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C O V E RS T O R Y
 Photos by Donna Terek / The Detroit News Free at last: Barb and Ron Hofmeister, who also appear
on the cover, figure the cost of living in a motor home is 40 percent less
than for folks who live at a permanent address.
Read all about it: Ron and Barb Hofmeister write a newsletter
on RV living, plus they have a book out, too.
"The big advantage of this lifestyle is that you get to travel
 Creature comforts: The Hofmeisters may not have a phone line to access the Internet, but they can still operate a computer and printer on board their motor home. |
By Paul L. Gaba
Special to The Detroit News
magine a life
without utility bills. Absent of subdivision association fees. Void of
property taxes. Suppose you could visit historical monuments and tourist
attractions across the country without ever leaving your home.
For the more than one million Americans who've passed up the life of
urban sprawl in favor of traveling the country in their recreational vehicles,
this is no fantasy, it's everyday life.
"Home is where
you park it," a philosophical Jim Kimmins says of his RV-cum-residence.
"We planned this out for eight years, and I think this is even better than
we thought it would be," says his wife, Maralyn. The Kimminses, who've
been on the road for about a year, used to park themselves in a far more
traditional house in Canton.
They're part
of a national boom in RV users. Sales of RVs, which for statistical purposes
also include towable units such as campers and travel trailers, are expected
to soar through the '90s as baby boomers enter the prime RV-buying years,
age 45 to 54, according to the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association.
According to a recent University of Michigan study, 44 percent of RV owners
are 55 and older, while 39 percent are between the ages of 35 and 54.
The concept
of living full time on the road is simple: Although far smaller than the
average permanent home (the Kimminses' quarters encompass all of 300 square
feet), today's motor homes provide comfortable, modern accommodations for
their dwellers. RVers have refrigerators, computers, stereo equipment,
microwaves and satellite dish-enhanced TVs at their disposal.
What they don't
have, though, is what many people don't want anyway: Stress.
"I traveled
for Chrysler for 30 years, going from airports to rental cars to hotels,"
says Jim Kimmins. "There's no Maalox or Tums in this lifestyle. The stress
is gone."
Kimmins pauses.
"Of course, if you don't like to tow or drive a motor home, then it's stressful
- but you won't pick this lifestyle, either. If you want to sit at home
and spend your retirement being a couch potato, this is not the lifestyle
for you."
Rather, the
life of a full-time RVer is nomadic, spent roaming from one campground
to another with mostly the basic necessities. It is a chance to get back
in touch with rustic America, something foreign to many urbanites.
"We take the
back country roads, visit the small, little towns and meet people we've
never had the opportunity to meet," Maralyn Kimmins says. "Having lived
in the big city for so many years, you find there are things that happen
there that don't happen in the smaller towns. Doing this really helps you
regain faith in humankind and regain an appreciation for this nation that
perhaps a person loses when living every day in corporate life."
This includes
going to a local high school football game, participating in potluck dinners,
going to band concerts and really becoming immersed in a community for
weeks at a time.
RVers also
disprove the adage that you can't take it with you. "The big advantage
of this lifestyle is that you get to travel and see a lot, but you're also
living at home," says Ron Hofmeister, who with his wife, Barb, has co-authored
a book about full-time RV living called An Alternative Lifestyle:
Living
and Traveling Full Time in a Recreational Vehicle, and an RV-lifestyle
newsletter, Movin' On. "If you have a house and wanted to do all
this travel, it would be (cost) prohibitive."
"We don't have
to worry about smoky motel rooms or sleeping in beds other people have
slept in," says Barb Hofmeister. "Our home is always with us."
Along with
the back-to-nature mentality that many full-timers share is another love:
the lower cost of living. Ron Hofmeister, a former deputy finance director
of the Michigan Department of Transportation, is considered an expert on
budgeting for the lifestyle - and with more than seven years on the road,
he has the credentials. He says full-timers pay up to 40 percent less in
household expenses than people living at permanent addresses.
Depending on
whether you buy new or used, and, of course the size of the vehicle, an
RV suitable for full-time living ranges from around $40,000 all the way
to $1 million for those bus-size behemoths used by rock stars. The Hofmeisters
started out with a $30,000 vehicle and eventually upgraded to a larger,
better-appointed model.
Rent, utilities,
property taxes, maintenance costs and other fees associated with home ownership
do not exist in the world of full-time RV residents. The Hofmeisters' monthly
budget of $1,615 has only four major expenses besides their monthly RV
payment: $350 for groceries, $300 for recreation or dining out, and $175
each for campground fees and fuel. The fuel is for both their RV and their
accompanying Toyota pickup truck, which they use for excursions into town,
as it's rather cumbersome to unhook an RV from its site just to go grocery
shopping.
Hofmeister
says even their budget can be chopped. "There are countless ways to lower
campground costs, and $175 merely represents our experience based on a
combination of membership parks, commercial campgrounds and public parks,"
he says.
Some parks
reserve sites only for members, such as Smoke Rise, located east of Flint
in Genesee County's Richfield Township. Smoke Rise, where the Hofmeisters
and the Kimminses recently stayed, is a Coast To Coast campsite, meaning
only members of that organization can stay there. Maralyn Kimmins says
that by buying a membership prior to retirement and becoming full-timers,
their campground costs are covered by $4-per-night vouchers.
The Hofmeisters
get more mileage out of their campground budget by either "boondocking"
(camping in roadside rest areas, parking lots and other safe and legal
places to park) or by volunteering time at public parks.
A common type
of public volunteering is called "campground hosting." A campground host
is comparable to that of a park ranger proxy, assisting other campers with
park information, rule interpretations, campsite selection and even emergencies
requiring outside assistance.
Full-timers
also pitch in when disaster strikes. When torrential rains flooded the
Mississippi River a few years ago, many full-time RV dwellers revised their
travel plans and headed to Iowa and Missouri to assist the cleanup effort.
Despite all
the positives full-timers experience, they admit there are a few drawbacks.
Minor expenses include mail forwarding and voice mail services - essential
for full-timers because they don't have a permanent address and rarely
hook a phone line into the RV.
"You'd better
get used to the world of pay phones. Cellulars are nice - they're OK for
emergencies - but they're not cost-efficient for everyday use," Ron Hofmeister
says. "Any full-timer will tell you that not having a regular phone is
the biggest drawback to this lifestyle."
"We have provisions
to hook up a phone line, but the only time we use it is when we know we
will be in one place for two or three months," Jim Kimmins says. "We call
for messages daily and get first-class priority mail drops once a month."
Adds Maralyn
Kimmins: "Because we don't have a phone, I can't access the Internet, which
is something I'd really like to do. I feel in a way that I'm missing out
on it."
Along with
missing direct phone calls from children and friends, some full-timers
miss having a permanent church or school system. (You don't have to be
a retiree to partake of full-time RV living; younger people have been known
to home-school their children.) They also sometimes have difficulty explaining
the rationality of selling or giving away their worldly possessions in
favor of life on the road.
"We trained
our kids in terms of what we're doing," Barb Hofmeister says. "We told
them, 'We're not jumping ship and we're not abandoning you. We want to
keep in touch and we want you to call, and we will call back. And we will
visit you, because our house has wheels."
"Much of our
old furniture is divided up among our kids, and whenever we see them there's
always a reminder of our former home there," says Jim Kimmins. "Most of
our kids handled it pretty well, although we were asked a lot of times
by one of our sons, 'Are you done yet?'"
"We know people
very close to us who think - and have voiced to us - that what we are doing
is absolutely crazy: 'You're so radical! How can you sell your house?'"
he adds. "Let me tell you, I've had enough of shoveling snow! I've had
enough of gardening! I've had enough of paying property taxes and association
fees and getting nothing for it; to heck with that!"
n Family Motor Coach Association, (800) 543-3622
n Escapees, (800) 976-8377
n The Good Sam Club, (800) 234-3450
n Coast to Coast (800), 368-5721
n Christian Camper Club, (818) 343-3881
Their book, "An Alternative Lifestyle: Living and Traveling Full Time in a Recreational Vehicle", is available at most bookstores.
Webmaster's Note: This article was printed
when An Alternative Lifestyle
was still in print. It has been replaced with our new book, Movin'
On which is available everywhere. Click here for ordering
information. You may read the adventure stories from An Alternative
Lifestyle on line at http://www.movinon.net/Book/contents.htm
