Guest Author - Dennise Ziaja

There are many factors to consider when thinking about an RV, whether it is your first venture into the RV world or your fifth RV purchase. When my husband Paul and I started looking for an RV, we were first timers and knew little about the various classes of RV’s, what fit our budget and more importantly, just how we planned to use it. I had been a camper as a kid, mostly with the Girls Scouts of America and just loved the whole idea of camping in a tent; I guess I must have thought it was neat to be like the American pioneers or the fellas we watched on TV in Wagon Train and Rawhide. When I was about 13, Mom and Dad took my three sisters and me on a three week camping trip from our home on the north side of Chicago to Disneyland in California. We were to stop and visit some relatives in Texas on the way, and see the Grand Canyon. As city kids, we had Lake Michigan and Wrigley Field but the Pacific Ocean and the towering mountains and forests of the west was an exciting thought as was the hope we could ride horses somewhere along the way . We had never been out west, and most of our vacations were visits to relatives in places like Joliet and Bensenville IL! My dad had purchased a pop-up camper and we were thrilled to have a chance to pick out very own sleeping bag in our color choice, help Mom and Dad find just the right camp stove, and of course, choosing the roasting forks for hotdogs and marshmallows. My Mom was a little apprehensive; she had never camped before. Dad was looking forward to the trip, just not the camping part…he had spent several years on the beaches of the Pacific in WWII and remarked several times that “camping” experience was enough to last him a lifetime. But both of our parents wanted us to experience the outdoors and perhaps create some good family memories. We all thought the pop-up camper was top notch. It had a refrigerator that attached to a huge propane tank on the outside of the camper, a sink and water hose to connect to the camp’s water supply and even a two burner stove inside that also used the propane. Next to the “kitchen” was the large family size booth that converted into a cozy bed for my two younger sisters around 4 and 6 years old at the time. Mom and Dad had a spacious bed just above the girls on the pop-up’s slide out tent and my older sis and I were across the way in the other slide out bed. I recall Jan and me whispering and giggling the nights away, listening to the sounds we were unfamiliar with like tree frogs, crickets and the buzz of the moths as they sought out sources of light. We sat around campfires and told stories, did the s’mores thing and even cooked our hobo dinners in tin foil. I thought it was magical. I loved each and every night we spent in those three weeks out camping. It wasn’t in actuality… the camper fell off the hitch while we were crossing the mountains; our campsite was overrun by out of control trail horses spooked by some rotten kids; and we all got poison something-or-other hiking and eaten alive by bugs of every imaginable species. I choose to preserve the magical memories in my heart…Daddy laughing when he scared us with his ghost stories, Mom proudly making a Dutch oven dump cake of some sort over the wood campfire, and the multitude of shining stars that we as city kids had never seen in such numbers before. I’ll always remember the tall American Indian man who talked to us and told us stories in an Albuquerque, New Mexico repair shop waiting room when our car broke down, and I can still see the turquoise earrings I purchased in the giant Tepee Gift shop somewhere along Route 66. So many memories… too many to write about. All good stuff I say. Go Rving!