Tent camping was the norm for my wife and I before the addition of two Yorkshire Terriers to the family. So the thought of being in a tent with two active puppies with equally active bladders and bowels is my personal version of a nightmare. So we decided to buy a travel trailer. We knew next to nothing about campers or RV’s in general which meant that we had a great deal of research to do. What kind? How long? What kind of features do we need? All these questions were answered by the folks at Northgate RV in Ringgold, GA. Salespeople and I rarely seem to see eye to eye, so it was refreshing to find one that I hit it off with. Fred May answered all of our questions and a few days later we became the proud owners of a 2006 Sun Valley Roadrunner XL 27RB. We left the dealership and headed straight for the campground at Doll Mountain on Carter’s Lake to try it out for the weekend.
Our first camping experience in the travel trailer was a bit confusing initially, but we soon settled in and found out what all of the fuss was about. The first benefit we discovered after getting the electricity and water connected was convenience. When we were tent camping, my wife had to get in the car and drive to the public bath house in the campground to even use the restroom. In the camper there is a toilet, shower, and sink with full privacy and safety. The next thing I noticed was that there was more free time to actually enjoy the camp site. With tent camping we would focus most of our time on making the gear work, like messing with tent stakes, the rain fly, sleeping bags, and propane bottles. With the RV, things just worked. The bed was made, dinner was ready in minutes instead of hours, and we spent less time looking for things that we knew we had brought but couldn’t seem to find. Now traditionalists may find these very activities a reason FOR tent camping, like part of the experience, and it is. But sometimes you just want to relax. Camping in a travel trailer allows you to focus on the parts of camping that are enjoyable like endlessly messing around with the campfire or reading a good book or playing guitar. When the rain comes, you just go inside the camper and do something else until it quits instead of praying that you sealed all the seams correctly in your tent.
My wife and I will still go tent camping, but without the puppies and probably in conjunction with some hiking. So if we are going to get drenched, smoky, and tired, the destination will make it all worthwhile.