Heaven on Wheels

Home is where the RV is

By Michaele Matassa Flores

ABOUT A HUNDRED YARDS inside the groomed, wooded campground, just ahead of the welcome sign and to the left of the miniature golf, Wayne and Jayne Kuntz descend the steps of their RV, a 36-foot Cruise Aire III. They are tanned, relaxed, grinning. Surrounded by fir trees and whistling birds, they might be mistaken for happy campers.

Except they aren't campers at all. That much is obvious from the perm rods and tomato plants.

Jayne is wrapped in a pink hairdresser's cape, her silver hair wound tightly around curling rods as she gives herself a home permanent. To her side, two potted tomato plants grow up the side of the Cruise Aire toward the passenger window.

Campers do a lot of things. They hike, they fish, they build fires and make s'mores. They don't typically perm their hair and grow beef- steaks.

Throughout this 110-acre compound near LaConner, Wayne and Jayne's neighbors also act like they own the place. They make raspberry jam, grow chrysanthemums, raise birds, open mail. There is a distinct lack of campfire smoke in the air.

Most of the campers in this campground, at least between weekends, are "full-timers," retirees who have sold or rented their houses and headed out in recreational vehicles to see the country.

Living month in, month out rolling from state to state, they aren't about to rough it. They buy memberships in private campgrounds offering swimming pools, saunas, family lodges, laundrys, shuffleboard, tennis and sometimes even golf. Relaxing in luxury, they dismiss the romance of the evening campfire. They know better: You can't enjoy the starry sky when you're choking on smoke and slapping at mosquitoes. And besides, it'smore fun to play hearts or bridge inside than shiver in the cool night air.

At a time when the population is aging, and many baby boomers are confronting their own feelings about growing old, the question of quality of life for the elderly seems more salient than ever. Some older folks move in with their kids. Others buy condos in Florida or try various versions of assisted living.

The campground clan has chosen a different path. As full-time RVers they see the country, breathe fresh air, exercise, make new friends, find a sense of community and cling to an independent lifestyle.

And a good number of them do all of that in Washington. This is one of the top four states in the country for membership campgrounds (the opposite of public campgrounds), along with California, Florida and Texas. Credit the fir trees, the beauty of Puget Sound and our wonderful summer weather (mostly cloudy beats hot and humid).

This is where full-timers come after they've wintered in Orlando, convoyed through Texas, met buddies in the California desert, found familiar faces on the Oregon Coast. This is where they stop as they drive the country in circles, squares, diamonds and every other map route imaginable. This is where they make their home for a good three to six months a year. Mammoth motor homes and trailers, with bumper stickers declaring "We're spending our children's inheritance" are common summer sights, as these adventurers head for hookups in LaConner, Leavenworth, Lake Sawyer, Discovery Bay

They can stay a limited time at one campground -- two weeks is typical -- but can hop back and forth between sites as often as they wish. Many own multiple memberships so they'll have more places to stay. Most tow cars or pickups for day trips. They gather once a year for hugh RV "rallies," where they dance, eat and get to know each other better -- the equivalent of the neighborhood block party. About 600 coaches rolled into Western Washington (Puyallup) Fairgrounds last May for a regional rally, and 6,000 coaches are expected there next year for a national event. More routine attractions include $2 pancake feeds on Saturday mornings at most campgrounds.

The metal boxes these wanderers call home contain no more space than a two-car garage. But the rigs are a bit of rolling heaven for retirees, complete with queen-size beds, two TVs, two VCRs, microwave ovens, washers and dryers, wet bars and hutches, built-in CD players, computerized alarm systems, glass-enclosed showers and rooftop TV satellite dishes. Trailers range from the basic step-above-a family-tent, costing less than $20,000, to the full-scale, $50,000 models with side "rooms" that slide out once you park. Motor homes range from middle-class, $70,000 versions to luxurious conversions of passenger buses, topping $600,000.

Heading to heaven, though, means leaving behind what you like about Earth.

Most full-timers spend months preparing to leave home: holding 21 days' worth of garage sales, subscribing to voice-mail through their credit-card companies, arranging to refill blood-pressure prescriptions by mail, buying post-office boxes or paying to have mail sent to towns via "general delivery." Once they leave, some can't adjust to five-minute showers or shake their cabin fever, although most say they never feel confined because the entire Great Outdoors is their home.

At 60, Wayne and Jayne Kuntz are young for full-timers. But they have much else in common with their neighbors. Wayne, a former engineer with General Motors in Detroit, took early retirement. The two wanted to travel, get out and enjoy life. And while they kept ties to their previous home life, they had no qualms about selling their Las Vegas house two years ago and selling most of their belongings at four or five garage sales.

"There was no empty-nest syndrome for us," Jayne says. "We helped our kids pack." She laughs.

The Kuntzes' only links to their past life are a climate-controlled storage room in Vegas, containing photo albums and other personal belongings, and an RV spot they lease by the year at the Forty-Niner Trailer Village in Northern California, near their four kids and 12 grandkids.

The Kuntzes started tent camping 35 years ago, then graduated to a 26-foot trailer, a 32-foot trailer, a 32-foot motor home and now the $100,000 Cruise Aire III. "We'd get to the point where we'd go out for two weeks and we weren't ready to come home," Jayne says. "We'd say we can't wait to retire -- so we don't HAVE to come home," Wayne finishes.

After traveling the West Coast their first year, Wayne and Jayne took jobs at the LaConner Thousand Trails campground this summer and settled in for a few months. He works as a ranger, she as a cashier in the camp- ground store, selling Hamburger Helper, replacement pump parts, greeting cards, wind socks and other necessities.

They call their motor home a "house on wheels," pointing out features like its basement storage -- compartments built beneath the floor, accessible through outside doors. They love the built-in wardrobe and the spot inside their platform bed where they keep their "office," a box with important papers. The best surprise is hidden beneath the steps into the coach. Wayne excitedly lifts one of the steps to reveal a compartment that's insulated so it can double as a cooler. You'd think they had just been given free reserved parking downtown, or their own shortcut around a traffic jam.

But they're especially fond of the touches they've added themselves: the oak and brass plumbing fixtures, extra pantry shelves and -- the best one -- the little spice rack that fits so cleverly into unused cabinet space at the front of the sink. Those things make the place uniquely Wayne and Jayne's.

"This is home," Jayne says.

THOUGH THEY MAY APPEAR LONERS ON THE road, these travelers know intimate details about each other's lives, details about childhoods, career moves, family ties and health problems, details shared by people with time and memories to spare. When a couple pull into a new spot, no sooner have they hooked up their 30-amp electricity lines and 30-gallon sewage tanks than they're out asking others whether the Wilsons have pulled in or if the Kennedys are coming this year.

That's one of the things that attracted Dick and Marti Keffer to full-timing back in 1984. They like to travel but hate hotels and suitcases. "If you want to travel, it's the most ideal way in the world to see the country, to see the other states," says Marti, 71, with a slight Midwestern drawl.

"It seems every place you go, you find a couple of people you bond with, people you stay in touch with."

One thing is clear: The Keffers aren't born campers. Except for sightseeing, they spend little time outdoors. "I grew up on a poor farm in Missouri-uh, with no electricity," Marti says. "I wasn't about to go buildin' a smoky campfire." She's relaxing now in her $200,000 Monaco Crown Royale, a 36-foot by 8 1/2-foot luxury motor home with etched-glass hutch doors and trendy blue-and-mauve furniture, which she's draped with matching homemade afghans.

Like the Kuntzes, Dick and Marti Keffer used to take short trips. Dick, 70, retired from the Navy in 1978, and the two enjoyed sightseeing. By 1984, they were ready to rent out their house in San Diego and move into their rig.

"We had two places to keep, you see, moving in and out," Marti says. "That wasn't retirement to me. That was too much work."

The Keffers travel the country now, visiting the Northwest every summer. They've been to LaConner 12 years in a row. They perform country music -- Anne Murray, Waltz Across Texas and other crowd pleasers -- with Marti on guitar and Dick on the mandolin. They dress all-out country when performing, wearing leather hats she makes and sells for $35 apiece.

Her Crown Royale is full of crafts she markets: yarn cats, crocheted sweaters, Western jewelry and skirts made of bandanas sewn together. Camp- grounds often hold weekend craft classes imparting the fine art of making stained-glass hummingbirds or airplane mobiles out of Budweiser cans. Throughout this campground, though, people rave that Marti's hats and jewelry are several cuts above the regular crafts. They're classy, like her. Naturally, Marti advises other women who have questions about their own crocheting and crafts -- like the neighborhood housewife who's considered the expert on interior design.

Dick and Marti's side income from music and crafts helps pay for the little extras they like, maybe dinner at King's Table or a salad bar at Wendy's.

The wanderers' life isn't always perfect, Marti says. She gets frustrated trying to communicate with family, friends and doctors, especially making calls from "bastard" pay phones (non-AT&T) that wind up costing a fortune. She also recalls it was difficult to sell everything.

"That's a very traumatic experience, any time you have to get rid of a 30-year accumulation of things," she confesses. "I sold my bass guitar, and I wish I hadn't."

Ask Mavis Karmazin why she and her husband Frank moved into their 25-foot Terry trailer six years ago, and she gives two different answers on different days.

The first day, she's wrapping up Walk to the Music, the exercise program she leads every morning as a volunteer. As "Skip to My Lou" fades out, Mavis talks of her health, which could be better. The 72-year-old great- grandmother has a bad heart, palsy, a blind right eye, an artificial left knee and gout, most of which she refers to as "little things" that don't get her down.

Health is on her mind today when she talks about being a full-time RVer. "I had two near-death experiences. I saw Christ. I saw the light and everything. Heart attacks." Both times, in 1980 and 1984, doctors revived her. "So my husband and I decided why don't we give up all our material things to the kids and go out and have a good time."

Mavis and Frank are this neighborhood's couple-who-know-everybody. Dottie stops by one day with some line-dancing handouts she found in the road, asking Mavis if she recognizes who they belong to. Frank is called on now and then to help with a neighbor's engine repairs or lend out one of his tools.

Mavis loves the simple life. "No phones, nothing to get you all gibobberated."

A few days later, as she sits in her trailer watching birds at her feeder and birdbath outside, she's talking about raising six children with little money. So finances are on her mind. The real reason she and Frank hit the road, she says this time, was pure and simple economics.

Campground membership fees and annual dues are far cheaper than mortgages, light bills, water, sewer, garbage, heat and phone bills. It's even possible to live pretty well on $15,000 a year in pension and Social Security payments. Memberships cost 2,500 to $7,000 initially, plus $240 to $700 a year, depending on when the member joined. Some places charge no nightly fee, others $1. And full-time campground volunteers, like Mavis and Frank (he works maintenance and odd jobs, and they both cook) can stay at one place, which means they don't have to worry about guzzling gas at five to seven miles a gallon.

MONEY IS A BIG CONVERSATION topic in the campgrounds, but not one to be discussed around strangers. At least not in detail. These people have a few secrets when it comes to saving money, secrets they eventually divulge. But for now, they've got other stories to tell.

RV TALK

A quick guide to the language of the road

FULL-TIMER: One who lives year-round in a motor home, trailer or camper, sacrificing the comfort and security of a house for the adventures and challenges of life on the road. Usually retired. Or people who don't hold real jobs.

RIG or COACH: The favored terms. As in "Nice rig" or "Darn, I left my walking stick in the coach." Only the uninitiated use such stilted terms as "motor home" and "trailer" in casual conversation.

PRESERVE: Thousand Trails' word for campground. The company says it strives to "preserve" the natural habitat around the parks. One full-timer offers a more creative definition: The campgrounds are like wildlife preserves because they're sanctuaries for people.

HITCH ITCH: The antsy feeling full-timers get when it's time to pack up the rig, roll out of the preserve and head on down the road. As in, "I'm gettin' hitch itch, Esther; let's head for Leavenworth and hit the craft fair."

FOUR-DOWN: The most economical way of towing a car or pickup behind a coach. As in all-four-wheels-on-the-ground. As in you don't have to buy a trailer for the auto.

HOOKUPS: The all-important connections to civilized life, provided at most RV campgrounds. In order of importance: electric outlets, water lines, sewage lines and cable television. No Playboy channel or video poker.

BOONDOCKING: Parking short-term at a rest area, parking lot or other place without hookups. "We boondocked down at the truck stop because the pre- serve was full up." Not preferred. Considered a desperation move.

And boy, do they.

Stepping into any of these campgrounds is like visiting an era before television, maybe before radio, when people entertained each other by telling stories: good, long, slow ones, rich with detail. They describe cooking their first scrambled-egg breakfast for 80 soldiers at an Army camp somewhere near Columbia, S.C. Finding a new group home for son Roger, who has Down syndrome. Organizing a potluck at a flooded California campground to cheer up gloomy campers stranded by water over the roads. Or watching with fascination as a mother slug lays her slime over a row of poison, committing suicide so her babies can follow safely behind.

At a Coast to Coast campground at Lake Sawyer, in Southeast King County, two longtime RVers in their 70s compare notes on their recent operations. Nick Butrica and Sid Loss, passing time in the Cedar Room lodge, discover they've both had surgery for colon cancer.

They talk about seeing people rushed to the hospital by campground buddies. Nick says that happened to him once when he got real sick. His son flew halfway across the country to pull Nick out of the little-known hospital in the South and bring him to Seattle for some care he could trust. That was when he was diagnosed with the cancer.

He says he was awake during surgery, and the sheet that was supposed to block his view of the operation slipped down at one point. "I looked down and saw my whole stomach. She was holding the clamps. It's wide open. They were sopping the blood up and all. I couldn't feel a damn thing. I said Awwww, oh-my-god-that's-my-stomach, and I shut my eyes. Right away, the curtain went back up."

Back in LaConner, Mavis sits in her trailer, surrounded by family photos and trinkets like coffee mugs with her great-grandchildren's pictures. She tells of life after marrying Frank at age 15. He worked in the aircraft industry, helping make "the last of the cloth-covered planes and the first of the metal-skinned ones." He was left jobless at one point because his company merged with another, so the couple moved with four kids from Connecticut to California. It was 1948, a tough time to find work in California or anywhere. The family had to share a two-room house. Mavis recalls raising 15 chicks in her living room/bedroom then butchering them once they grew into "skinny fryers."

Like all neighbors, the travelers also make small talk and they share camping strategies. Maurice has a trick for finding sites with sewer hook- ups: He gets in his hatchback at 6 a.m., when the RVers are pulling out for the road, quietly circles the campground to find a good site, zips in and parks when he finds one, hoofs it back to the Winnebago, moves the rig right away, then heads to the front gate to give his new site number to the ranger.

A group of friends tell how they keep their holding tanks clean: After each campground stay, before hitting a dump station, they head out on the highway and drive the rig awhile so the sloshing can clean the tank's insides.

Dick Keffer, the mandolin player, chats it up one evening with Lucille Kennedy. Lucille isn't a full-timer but spends every summer on the road with her husband, Maurice, escaping Southern California heat (107 today) in their 23-foot Winnebago. Dick and Lucille share salad-dressing recipes and the best route to Idaho, and he tells stories about a recent flood at Soledad Canyon, Calif., a large campground it seems all Thousand Trails members have visited. Lucille says she's expecting friends soon, a couple she met at another campground. They plan to play cards every evening.

DESTINATION STATE

Washington is one of the top five states in the U.S. for RV
sales and membership campgrounds. Some facts:

* There are nearly 200,000 motor homes, trailers and campers registered
in the state. That's one for every 25 residents.

* Washington ranked fifth last year in one state-by-state measure of RV
sales, behind California, Florida, Michigan and Texas. The ranking
measured wholesale orders by dealerships.

* The state collected $20.67 million last year in excise tax (part of the
registration fee) on recreational vehicles.

* Thousand Trails, known as the grandfather of campground membership
companies, was founded in 1972 and is based in Bellevue.

AS IN ALL NEIGHBORHOODS, SPATS OCCUR. Residents complain about neighbors letting dogs run free. About cliques forming and feeling snubbed. About park rangers giving their friends the sites with views and sewer hookups despite first-come, first-served rules. Some Californians say they've been told by locals to go back home, and they angrily point out that during winter months Northwesterners invade the California parks.

RVers also play their own version of Keeping Up with the Joneses. When one guy gets an electric awning, others either get one themselves or dismiss the gadget as a waste of good money. When one woman says she loves her new convection oven, her neighbor raves about her own combo-convection-and- microwave. Some RVers seems to compete for the most-colored-plastic-lights- hung-around-the-campsite, or the most-elaborate-tole-painted-welcome-sign- with-the-family-name.

Insults often fly between full-timers and recreational campers who use the same parks.

Membership campgrounds were not intended for full-time RVers. Bellevue- based Thousand Trails, know as the granddaddy of the membership-campground business, was founded in 1972 for vacationing families, as an affordable alternative to resorts. In the last several years, though, full-timing has grown so popular that weekend campers complain they can't find good campsites, that they feel like outsiders at their own campgrounds. They also believe full-timers are forcing companies like Thousand Trails to go broke.

Some campground companies have faced severe financial problems, even closing or filing bankruptcy. Thousand Trails barely avoided bankruptcy last year by refinancing some debt. The company blames its problems on expanding too fast in the 1980s, adding 36 campgrounds in one four-year period.

But some disgruntled campers blame full-timers who take daily showers instead of going grungy for a few days like recreational campers, who bake chicken inside instead of barbecuing outside, who watch Oprah and Jay Leno instead of hiking and roasting marshmallows. All these things, the week- enders complain, take advantage of free utilities and drive up costs for the campgrounds.

"That's what's breaking Thousand Trails," says Jim Henry of Mukilteo, an occasional camper who bought a membership in 1974. "This wasn't meant to be a retirement center."

Full-timers take pride in their low-cost lifestyle, bragging that they don't have any bills. Some find legal ways to register their rigs in Oregon or Alaska, known for low registration fees, by buying small properties in one of the states. Others break the law: They register in the cheap states using a friend's or relative's address, or they buy a rig in a state without a sales tax and fail to report the deal in their home state.

Trade associations and companies play down the tricks owners use. But the issue of full-timers burdening campgrounds is coming to a head across the country.

Thousand Trails is running a fund-raising campaign, pleading with members to voluntarily increase their dues and/or begin paying nightly fees if they use the parks a lot. So far, members have pledged about $1.5 million in additional dues. Charlie Davis, the popular new company chief executive, says full-timers don't use that much more electricity and water than anyone else, but they fill the parks up. That, he says, exacerbates the company's real problem: Everyone was so busy selling memberships, they forgot to take into account the costs of operating parks for all of those new members.

Some members are running scared, selling their memberships cheap for fear the company will close. Trade magazines carry classified ads selling memberships for as little as $2,000 -- far less than the last company price of nearly $8,000.

But many members say they aren't worried because they've seen companies including Thousand Trails survive financial threats before. Some longtime members say even if the campgrounds fold, they'll feel they've gotten their money's worth.

FOR MOST FULL-TIMERS, THERE COMES A time to park the RV for good anyway, and move back into a place with a foundation. Even if it takes 27 years like it did with Sid Loss, the old-timer chatting with Nick at Lake Sawyer. Sid lost his wife last year -- his "co-pilot," he called her -- and has trouble driving now because of his own failing health. It's about time to hang up the keys, he says.

That inevitability seems to be on full-timers' minds from the start. They usually hold onto something -- a small condo, a storage locker full of stuff, or some cherished belongings they've stashed at a son's or daughter's.

Don and Lois Godsman thought they'd be on the road only a year when they headed out. That was four years ago. And they're not close to settling yet. They're having too much fun leading line-dancing lessons and seeing the country. With little prodding, Don brings out an album with pictures of Gettysburg, Niagara Falls and other places they've been.

Soon after they started full-timing, the Godsmans figured they should get a place so they'd be ready when they wanted to settle back down. So they bought a half-acre of land on Fidalgo Island, near Anacortes. No go. They sold the land last summer when they realized they still weren't ready to leave the road.

Instead, they put money down on a permanent RV spot at Chimacum, south of Port Townsend. When they get the site (they're on a waiting list), they'll be able to park there full-time or rent it out and head off on a trip. Kind of like a time-share resort for RVs.

Don and Lois figure that's the best kind of neighborhood there is. If there's something you don't like, all you do it get up and go.

Michele Matassa Flores is a business reporter for The Seattle Times.
Copyrighted by and permission to reproduce: Seattle Times . This article originally appeared in the August 15, 1993 issue of The Seattle Times "Pacific" Magazine.

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