For 16 years, my Wonderful Husband and I lived year-round in an RV (recreational vehicle) and traveled all over the USA and Canada. I would still be doing it, if I did not have Parkinson's Disease. Many people have expressed curiosity about RV's, mostly from other countries, but several Americans as well. So here is the story...
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| Yuma Bev cooking eggs |
We bought our first RV in 1991, a 21-foot long Motorhome (motorhome means that it has it's own engine and you drive it like a car) and took off on a three week trip. There wasn't much room in it, you had to make a bed out of the sofa every night and you couldn't pass each other in the hallway, but after two weeks, we didn't want to go home, EVER, so, we traded it in on a 34-foot Motorhome and kept on traveling.
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| The 34 foot motorhome |
This RV was small inside as well, but it had a full size bed in it (you had about 6 inches on either side to walk around) and a sofa and dinette, so we thought we were in heaven. We took this Motorhome from Florida to Colorado to Arizona and back all in one summer. Living in an RV requires a very good sense of humor.
Several years later, we got rid of the Motorhome and from then on, we had a variety of RV's that you towed behind or placed in the bed of a truck. Sometimes, we would buy a very small one to take a specific trip and then sell it after we were done, it all depended on where we were going, but we lived in an RV of some kind or another year round.
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| YumaBev and the truck camper |
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| Aliner |
We spent 5 months in the little Aliner above and 4 months in the truck camper!
The last RV we owned was the biggest and we towed it behind a big pick up truck, however, it was still only about 200 square feet of living space! For most RVers in America, this would be called a weekender, just big enough for 2 or 3 days, but we lived in it for 7 years! I did 99% of the driving and could back it into the tightest spaces.
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| Truck and camper parked lakeside in Idaho |
It was still very small inside, as the pictures below will show
and to give you some perspective, there is a photo of me standing by an inside door of the RV and one of me standing by an inside door of my house. See how much narrower the RV one is?
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| YumaBev by RV door |
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| YumaBev by house door |
As you can see, the space is quite narrow in the bedroom and bathroom and as my Parkinson's symptoms progressed, it became increasingly difficult for me to manage without constantly bumping into things. The entry steps to get in the camper were tricky as well and I didn't feel comfortable towing the RV anymore, so we gave up that life and started a new one. Adapt, adapt, adapt.
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| Living room and sofa |
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| TV across from sofa and hallway door |
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| Bathroom sink |
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| Tub and toilet |
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| Dining area right next to sofa |
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| Bedroom area |
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| Kitchen area |
Do I miss it? Yes, very much.
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Thank you for reading this story, I hope you enjoyed it. This is just one of a hundred stories in my book, Parkinson's Humor - Funny Stories about My Life with Parkinson's Disease. Please consider purchasing a copy from Amazon.com or your favorite online book seller. Thank you and have a Happy Parkie Day!
Yup, I looked like Garfield, the cartoon cat. No wonder my cheeks hurt. How long has my face been doing this, I wondered? I asked my Wonderful Husband, but he didn't know. The next morning, I asked one of the neighbors if I had been grinning all during our get together the night before and she said "Yes, but I thought you were just having fun". 
