Most people in the U.S. have ancestors within a few generations that had "itchy feet". That is not true worldwide. But even in places like Germany, where most can go back hundreds of years in the same area, there are a lot of people who love to travel.
My favorite story is a good friend I met in college. Soon after his mother got pregnant with him his father was drafted and he was born on a military base in Germany. He was his grandparent's on his father's side first grandchild. So his grandparents, who hadn't traveled out of the state they were born in before, came to Germany. They found out they loved to travel. Until they were unable to travel, they went everywhere and sent postcards. My friend's uncle, who almost got ill going more than an hour from his home town, blamed his brother for taking his parents away on trips. Of course the military moves also had an affect on my friend's parents, his father took jobs in different places and has never moved back to his home state.
I am an Army brat and my mother is a war bride, so traveling seems very natural to me.
-- Edited by bjoyce on Monday 8th of April 2013 03:19:46 PM
Hina said
06:17 PM Apr 8, 2013
I have been thinking, are RVer's expressing the "hunter-gatherer" instincts of our caveman ancestors? I mean, like people walking across the Bering Strait, Celtic mummies found in China, Polynesians rowing boats all over? Cities, taxes, sitting at desks all day, it's just not natural! So, do you think that this RV urge is an expression of our primal DNA?
Lucky Mike said
09:24 PM Apr 8, 2013
Wont really know till I see the big ape with the club sitting on the side of the road chiseling a rock into a spare tire!!!!!
The Bear II said
09:27 PM Apr 8, 2013
It's funny...some people love to travel but would only do so "if there are hot and cold running bellboys" as my mother-in-law would say. Others hate to travel under any circumstances.
and then there are RV'ers. We travel willingly even with the knowledge that the odds are against us to have a good time. Something breaks, the weather turns nasty, the campers next door are noisy and rowdy, bugs, road construction, no spaces left...etc.
I agree it's the same thing that drove our ancestors and relatives to leave their comfortable homes in search of something better. The grass is always greener on the otherside of the hill.
I'm betting if you went back to the 1800's there would be someone in a wagon train heading down some trail in Kansas asking this same question....Why ?
Small House - Big Yard
lindy said
09:48 PM Apr 8, 2013
While not fulltiming yet (waiting on DW to retire), I constantly feel the wonder lust. Might be tied to 20 years in the military always moving, and then 20 years driving tractor trailer all over the country. While some it the instinct might be inbred as Hina mentionsa it too maybe a product of our job/growing up/etc. Who knows for sure, I only know - RVING IS FUN!!!!!!!!
Terry and Jo said
01:10 AM Apr 9, 2013
I'm not sure that hunter/gatherer is the right terminology to use in this case. The early hunters likely had to travel to follow migrating animals and the gatherers likely stayed in one place mostly with only short trips for hunting. That is, unless they just lived off of what grew wild instead of being cultivated. In either case, they were living their lives for survival.
I like to think of the RV lifestyle as individuals that are more like pioneers and mountain men. The early explorers went west and kept moving simply because they looked to see just what was over the next ridge. They were eventually followed by the pioneers who ripped up home ties in the east and went west looking for a better life. Many times, those that went west found themselves developing into leaders and visionaries once they got away from the "settled" lifestyle in the east.
So, I guess we could all be more like those two categories of people. Well, except for a few of us, like Jo and I, who are still waiting for the opportunity to do more traveling. In spite of the fact that we are still settled, both of us have done a lot of traveling across the U.S. at different times, but only for short periods.
When I had my blog on Blogger, the header at the top was comments based on the writings of Louis L'Amour. It is still on my blog at Wordpress, but I had to put it into a linked area instead of being right at the top to be the first thing seen by readers. Here is what I wrote for that purpose:
"Pioneers take the arrows"
Oh, wait. I should be upbeat and taking arrows doesn't sound like an upbeat thing to say.
So, let me amend that statement.
It was courage and vision that led the pioneers to leave behind a comfortable, settled life and trek West to begin a new life in a new place. Many of those from the East that went West found a strength within themselves that they didn't see while they were in their old life. Instead of being one of those that just kind of went along with the others in the old life, they became leaders and visionaries in their new lives.
The sentiments of that last paragraph come from a favorite author, Louis L'Amour, in many of his books. So, I can't really say that it is an original thought from me. However, what he said is truthful.
Welcome to being a pioneer. Look ahead and ignore the "barking dogs" that give you negative opinions and comments. Louis L'Amour also spoke of the barking dogs.
In some of his stories, it was usually a father or older man telling a young boy how it was that when the Westward bound Conestoga wagons rolled through towns, the dogs came out to bark at them. His character then told the young listener that the barking didn't stop the wagons from going on to their destinations.
Following the advice of the Louis L'Amour characters, may we all forge ahead with our plans, after carefully considering all consequences and leave the "barkers" behind.
Terry
Hina said
02:05 AM Apr 9, 2013
I don't know, some hunter gatherers were just early pioneers, without the wagons. I think mountain men living off the land qualify as hunter gatherers too, a lot of them were considered whites who had "gone injun". In any case, I think humans have a natural instinct to wander, to meet other tribes and trade along the way, looking for greener pastures. Unless it's been domesticated out of them completely, which seems unhealthy (people who actually like living in places like NY?)
Lucky Mike said
02:44 AM Apr 9, 2013
I think once you get the taste of RVing and the freedom that comes with it, its very hard to give it up........I did my first round of Rving right out of college , Traveled for a couple of years searching for home, thought I found it and stayed there.
For the next 18 yrs I wanted that freedom back...the ability to follow adventure, happiness and just being free of trying to make a life that everyone else had a saying of how and what standard I should live..
To be able to wonder in natures wilderness and meet with like minded people who find the same happiness looking at nature as it is supposed to be seen, and see that we are just a small part in the bigger picture is awesome!!!!!!!
your right....the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence...............but the view of the grass is more spectacular when the fence is not there, and its just you and nature being one!!!!!
PIEERE said
03:34 AM Apr 9, 2013
I found out that what was portrayed on "Lassie; Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best", my life was going to be so much different than the "Jones and Smiths". When my friends down the road were shooting baskets and hitting home runs; I would be working for the farmer up the street; picking crops and chucking hay bales. As i got older; 12 I would have a paper route and at 14 I would be working in the auto scrap metal business. At 19 I enlisted for a 3 yr. hitch with the Army; then I would be bit by the RV bug; when I found myself hauling RVs from Indiana to UP-East New York State. And Hina just to inform you I was in the country with farms and woods; 365 miles North of the Big Apple! And now I am still older turning 62 in July and still living in an RV hoping and praying to be able to turn the wheels again for some more fun and seeking the serenity from my primal urges that keep me motivated. LOL!
Hina said
04:31 AM Apr 9, 2013
I meant NYC They're getting so domesticated there, they can't even choose to buy Big Gulps anymore! And if I'm going to live small, I'd rather it be on wheels, than a $1,000 a month 300 sq ft apartment with bars on the window.
lindy said
12:31 PM Apr 9, 2013
Hina: better make a distinction between NY and NYC. Those of use that live in the western and up state areas consider NYC the sewer where we flush our tax money to.
Terry and Jo said
02:00 PM Apr 9, 2013
lindy wrote:
Hina: better make a distinction between NY and NYC. Those of use that live in the western and up state areas consider NYC the sewer where we flush our tax money to.
You know, I used to have this attitude about NYC. Then in 1995, Timothy McVeigh decided to blow up the Murrah office building here in Oklahoma CIty. While talking with a person from New York City, she told me that the employees of the World Trade Center (which suffered the 1993 bombing) had huge "cards" in the lobby of the towers and everone was signing those cards as support for the victims, families, and citizens of Oklahoma City.
Now, that said, and with the distinct danger of making this political, I doubt if any of those signers of the cards were politicians.
So, I now have a new "allegiance" with some of the citizens of New York City.
Terry
WestWardHo said
03:06 PM Apr 9, 2013
Great question, Hina. I wonder if its not more genetic. I'm currently living in my 11th state. People think I'm strange but I love change and meeting new people. When I last lived in Cleveland I was struck with the number of people who said, "I could never move, my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins live here and I could never leave them!" I heard fear. My G-Grandfather moved his family across the ice on Lake Michigan from Canada at night and only the horse stopping the buggy saved them from drowning when the ice ended. My father's father ran away from home in Maine at age 14 and ended up in Michigan. My brother lived on boats, one in Michigan and one in Florida. My sister lived on a boat in Florida for 5 years. I was home raising 4 kids but I've never forgotten lying in bed as a little girl in Michigan and hearing the train whistle at night and dreaming about where it's going and wondering what was out there.
Jesse was an Air Force brat and is retired Navy so he's lived all over the world. He was a nomad crossing the country with his travel trailer when we met and settled into a house.
I just wonder what took us so long!
Sherry
Hina said
04:15 PM Apr 9, 2013
Hey Sherry, I have a tendency to gaze at mountains, and wonder, how far away is that? What's on top? What's on the other side? Once I get going, it might be going from mountain to mountain!
Terry and Jo, I know what you mean.... 9/11 I was in Marin County, California, snotty yuppy capital of the Bay area. Normally, a lot of those people wouldn't give you the time of day, unless you have a big fancy college degree, or own a home (median home price, $800,000). I remember being in my favorite Mexican restraunt, where the owner had proud pictures of her Marine sons displayed behind the register. She was visibly distraught, thinking about her boys being deployed. People who normally treated her as a "servant" (rather than a small business owner) were truly concerned, and saying very kind, supportive things. I think maybe some of them were "shocked" out of their dream world, and were forever "re-humanized", realizing there is more to life than power and prestige.
Back to the Big City... I read an article about the new "micro-apartments" being rolled out in NYC (also SF) which are like, 200-300 sq ft (RV sized) The writer was like, "You won't need a living room, because you will be doing all your living and socializing on the street, out in public... feeding on the energy of the City!" I lived in SF for about 2 years, and didn't like the "energy" of the City, and I didn't really fancy "socializing" in public with the people on the street.
I'm thinking, it may be less "domesticated" and more "primal" to want to hit the road, "feeding on the energy of the Earth", perhaps traveling and socializing in small family groups or tribes, following the trade routes... like how like in the movie Conan, Conan tells his buddy, let's get out of this place! And they take off across the prairie!
VanMar said
01:47 PM Apr 10, 2013
WestWardHo wrote:
I was home raising 4 kids but I've never forgotten lying in bed as a little girl in Michigan and hearing the train whistle at night and dreaming about where it's going and wondering what was out there.
Sherry
Wow! DW is from Michigan also (don't know if that has anything to do with it, though). She always liked to watch the trains also. She told me (and I believe her) that she would wave at the trains where they ran close to their place. Once, the engineer stopped and offered her a ride and she got on. This must have been in the early 60's when she was under ten! Imagine that happening today! To this day she fantasizes about jumping on a train like a hobo! It's all I can do to keep her in check for one more year.
Vance
blijil said
08:09 PM Apr 10, 2013
We are just exercising our freedom to make our own decisions. People have always wanted to explore new places and experience difference cultures. RVers just have the opportunity to exerices our wonderlust is a comfortable way.
Most people in the U.S. have ancestors within a few generations that had "itchy feet". That is not true worldwide. But even in places like Germany, where most can go back hundreds of years in the same area, there are a lot of people who love to travel.
My favorite story is a good friend I met in college. Soon after his mother got pregnant with him his father was drafted and he was born on a military base in Germany. He was his grandparent's on his father's side first grandchild. So his grandparents, who hadn't traveled out of the state they were born in before, came to Germany. They found out they loved to travel. Until they were unable to travel, they went everywhere and sent postcards. My friend's uncle, who almost got ill going more than an hour from his home town, blamed his brother for taking his parents away on trips. Of course the military moves also had an affect on my friend's parents, his father took jobs in different places and has never moved back to his home state.
I am an Army brat and my mother is a war bride, so traveling seems very natural to me.
-- Edited by bjoyce on Monday 8th of April 2013 03:19:46 PM
I have been thinking, are RVer's expressing the "hunter-gatherer" instincts of our caveman ancestors? I mean, like people walking across the Bering Strait, Celtic mummies found in China, Polynesians rowing boats all over? Cities, taxes, sitting at desks all day, it's just not natural! So, do you think that this RV urge is an expression of our primal DNA?
and then there are RV'ers. We travel willingly even with the knowledge that the odds are against us to have a good time. Something breaks, the weather turns nasty, the campers next door are noisy and rowdy, bugs, road construction, no spaces left...etc.
I agree it's the same thing that drove our ancestors and relatives to leave their comfortable homes in search of something better. The grass is always greener on the otherside of the hill.
I'm betting if you went back to the 1800's there would be someone in a wagon train heading down some trail in Kansas asking this same question....Why ?
Small House - Big Yard
I'm not sure that hunter/gatherer is the right terminology to use in this case. The early hunters likely had to travel to follow migrating animals and the gatherers likely stayed in one place mostly with only short trips for hunting. That is, unless they just lived off of what grew wild instead of being cultivated. In either case, they were living their lives for survival.
I like to think of the RV lifestyle as individuals that are more like pioneers and mountain men. The early explorers went west and kept moving simply because they looked to see just what was over the next ridge. They were eventually followed by the pioneers who ripped up home ties in the east and went west looking for a better life. Many times, those that went west found themselves developing into leaders and visionaries once they got away from the "settled" lifestyle in the east.
So, I guess we could all be more like those two categories of people. Well, except for a few of us, like Jo and I, who are still waiting for the opportunity to do more traveling. In spite of the fact that we are still settled, both of us have done a lot of traveling across the U.S. at different times, but only for short periods.
When I had my blog on Blogger, the header at the top was comments based on the writings of Louis L'Amour. It is still on my blog at Wordpress, but I had to put it into a linked area instead of being right at the top to be the first thing seen by readers. Here is what I wrote for that purpose:
"Pioneers take the arrows"
Oh, wait. I should be upbeat and taking arrows doesn't sound like an upbeat thing to say.
So, let me amend that statement.
It was courage and vision that led the pioneers to leave behind a comfortable, settled life and trek West to begin a new life in a new place. Many of those from the East that went West found a strength within themselves that they didn't see while they were in their old life. Instead of being one of those that just kind of went along with the others in the old life, they became leaders and visionaries in their new lives.
The sentiments of that last paragraph come from a favorite author, Louis L'Amour, in many of his books. So, I can't really say that it is an original thought from me. However, what he said is truthful.
Welcome to being a pioneer. Look ahead and ignore the "barking dogs" that give you negative opinions and comments. Louis L'Amour also spoke of the barking dogs.
In some of his stories, it was usually a father or older man telling a young boy how it was that when the Westward bound Conestoga wagons rolled through towns, the dogs came out to bark at them. His character then told the young listener that the barking didn't stop the wagons from going on to their destinations.
Following the advice of the Louis L'Amour characters, may we all forge ahead with our plans, after carefully considering all consequences and leave the "barkers" behind.
Terry
I don't know, some hunter gatherers were just early pioneers, without the wagons.
I think mountain men living off the land qualify as hunter gatherers too, a lot of them were considered whites who had "gone injun". In any case, I think humans have a natural instinct to wander, to meet other tribes and trade along the way, looking for greener pastures. Unless it's been domesticated out of them completely, which seems unhealthy (people who actually like living in places like NY?)
For the next 18 yrs I wanted that freedom back...the ability to follow adventure, happiness and just being free of trying to make a life that everyone else had a saying of how and what standard I should live..
To be able to wonder in natures wilderness and meet with like minded people who find the same happiness looking at nature as it is supposed to be seen, and see that we are just a small part in the bigger picture is awesome!!!!!!!
your right....the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence...............but the view of the grass is more spectacular when the fence is not there, and its just you and nature being one!!!!!
And now I am still older turning 62 in July and still living in an RV hoping and praying to be able to turn the wheels again for some more fun and seeking the serenity from my primal urges that keep me motivated. LOL!
I meant NYC
They're getting so domesticated there, they can't even choose to buy Big Gulps anymore! And if I'm going to live small, I'd rather it be on wheels, than a $1,000 a month 300 sq ft apartment with bars on the window. 
You know, I used to have this attitude about NYC. Then in 1995, Timothy McVeigh decided to blow up the Murrah office building here in Oklahoma CIty. While talking with a person from New York City, she told me that the employees of the World Trade Center (which suffered the 1993 bombing) had huge "cards" in the lobby of the towers and everone was signing those cards as support for the victims, families, and citizens of Oklahoma City.
Now, that said, and with the distinct danger of making this political, I doubt if any of those signers of the cards were politicians.
So, I now have a new "allegiance" with some of the citizens of New York City.
Terry
Jesse was an Air Force brat and is retired Navy so he's lived all over the world. He was a nomad crossing the country with his travel trailer when we met and settled into a house.
I just wonder what took us so long!
Sherry
Hey Sherry, I have a tendency to gaze at mountains, and wonder, how far away is that? What's on top? What's on the other side? Once I get going, it might be going from mountain to mountain!
Terry and Jo, I know what you mean.... 9/11 I was in Marin County, California, snotty yuppy capital of the Bay area. Normally, a lot of those people wouldn't give you the time of day, unless you have a big fancy college degree, or own a home (median home price, $800,000). I remember being in my favorite Mexican restraunt, where the owner had proud pictures of her Marine sons displayed behind the register. She was visibly distraught, thinking about her boys being deployed. People who normally treated her as a "servant" (rather than a small business owner) were truly concerned, and saying very kind, supportive things. I think maybe some of them were "shocked" out of their dream world, and were forever "re-humanized", realizing there is more to life than power and prestige.
Back to the Big City... I read an article about the new "micro-apartments" being rolled out in NYC (also SF) which are like, 200-300 sq ft (RV sized) The writer was like, "You won't need a living room, because you will be doing all your living and socializing on the street, out in public... feeding on the energy of the City!" I lived in SF for about 2 years, and didn't like the "energy" of the City, and I didn't really fancy "socializing" in public with the people on the street.
I'm thinking, it may be less "domesticated" and more "primal" to want to hit the road, "feeding on the energy of the Earth", perhaps traveling and socializing in small family groups or tribes, following the trade routes... like how like in the movie Conan, Conan tells his buddy, let's get out of this place! And they take off across the prairie!
Wow! DW is from Michigan also (don't know if that has anything to do with it, though). She always liked to watch the trains also. She told me (and I believe her) that she would wave at the trains where they ran close to their place. Once, the engineer stopped and offered her a ride and she got on. This must have been in the early 60's when she was under ten! Imagine that happening today! To this day she fantasizes about jumping on a train like a hobo!
It's all I can do to keep her in check for one more year.
Vance
We are just exercising our freedom to make our own decisions. People have always wanted to explore new places and experience difference cultures. RVers just have the opportunity to exerices our wonderlust is a comfortable way.
See you on the road.
Larry and Jacki