rv life

The RV Archives

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There’s such a wealth of information about RVing and long-term camping online. We are constantly researching. To my fellow RVers, I encourage you to do what you can to keep your sites online, even after you lose interest in blogging, quit RVing, or switch to posting solely on YouTube or other “siloed” service. (A siloed service is one which can only be used or accessed through a specific app or other limiting factor, like Facebook, Twitter, and yes, even YouTube, where posts can vanish at the whims of the services’ owners.) Many sites fade away. There are still some decades-old gems out there though. One of my favorites is Two Penny Travels’s computer setup from 1999. As I write this post from a 4-pound laptop tethered to a smartphone hotspot (at speeds of 45mbps up and 23mbps down), I think about Sam and Alice (of Two Penny Travels) and the …

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RV Park Co-Ops

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What is a coop? A co-op (or coop) as in a “cooperatively owned entity” is one in which everyone involved in the entity is also an owner. Companies can be coops (like REI, Ocean Spray, and Welch’s), but so can neighbors who have a collective stake in their communities and who want to build a better neighborhood. Residents of mobile home parks have been forming coops over the years, inspired by heartbreaking and heartwarming stories about landlords who raise lot rents so high that people are left homeless, and neighbors banding together to collectively purchase and run their parks. Just last week, VTDigger published a story about 4 mobile home parks converted into resident-owned coops. This 1986 LA Times article about a group of tenants who banded together to buy their home from their landlords is especially empowering, because their actions created a whole new category of government loans. Mobile …

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Can I tow this?

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When we decided to move into an RV, we spent a lot of time weighing the pros and cons of motorhomes vs. towables. We ultimately decided on a travel trailer (for reasons we’ll probably talk about in another post). We spent so much time learning the differences between GVWR and GCVWR, that we decided to write it all down. We created a small towing capacity calculator, Can I Tow This? to help us decide what we should tow and how we should tow it. We also used Trailer Life’s Tow Guides with comprehensive lists of towing capacities, since truck manufacturers aren’t especially consistent about publishing towing specifications.