As her husband neared the end of his career, Barbara Leake began to picture her future from the passenger’s seat of the recreational vehicle the couple planned to buy. That picture got a little fuzzy after his retirement, when, instead of an RV dealer’s lot, the two found themselves in divorce court. With her husband of 32 years pursuing other, “much younger” interests, the then-52-year-old moved into the driver’s seat of her own RV.
“He got the new girlfriend and I got all our plans for a life on the road,” said Leake, leaving no question as to who she thinks got the better end of the deal.
“I’ve always been independent, but in my marriage it was easier not to argue, so I became a little introverted,” she said. “But since I got behind the wheel, I’ve been getting back to the girl who said what she thought and went where she wanted to go.”
For the past 10 years, that has meant visiting her parents frequently in Arizona, dropping in on any one of her four kids without having to boot any grandkids out of their beds and earning her keep at campgrounds and RV resorts across the Southwest, where she has done everything from managing the kitchen to cleaning the bathrooms.
Along the way, she has found not only a fierce independence and near obsession with freedom, but also a community of women her age seeking–and finding–those same things at the wheel of their own RVs.
Leake is a member of Loners on Wheels (www.lonersonwheels.com), an international RV club of single men and women who enjoy traveling and camping along with the camaraderie of fellow RVers and the singles lifestyle. About 65 percent of its 3,000 members are women. She is also part of an unofficial community of women who have chosen the road over a retirement home; freeways over Florida; and self-reliance over self-pity at losing their husbands and former traveling buddies.
“I’ve discovered that I was far more independent and had far more faith than I ever dreamed. It has made me more outgoing and more adventurous,” says Sharlene “Charlie” Minshall, 66, who has put 330,000 miles on her RV in the 17 years since she hit the road, four years after her husband died at age 47. That’s when the former Girl Scout leader and medical secretary decided she “wasn’t getting much out of life,” sold her home in Michigan, quit her job and “hit the road, silver, single, and solo.”
Minshall has written several books since then, including “RVing Adventures with the Silver Gypsy” (Gypsy Press, 2001) and “Full-Time RVing: How To Make It Happen” (Gypsy Press, 2000), and leads seminars at national RV rallies. But her biggest rush still comes from a nomadic existence. If her home didn’t have wheels, Minshall knows she would never have lived for six months on a beach in Mexico, jumped off a 10,000-foot mountain in a tandem paraglide or canoed through 500 miles of wilderness on Alaska’s Yukon River.
“When I have no schedule and I can pull in beside a rushing stream in tree-covered mountains and set up where nobody knows where I am …,” she said.
Sharing a community
For those who want to hang out with just the gals, there’s RVing Women, “the only international support network solely for the woman RV enthusiast,” says its Web site (www.rvingwomen.org). RVW provides rallies, classes, online chat rooms and caravans as well as a sisterhood for its members, who might enjoy their freedom, but still crave girl talk, homemade chicken salad at potluck dinners and advice from someone who knows how to get grease stains off the side of the rig.
“If you don’t have community, you will get off the road. You need a shared culture,” says Jaimie Hall, 58, co-editor of “RV Traveling Tales: Women’s Journeys on the Open Road” (Pine Country Publishing, $14.95). Hall has traveled full time with her husband since 1992 (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
Escapees RV Club (www.escapees.com), the granddaddy of RV groups with 34,000 members, was founded 25 years ago by Joe and Kay Peterson (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). Among its services: mail forwarding and a bimonthly magazine. For women new to RVing, the advice offered by such groups and in books can be priceless, especially when it comes to issues that don’t seem to be a problem for men, like surviving separation anxiety–from stuff. Contributors to “RV Traveling Tales” remind readers that Aunt Lucy’s china or Hummel figurines are not good traveling companions. Although today’s RVs have many comforts of home–including figurine-accommodating shelving–knickknacks add extra weight and emotional baggage, slowing the vehicle and driver, say those who’ve discovered the convenience of storage units and the basements of their adult children.
Like many newcomers, Wendy Humphries came to RVing Women after losing a traveling companion, wondering if she had the courage and knowledge to go solo.
“The get-together with the Midwest Wanderers was a life-changing experience,” says Humphries, about her trip to an RVW event in Scottsburg, Ind., last year. Her RVing partner had died six months earlier, she was retiring, selling her home and deciding what to do next.
“We laughed and laughed and laughed our way through the weekend,” Humphries said. “I returned home knowing that I had a new group of friends for support and encouragement.”
That support, she has learned in her one year and 12,000 miles on the road, can make a solo traveler feel like part of a big family.
That “girls-only” vibe is fiercely protected at RVW’s rallies. On the Web site of the Northeast Network of RVW, rules about “dogs, men and children” are clearly stated: Dogs, cats and other pets can’t come to group events like meals because of “other women’s allergies and possible disruption problems.” As for men, the site warns, “we make no exceptions to the `Can I bring my husband’ issue. The answer is `leave him at home or in a motel and come and join us for a few wonderful days.'” And the same code applies to kids–although “a 75-year-old member may bring her 55-year-old daughter.”
“The gathering of women without men is completely different than a gathering of mixed couples,” said Lyn Rogers, 71, an RVing Women board member who lives full time in her rig. “We are not afraid to ask questions. The women seem to be more free to be themselves.”
Behind the lone-wolf attitude, however, are plenty of devoted mothers and grandmas. And the fear of losing touch with family is a concern–at first. Minshall said she feels closer to her two daughters (who have 3,000 miles between their doorsteps in Virginia and Washington) and sees their families more often than she would if still lived in Michigan.
For Leake, being able to park her rig down the hill from the home of her parents, who are in their mid-80s, makes her feel more secure than if she had to call a nursing home to ask how they’re doing. And thanks to e-mail and cell phones, many RVers said they check in with their adult children at least weekly and chat online with their grandkids.
“My biggest fear was leaving my children and grandkids,” Rogers says. “But they keep moving on with their lives, and now, so do I. Staying in touch has never been a problem.”
RV ownership growing
Groups like RVingWomen and Loners on Wheels have noted an upsurge in members in the last five years, although they have no specific data on growth. Since two women tacked up a poster looking for other “independent women” at an RV rally in 1989, RVW has grown to 18 chapters with 5,000 members in 42 states and Canada. Overall, nearly 1 in 12 U.S. vehicle-owning households now owns an RV, a 7.8 percent increase in the past four years and a 42 percent gain over the past 21 years, according to a 2001 University of Michigan study commissioned by the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association.
Over the next decade, as Baby Boomers enter their prime RV-buying years, the number of RV-owning households is projected to rise 15 percent to nearly 8 million by 2010.
Although the RV industry doesn’t collect specific data about the number of single women RV owners, nearly every segment–from dealers to driving lesson instructors–is catering to them. At conventions, seminars urge dealers to learn the basics of selling to women (“listen twice as much as you talk,” avoid calling anyone “Dear” or “Hon” and never automatically hand the keys to the husband for a test drive). Caravan tour companies offer all-women “spa getaway packages” to campgrounds and resorts that offer massage, fitness classes and pedicures. And through an approved technical service training program, weekend maintenance classes for women are offered by RVW in conjunction with the RVIA.
“More women are going solo in their RVs because it’s getting easier,” said Gaylord Maxwell, a former RV dealer, college educator and writer whose popular Life on Wheels conferences have made him a Pied Piper of the lifestyle he and his wife have enjoyed for nearly 50 years. Among the 150 seminars at his conferences, many address the specific needs of solo women drivers, like safety concerns, and include pepper-spray demos and RV maintenance.
Said Maxwell: “The equipment is easier, the learning process is easier and the whole idea of being able to pick up and go wherever you want and do your own thing is exactly what women today are looking for.”
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TIPS FOR THE ROAD
“Go for it!”
That was the single most repeated piece of advice veteran RV-ers had for other wanderlust-bitten women. But in addition to the near cultlike (in a good way) enthusiasm, the women interviewed also offered these practical tips:
– Rent before you buy.
– Start small–in both rigs and routes.
– Join a club. No one is born knowing how to hook up a sewer line.
– Take a driving course.
– Figure out your monthly land-based budget and make sure you can afford to go on the road.
– Create a list of your employable skills and look for ways to use them on the road.
– Get a notebook computer. Get a cell phone. Your kids will thank you (and bug you less).
— Amanda Long
TRAINING WHEELS
The RV community lives up to its friendly reputation from the get-go, welcoming new owners and those thinking about buying with driver courses, mini-RV universities, and Web sites packed with buying tips, job ideas, campground reviews and personal testimony. There are books, magazines and, of course, groups like RVing Women and Loners On Wheels to get you rolling.
Traveling Groups and Trade Associations
The Recreational Vehicle Industry Association (www.rvia.org)
RVing Women (www.rvingwomen.com)
Loners on Wheels (www.lonersonwheels.com)
Escapees (www.escapees.com)
Education
Life on Wheels (www.lifeonwheels.com): conferences, seminars, advice
New RVer.com (www.newrver.com): general information
RV Traveling Tales (www.rvtravelingtales.com): job tips and order information for “RV Traveling Tales: Women’s Journeys on the Open Road”
— A.L.
