Turning a ‘staycation’ into a vacation

Perhaps these advantages are what drive RV enthusiasts, or perhaps it’s the money they save. One fellow we encountered at a gas station, who was towing a Jeep behind his motorhome (with a scooter on a rack at the back of the Jeep), said he was getting a respectable 9.4 miles per gallon with his rig. Respectable, that is, for a house on four wheels. It’s worth remembering that, unlike the car in your drive, a motorhome has to carry your family, three beds, a fridge, stove, sink and shower.

RV drivers calculate their mileage to the tenth of a gallon, because when you’re filling up a 55-gallon fuel tank it really does matter. Gas has always cost more in Canada than in the United States, but we saw more RVs there and more RV dealers than anywhere in the United States outside the warm weather snowbird destinations. A fellow guest at the Kampgrounds of America campground in Montreal explained that he and his wife have 51 days of holidays and vacation a year, so they travel extensively in their RV.

In RV jargon, our 31-foot Jayco Melbourne was a “Type C” motorhome, built on a cutaway van chassis. In English, that means that it’s one of those RVs that has the front part of a van and a camper stuck on the back, very much like many rental moving trucks and airport parking shuttles.

Jayco seemed to have executed most of the “home” aspects of the Melbourne impressively, with particular kudos for the impressive quality of the cabinetry. The air conditioner, refrigerator and combination microwave/convection oven all worked well, and the sliding windows were easy to operate for cross-ventilation when parked.

The table and couch convert to beds, in addition to the queen-sized bed in the rear bedroom. The manufacturer rates the camper’s capacity as suitable for four adults and two children, but the table and couch beds were cramped even for the kids to share, so we’d rate its comfortable capacity as four people.

But the Melbourne has its drawbacks. Several of the light switches are located at knee height and are mounted in panels with multiple switches, so you have to bend down to see which switch does what. And the addition of stabilizers to hold the vehicle still when parked would be an improvement. Any tossing and turning by people in bed shook the whole vehicle and prevented other campers from dropping off to sleep.

With a price tag of $91,022 the Melbourne is the top of the line for Jayco’s Type C van-based RVs, but you can get into a smaller, less well-equipped model for $69,786. The cost equation of RV travel is attractive as long as you can justify at RV’s purchase price. We spent $550 on gas and $220 on campgrounds for six days of travel for a family of five, and our grocery bill was about the same as it would have been at home, though we did indulge in a few extra meals out so we could enjoy Quebec’s French cooking.

And, yes, the kids bicker when packed together for a week, but they do that in hotel rooms, too. And they also play games and look out of the windows at the changing landscape. RV travel, it turns out, is a little like a visit to Quebec. It’s a little foreign in some ways and very familiar in others, which makes it an exciting combination for the kids.

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