefits'.
And, remember, — if we had flown or
taken the train from Charlotte to New York and back the kids would
have missed out on all the sights and thrills they took in on the
way up and back. Now tell me, can you really afford to give up
RVing? |