I can’t perceive why persons are pouring their hard-earned cash into cryptocurrencies as an alternative of campers. The RV growth that started final yr exhibits no signal of slowing down. Shipments are anticipated to achieve document ranges this yr, and consumers are snatching up models as quickly as they hit the lot. Inventory for used RVs is simply as tight, and the inventory value of two of the main producers — Winnebago and Thor — has greater than doubled. But to me probably the most compelling motive to decide on campers over crypto is pure utility. Sure, Bitcoin can now be used to purchase a Tesla, nevertheless it gained’t get you into a National Park.
To be clear: I don’t know whether or not both the crypto or camper market is in a bubble. I’m not an investor, and I don’t personal any inventory in RV firms. I’m simply a man who, as I write this, is dwelling in a van down by the river.
Last summer time my spouse and I purchased a 25-foot 2017 Winnebago, and since September we’ve been touring whereas working remotely. It’s been an absolute pleasure, even when it’s appeared like a complete calamity, which has been usually sufficient — just like the time the bathroom pedal broke. That was hardly the one pure catastrophe that threatened to destroy the journey. The wind in Wyoming almost blew us over because it ripped aside certainly one of our canopies. The wildfires in Colorado saved us inside, and the tornados in Alabama saved us up all evening. The historic deep freeze in Texas killed our battery and froze our water pipes. But we’re from New York, so we’re used to robust winters. At no level did we take into account flying to Cancun.
Living on the highway in a RV is not for everybody, in fact, and the surroundings is not at all times one thing out of America the Beautiful. But that’s the purpose: It’s a probability to expertise areas of the nation we expect we all know from the information, and to talk with individuals we expect we perceive from purple and blue maps. I’m not suggesting that extra RV-ing will magically eradicate our deep nationwide divisions, however I do assume it could assist soften among the hardest edges.
At RV parks and campgrounds, life occurs open air and folks are usually chatty — about their lives, their travels, their autos, and every so often, in fact, their politics. Conversations with strangers circulation simply, and people interactions may also help us see each other as one thing greater than Democrats and Republicans, allies and enemies.
The solely bother is: The neighbors we got here throughout at campgrounds didn’t, as a group, seem like America. RV-ing tilts previous and white — a number of retirees. We noticed hardly any Black, Latino or Asian campers. I can’t say whether or not we met any Jews, however one man in Pittsburg informed me his final identify, Markowitz, was Yiddish for “no tenting.”
The RV group would profit enormously from extra variety. And as individuals discover themselves parked subsequent to neighbors from completely different backgrounds, so would the entire nation. We not too long ago stayed at a Black-owned RV park in Georgia that a younger couple opened a few years in the past, and I used to be stunned to be taught that it is certainly one of solely about a dozen within the nation. But perhaps that’s altering. Another will open in Talladega, Alabama, this spring. And the younger households and {couples} driving the Covid camper craze usually tend to worth and search out variety.
Of course, it could be that the RV growth goes bust, and Bitcoin soars ever larger. But if I’m going to danger burning cash, I’d want to do it whereas sitting round a campfire sipping my neighbor’s moonshine.
