Disclaimer: BC Ferries and Camping and RVing in BC sponsored our travels.
Peter and Kelly are still asleep in their bunks. I’m in the back alcove, it’s almost a real bedroom. Kelly has the fold out couch in the kitchen/living area, and Peter is in the bunk over the cab.
We skipped out on our park stay to get a site with full hookups — after three nights with no power or running water, we needed to dump the loo, charge a staggering assortment of electronic gear, check email, and generally take advantage of the grid. Because of that, we are now parked in bay 114 in Fort Victoria RV Park, a glorified parking lot with views of other RVs as far as the eye can see.
It took us two tries to find a campsite for the night. Our first choice, West Bay, was on the Victoria Harbor and — we think — had access into the city via a water taxi or shuttle ferry. We didn’t find out because they were full up and sent us here, to Fort Victoria where we spent our Friday night like suburban teenagers without a car, roaming the arterials in search of beer.
I now understand why the big rigs are so often carrying a service vehicle, made tiny in persepective against the giant RV. A Ford Explorer, a minivan, once I saw a Hummer towed behind a giant bus conversion. You can’t just run into town in an RV. You can’t drive it just anywhere and you certainly can’t park it on a whim. Once you’re all hooked up and have the sides popped out and your stuff has exploded all over the, uh, cabin, it’s a hassle to get everything stowed properly again for driving.
And you need real estate for an RV park. So here we sit, bordered by railroad tracks and power lines and a main arterial and a freeway. In a not very walkable neighborhood near… not much, really. The bus to Victoria is about a 15 minute walk from here, the nearest supermarket half an hour away. The liquor store, 20 minutes the other way from the minimart — a place with cigarettes and instant meals in a box but very little produce.
It’s a rookie mistake, rolling into camp without proper supplies. It’s not like we starved, but no one was keen to unhook and drive out to the supermarket to get groceries. We eyed a divey little pizza joint and opted to make the additional half hour walk to get beer.
Our neighbors are more big rigs — we watched the couple on our north side compulsively set up their trailer, unfolding chairs, bolting a bbq to the side of the rig, laying out a perfect square of astroturf over the little patio. Their giant fluffy collie crawled under the carefully leveled unit to lie on the gravel out of the sun. The neighbor to the south asked if he could park his truck in our “driveway” for a few minutes, but we’ve seen nothing of them since.
Last night it rained, hard, hammering on the flat metal roof while we slept. We stayed dry and if a little water sneaked through the ceiling vent in the loo, it’s nothing compared to having to bundle up and find the loo, hundreds of yards away from a wet tent in the middle of the night.
It will take us ten, maybe fifteen minutes to get out of here this morning, our time spent mostly in unplugging and stowing things that are currently standing on flat surfaces. I get that part of the RV life, I really do. I understand the convenience.
But the scale, I am having a great deal of trouble with the scale and ironically, the lack of mobility. It is hard to just pick up and go, to buzz into town, to run around sightseeing. Taking 32 feet of mobilized metal with you everywhere you go just feels like overkill to me.
From Peter and Kelly:
- Thank You, Friendly Canadians on The Carey Adventures
- The Beaches of BC on Travellious
i can’t imagine traveling in something that big. your insights seem pretty clear to me, too. 🙂
I think part of it might have been the type of RV. We have a “travel trailer” if you will and we tow it with our truck. So we get to the campground and have a few additional set up steps – like unhooking the trailer – and then we have the convenience of the RV life with the ability to jump in the truck and go explore when we want to. We also love to travel with our dog, so it’s nice to know that for some excursions she can stay “home” and chill in the air conditioning while we go to a museum or other dog-unfriendly place.
I think though, it depends on what you’re looking for. We have done tent camping and we really like the option to be inside and be comfortable if it rains. On the flipside, we don’t have a TV in our trailer, and we usually set up our little Coleman stove outside and cook. Of course, our trailer is also only 17 feet long and has pop-outs on the ends – like a tent camper – where our beds are. So we get the best of both worlds I think.