Published March, 2000
Welcome back for the third edition of RV Travel Links. I'm Sam, full-time RVer and part-time web-surfer, and I search the Internet to find the best web-sites for all you armchair RVers. Here are the latest web-sites I have found about the RV lifestyle.
The first place I looked this time was right at home, the home page of this magazine. If you are out on the road and cannot get your mail, or if you haven't picked up the latest copy of RV Companion, take a look http://www.RVCompanion.com/ to find out what you are missing. Like the hardcopy magazine, this web-site is just beginning its development and the editors are starting to provide a great networking list for services you may require in your RV travels.
I looked around for some more good reading and found Chuck Woodbury. He has been traveling around and writing about his observations of life on the road since 1987. He publishes these in a quarterly called the Out West Newspaper. A small fraction of Chuck's writing, but enough to tempt you, can be found at http://www.outwestnewspaper.com/. He offers samples of his features, editorials, and short stories. He also offers a subscription plan.
Another delightful place to find some personal writing about RV travel is at Winfield's page of Gentle Adventures. Go to http://hometown.aol.com/winfield3/life1/index3.htm. Here you will find the writings and musings of Winfield Stirling, a former entomologist at Texas A&M. He offers a delightful series of short pieces on his travels of the past eight years. You can spend hours reading here. He has other useful links in his page, including one devoted to his research into RV parks with Hot, Instant Phone Hookups for attaching to the Internet at your RV site.
There are more and more special interest groups in the RVing community, and many of these are using the Internet for networking and sharing their common interests. One very well organized site is http://www.RVingwomen.com/, the home page of an organization devoted to women who spend time in RVs. Here women can gather to read about issues of their immediate concern and to discuss their common problems and goals in RVing. The site has a chat room, and the organization has their own magazine.
Workcamping is the lifestyle of living in your RV while you work. This lifestyle has been around for years. If you are considering working while on the road in your RV, you must check out Workamper News on the Web at http://www.workamper.com/, Workers on Wheels at http://www.workersonwheels.com/ and the Cool Works site at http://www.coolworks.com/. These sites describe what the workcamping life is like and what kinds of opportunities are out there.
A great source of information for RVers is the growing variety of conferences and RV rallies around the country. One of these is the "Life on Wheels" Conferences sponsored by the University of Idaho. Notes from past conferences in this series can be found at http://www.rversonline.org/ConfIndex.html. If you have a chance to take classes at one of these conferences, do so, for you will learn much about the RV lifestyle. In the meantime, read some of these notes for some great ideas.
Have you wondered what to expect in a membership campground for the RVer? My wife and I have our base camp at Jojoba Hills SKP Resort in southern California, and I thought you might like to see the place. Take a look at http://www.jojobahills.com/. This resort has a nice set of amenities, and the web-site gives you some interesting details about how it operates.
Finally, I want to tell you about a web-site that does not focus on RVing, but it does look into the future, and from time to time addresses issues that will affect RVing. The URL is http://www.wfs.org/, the home page of the World Future Society. At this site you can read about what others think the world will be like in this new millenium, from available resources to social changes to technological advances. Take a look from time to time to see what is coming around the corner.
Well, that's it for now. Come by for a visit next issue. And if you are traveling, maybe we will see each other somewhere down the road. Drive safely.