RV Travel: 10 Reasons Why You Should Rent an RV for Your Next Family Vacation

Why is RV travel the best way to travel with kids? Because you can carry everything you need with you. There’s no need to pack and unpack in a hotel room, no need to find a restaurant with food your picky eater will actually eat and no need to find a pet sitter — Fido can come too! Even better, if you rent an RV for your family vacation, there’s no need to worry about where to store the RV when you get home. Here, a full-time RVing mom of 12 shares her top reasons why RV travel is the best way to vacation as a family.

This post is sponsored by RVshare, a peer-to-peer RV rental website that connects RV owners with people who want to rent an RV.

Living the RV Life

Our family of 14 (Mom, Dad and 12 kids) spends 9 or 10 months each year living in our RV, traveling North America. We much prefer the lazy, family friendly ways of RV travel to frantically chasing taxis to make a flight, dragging along the hungry and tired kids.

Because we are full-time RVers, we own our rig. Renting an RV is the answer for families who spend less time on the road. It offers all of the upsides of RVing with none of the downsides of owning — you never have to figure out where to park it when you’re not traveling!

Here are my top reasons RV travel is best for families.

1. It Promotes Healthy Living

We travel in a 1999 Georgie Boy that we remodeled in 2016 to suit our family’s needs. Our RV has limited living space. But that’s fine. To us, RV travel means spending our days outside, hiking, biking, climbing, whitewater kayaking, surfing, etc. We don’t typically hang out in the RV, though my husband does have a pseudo office rigged in the back bedroom.

After the year we’ve been through, the ability to be outdoors and socially distanced from other travelers can’t be overstated. Whether you spend the night in an RV park or a national park, the kids can spend the days running around outdoors and spend the nights in your own private space.

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2. You Aren’t Tied to a Schedule

During our years of RV travel, we have been able to incorporate adventure in our daily lives, home school our children, make memories and live truly free lives.

Our days aren’t governed by a schedule. We wake with the sun and retire with the moon.

Our family has never been as close as we are today. The gift of “getting away” whenever we desire, produces a relatively stress-free, worry-free, life. Whether you are a weekend warrior, a summer vacationer, or an extended RV traveler, being in control of your own time and destiny is a wonderful thing!

3. There is an RV for Everyone

4. RV Travel Can be a Luxury Experience

Luxurious RV travel is possible. Just look at the floor plans of some of the luxurious motorhomes. You’ll find some with king-sized beds and two baths, a washer/dryer, flat screen TVs, indoor and outdoor kitchens and full-sized refrigerator.

We don’t have any of that. But we have the real luxury of RV travel: being able to slow down, brew a cup of coffee, make lunch or even take a nap.

That kind of luxury doesn’t require a shiny new Airstream trailer. It’s all about the mindset.

5. It’s Always a Budget Friendly Vacation

For those of us who live life on a budget — where eating out for three meals per day, plus hotel rooms, gas, adventure activities and more would send us to the poor house — traveling in an RV is a life hack. We are able to cook all our meals in the RV, eat healthy and have money left over for the really fun stuff: the adventure!

Campgrounds cost, literally, hundreds of dollars cheaper than hotel rooms. And gas for one RV is much cheaper that airfare for 14!

6. You Can Bring the Pets!

We never want to leave our beloved Eddy, the mini Goldendoodle, or Mia, our cat, at home while we have fun.

While it’s getting easier and easier to find pet friendly hotels, you’ll pay extra for the privilege of leaving a pet in the room while you are out having fun.

Eddy goes just about everywhere with us. When we are going somewhere he can’t, like paddling whitewater, Eddy hangs out with Mia in our climate-controlled RV. With RV travel, there is no need to pay extra fees at a hotel or stress out your pets by boarding them!

7. You Can Go Anywhere

As all families with kids know, getting out of the house and getting anywhere on time is nearly impossible. That’s another reason RV travel is so perfect for our family. An RV trip is all about freedom — the freedom to leave when we are ready and go where we want to go.

Whether it is a west coast road trip from California to Washington or a cross-country drive from our home in Colorado to New York, we have the freedom to change our minds. Should we come to a crossroad and decide to turn left instead of right, we can.

We don’t even need to find an RV park with all the fancy hookups for the night. We can spend the night in the wild, next to a lake, or boondocking in a Walmart parking lot — whichever we choose.

8. It’s More Comfortable

One of the things I like the most about RV travel is that we get to enjoy the outdoors, spending all day on the river, at the beach or climbing or biking. But when we come home, exhausted and tired, we really are coming home, to our own things.

We have climate control, a fridge, a kitchen where we can fix healthy meals, comfy couches, our own blankets and pillows. Even our own beds.

And, while our humble RV doesn’t have any bells and whistles, we have toured RVs that have bunk rooms, washer and dryers, heated floors, multiple flat-screen TVs, even dishwashers. You can literally find an RV with every luxury imaginable for rent at RVshare.

9. You Can Bring as Much Stuff as You Want

Seriously, you can bring every important piece of equipment with you. From bikes and kayaks, to longboards, camp chairs, tents, hammocks and more, you can bring the house!

With 14 people traveling with us, we have to be a bit more careful. But we still manage to bring 20+ Jackson Kayaks, and all the gear that goes with them! We have surfboards and crockpots, cookware, all our toiletries, board games, toys, and a plethora of clothing.

10. You Can Eat Healthy

One of the biggest pitfalls of travel is hitting restaurants for every meal. It’s not budget friendly and it’s not healthy. I take great pride in feeding my kids healthy, home-cooked meals, even on the road.

We are able to keep a few days of food for our crew, even with our tiny fridge. We supplement with delish organically grown local produce. Our meals range from fish tacos to huge chef salads, and everything in between. And, of course, dessert, which often is s’mores around the fire.

RV Travel is for Everyone

Bob Dotson, from American Story, once said we would “be the first in line on the Oregon Trail.” We are definitely trailblazers, adventurers and we love to challenge the status quo.

This is why the full-time RV lifestyle has suited us so well. We can go anywhere at any time on a whim.

And I’ll tell you a little secret: We have two regrets in life. The first is that we didn’t home school our kids from the beginning. The second is that we didn’t start full time RVing earlier.

We got the jobs, bought the house, the cars, did the commute and the 9 to 5, the two weeks of vacation. And we uttered the letters, TGIF. The debt, the colossal debt drowned us. Being free of the mortgage, the car payments, the stress allows us to breathe.

Weekend Warriors

Of course, the full-time RV lifestyle isn’t for everyone. The majority of RVers are weekend warriors who rent an RV to hit the road for adventure on their days off of work and school.

Or they are summer vacationers, heading to the beach, to the mountains for a stress free time with their families. Maybe they are grandparents with grandchildren in tow. Or young couples with dreams of a future filled with joy. Or families hoping for one last hurrah before school starts in the fall.

Heck, we know a few families who pile their kids into their RV and head to the ski resort at the first sign of a powder day.

The point is there is an RV and an RV experience for everyone. No matter who you travel with, where you go, what you do, RV travel will always be the best way. Always.