Wednesday, February 03, 2021

The Way We Were Wednesday - Motorhomes


A few weeks ago, my Wednesday post featured a picture of my grandparents tiny Florida winter home.  Getting out of Michigan in the middle of winter was always a welcome idea.  My parents started doing it when they were down to two kids left in school.  My Aunt Edith and Uncle Dick, started going for 2 to 3 weeks at a stretch.  Accomodations in the tiny house in Istachatta, left a lot to be desired.  Dick was talking with a farming friend one day, who knew someone, who knew someone who had just died, owning a Winnebago that no one in the family wanted.  Now Dick was not really a farmer, he grew up on a farm, he spent countless hours helping friends on farms, in reality he worked in research and development for Ford, he ran cars on treadmill tests.  But many of his best adventures started on one farm or another. The Winnie was a few years old, and had less than 12,000 miles on it.  

This was not the first surprise that Dick brought home to Edith, at least this one didn't have four legs and a tail and go moo!  His thought was that they could drive it to Florida, and have reasonably comfortable place to sleep.  It worked, they drove the thing to Florida a dozen winters.  As their baby passed 6 feet tall and 275 pounds the accommodations grew a little tight, (my cousin is a giant of a man) so they traded it on a new one, one about 10 feet longer.  The next week, Dick's boss called him into the office and offered him an early retirement buyout. He said, "oh I can't do that, I just bought a new motorhome with three years of payments."  His boss came back a few minutes later and said, "we will pay you in a lump sum for those three years if you retire on Monday." He called Edith to ask what he should do, strange he called and asked first.  They moved to Florida that year.  

When I find a picture, I will talk about my parents misadventures with a motorhome.  It has a rather surprising ending. 

Any motorhomes in your family stories? 

 

18 comments:

  1. No, no motorhomes in my family when I was growing up. But in the summer whenever we'd see a huge, gas-guzzling Winnebago on the highway, we'd always say "Americans!" and we'd be right, of course, once we checked the licence plate. Only Americans could afford to buy and drive Winnebagos, LOL!

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    1. Gas has always been cheaper here, and a massive false economy that buying $100,000 behemoth that gets 3 miles to the gallon, saves on hotel costs.

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  2. My dad's cousin, the once who had the summer place of Harvey's Lake, had a nice motor home they used twice before selling it and getting a houseboat. I had one adventure with them on the Saint Lawrence seaway.

    I also also in a motorhome once during a hurricane...that is scary shit.

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    1. A motorhome in a hurricane - for once it was more turbulent outside, than in your bed.

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  3. Anonymous2/03/2021

    My parents borrowed my mother's parents caravan. It was so heavy it made the car radiator boil at a hint of an upward slope. Some hours were spent sitting outside in a shady spot waiting for the car radiator to cool down. There was our own campervan trip a few years ago that if you asked my partner, he would say it was a fail. I don't really agree.

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    1. There are some distant places in the country, that it would be the be a good way to explore. I am not one for camping.

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  4. My father always wanted one. My mother said that was no vacation for her since she'd still be doing all the cooking and cleaning. So, it never happened. SG and I toyed with the idea a while back of retiring on the road. We started browsing and ended up looking at multi-million dollar motor homes and realized that was not the life we were meant for. For me, they were a borderline OCD'ers dream. All that inventive space planning.

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    1. My mother enjoyed shopping for the perfect things to fit into the spaces, drove my father nuts - he would say "we already have one of those just make it fit"

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  5. My parents had one for many years. We once took it on a road trip from California to Texas for a family reunion, and, at just 16,my Dad let me drive it on the highway. It was kinda cool maneuvering that monster down the road!

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  6. nope, no motorhomes. but, as a child of the 60s, I always entertained the notion of getting a small RV and traveling around the country.

    kinda like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTbBvPoxUkk

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    1. My mothers parents pulled a travel trailer all over the country

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  7. Motorhomes, travel trailers, truck campers and even tents. I've experienced them all. My parents were avid travelers (north America) and we were always going on trips here and there. Even after I was an adult, I would take trips with mom and dad. I loved that open road feeling.

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    1. I only did the motorhome trip once with my parents, before mom’s moment

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  8. Nope, no motorhome stories here. My father's dream was to own a VW bus. Never happened. His sister's family owned several motorhomes through the years. I've never seen any of them leave the driveway.
    We're on our second trailer now. Love it. We're too old and creaky to camp in tents anymore. I did miss tent camping for awhile, now, not so much.

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  9. no motor homes in my family; no one ever said 'no' or poo-pooed them I recall but none we had.

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