Publisher

Hi, I'm Doug. I'm a father to two kids and husband to my high school sweetheart. I wasn't always an RVer, but when I started - I got hooked. This site and blog is really an offshoot to my posting on forums as I started learning and now I've moved onto helping other folks as I have a bit of time under my belt. My history is that I was a long time tent camper. Growing up, we would tent camp on vacation and each year, my dad and I would go tent camping for the start of trout season in Pennsylvania. As a young person, I would look at the RVers with snoobish disgust - "how were they camping if they were bringing their house into the woods?" As the years progressed, my camping fell back to being really twice yearly - in the early spring and late fall. Summer was too doggone hot and winter was too doggone cold! Fast forward a bit and now I've started my budding family and we wanted to go to the beach. The only thing that we could afford was tenting it at a campground. It reminded me- summer is too doggone hot! So, we didn't do that again and the next time opted for the barebones basic cabins- they had air conditioning. Roll forward to 2010, good friends of my wife bought a pop-up camper and spent all summer in it. They would tell us about all of the time that they spent and how wonderful the air conditioner worked and all of the amenities their little pop-up had (air conditioning, heat, potty, running hot and cold water). About the same time, my dad and his wife started asking around the family if we would use "Family Courtesy Cards" from Thousand Trails if they paid for the big upgrade to her Mom's membership. Apparently, with these cards, we could camp as much as we wanted for free. And then it happened- my wife's friend's family decided that they needed a little more space than the popup and were selling it. A few Facebook pictures and a quick in-person visit and we were the new owners of a 2001 Coleman Elite Niagara. It was the end of the season when this all happened, so it sat at the storage lot until the spring of 2011. 2011 came in with a bang. That yearly tent camping trip with my dad turned into us staying in the pop-up. That kicked the season off where we spent a good 30 nights in the camper as a family. Many of those, I worked during the day (I telecommute full-time anyway). While I never shook the feeling that I wasn't camping, I had great times spent with my family. But, there was this itch... The itch was that we took way too much stuff. Packing the pop-up was an exercise of a cross between Jenga and Origami and much stuff was moved back and forth from our Durango. We talked about going a few more times, but my wife just wasn't up for the work if we were just going for a weekend. We got a little green-eyed jealous of the home-like amenities of her friend's travel trailer... The winter of 2011 to 2012, we said that we'd "just start looking" and that we'd "keep the pop-up this year and upgrade next year". And then we looked a little more. And then we bought a new truck. And then we ordered our fifth wheel, a 2013 Palomino Sabre 36QBOK. At this point, it's like pulling a mobile apartment at 42' long, 2 bedrooms and 1 and a half baths. But, in 2012, we spent 50 nights in the camper together. Good times. I've learned a ton starting with the pop-up and then transitioning to the fifth wheel. I hope to share some of that knowledge here with you...

learntorv.com