People who take trips often like to share their experiences with family and friends when they come back home. When I was growing up, relatives would show their home movies and vacation photos at family gatherings. Today, the sharing is done through e-mail, Facebook or other social media, and sometimes it leads to self-published books.

Linda Leonard, a retired music teacher from Canada, and Robert R. Richards, a retired Seattle banker, have both published books that detail their RV travels. The books are no doubt especially interesting to family and friends, but they also appeal to a wider audience.

Richards’ book, Across America: the Initiation of Rookie RV’ers is the entertaining tale of a retiree who had no interest in RVing until he asked his wife what she wanted for her 70th birthday and she said a county RV trip on the back roads of America.

“I turned white,” Richards wrote. “I have absolutely no mechanical aptitude, and this was the farthest thing from any interest I might have.”

Richards and his wife, Marilyn, had traveled to major cities on business and had taken vacation trips with their children, but she felt they had not yet seen the real America. So despite his misgivings about his ability to handle an RV, they bought a 28-foot motorhome and set out on a 10,000-mile trip accompanied by their cat and dog.

They made the trip over ten weeks last spring, traveling almost entirely on secondary highways and back roads. Starting in Bend, Oregon, they went east to West Virginia, north to Maine and then back to Oregon by way of Canada and the northern states.

Most of Richards’ book is based on a daily journal he kept. From the daily entries, you learn that Richards is a conservative businessman with a love of self-reliance and the entrepreneurial spirit. His political observations will please those who enjoy Fox News and irritate liberals, but he is always good company. His comments are pointed and amusing.

Richards and his wife spent time in Kentucky touring horse farms and attending the Kentucky Derby and went to Branson, Missouri, to take in shows and attractions, but much of their time was spent in state and national park campgrounds, rather than private RV parks. They were looking for a camping experience surrounded by nature. A skeptic of government, Richards returned from the trip with admiration for the way state and federal employees manage campgrounds.

He was impressed, too, by the campers he met. “We expected mostly to run into retired folks like ourselves, but families abound in campgrounds,” he wrote. “And with these people the value of immediate family love is extended to all others, the human family, if you will.” He concluded, “Courtesy, conscientiousness and helpfulness is a common characteristic of people who use campgrounds.”

Richards also marveled at “the mental liberation effect over these two and a half months of having been freed from a previous life of commitments, appointments and schedules…” In fact, the liberating effect was so great that Richards has scrapped his original idea of selling his motorhome after one big trip and is planning more excursions.

The book is an entertaining read and could be instructive for anyone who hasn’t yet experienced RVing but would like to give it a try.

Two books by Linda Leonard could by useful to anyone considering RV travel in a foreign country. She has written Living the Dream in Mexico and Living the Dream in Europe.

As she explains it, the books aren’t travel guides, but accounts of what she and her husband, Phil, experienced during their RV travels. She and Phil are both retired teachers who made their first RV trip from Winnipeg, Canada, deep into Mexico in 2004. She began a journal to tell her mother what they were experiencing in Mexico. Family, friends and other RVers became interested in her writing, and she began posting her journal entries on the Internet. This led to the suggestion that she turn it all into a book. The book is an account of RV travel in Mexico over six years, plus a tribute to her remarkable wheelchair-bound mother, who left a nursing home in Canada to fly to Mexico and share in some of the vacation time.

In their extensive travels in Mexico, the Leonards didn’t just visit tourist places, but explored much more, gaining a deep appreciation of the people and the culture. They bought a condo in Zihuatenejo and now live there in the winter and in Canada in the summer. In 2010, they expanded their foreign travel with a threemonth motorhome trip in Europe, visiting Germany, France, Italy, England, Austria and Switzerland.

If you want an RV guidebook for Mexico or Europe, Leonard recommends the books by Mike and Terri Church. Her books don’t purport to advise anyone on where to stay or what to see, but recount personal experiences.

Leonard said she was surprised in Europe by the absence of any Americans in the RV campgrounds where they stayed. She said RVing is a better way to see Europe than going from hotel to hotel by bus or rail. “I really liked unpacking only once on the day that we received our little motorhome and re-packing only once on the day before our departure from Europe. It doesn’t get much easier than that.”

With a kitchen in their motorhome, they were able to have healthier meals than they would have had eating entirely in restaurants. In addition, she said, “It is really great to veer off the beaten path on a moment’s whim and to see the countryside between the cities and towns.”

Leonard said she originally thought this trip to Europe would be a “once in a lifetime experience,” but now she thinks they will return, and when they do, they will again rent an RV.

Living the Dream in Europe, Living the Dream in Mexico and Across America: The Initiation of Rookie RV’ers are available at amazon.com. 

Write to Mike Ward, editor at RV Life magazine, 18717 76th Avenue West, Suite B, Lynnwood, WA 98037 or e-mail editor@rvlife.com.  Find First Glance online at rvlife.com.

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