RV Holiday USA? New England

[katiewins22]

Hi

I am looking at organising holiday for 2010. We can manage to get 3 weeks away so I was thinking initially of USA - New York and Boston?

I then received email from Eurocamp about RV hire in USA and is set me thinking (wink)

We could use RV and see more areas. Has anybody done this area in an RV

Even if travelled other areas I would really love to hear about experiences in RV campgrounds in America and getting about in an RV. I think we would still want to do New York and Boston and maybe extend into other areas of New England. I am in the early planning stage so all advice would be very welcome. Thanks

Ok - see I haven't quite got the hang of the smileys and links !!! I will try again - that was suppiosed to be

oohh watching with interesti have always wanted to do this..

anybody?? any suggestions. I am now starting to wonder whether we would be making life hard work in a mobile home (RV) as we would need to keep packing it up and moving on. Maybe we should just hire car and stay in hotels/motels - isn' that the beginning of a song

noooo! dont give up it sounds fab..

I've always wanted to do that but wonder about how easy it is to only have an RV as your transport.
Usually on holidays dh and I don't do everything together. Like in France I'll often head to local town to wander around market for morning, while he does something else.
But in RV your "home" goes with you, so can other people stay behind really?

I did a week in an RV last year in Florida. Went from Orlando down to Miami then on down to the Florida keys, a few days there then back up the Gulf coast to Naples then back to Orlando.
To be honest, not sure I'd do it again. The RV we hired was the smallest one they did and I think we should have gone for a bigger one (although even in the small one we had trouble fitting in some roads in Key West). There was myself, DH, DD1 aged 12, DS1 aged 15 and DD2 aged 2.7. I'd just found out I was expecting DS2 the week before we left so not the best timing. Perhaps if we'd got a bigger RV it would have been a bit/lot more comfortable.

We also should have got one with stabliser thingys? (not sure what they are called) as without them, every time someone got up at night the whole van rocked. Our lovely American neighbours at a site in the Keys had a big 'proper' RV and it looked far more comfortable.
It took a day or two to get used to the 'dumping' of the water at the RV sites but thankfully the nice American neighbours showed us (after pi**ing themselves laughing at our attempts)

we stayed at a few sites that were Kamp of America (I'm pretty sure it was with a 'K' but will dig out my papers later).
Some sites were quite cheap, around £25 per night but others more expensive, I think nearer $75. Most had good facilities, except the one in Key Largo which was awful

It is handy being able to just move on when you've had enough of one place but what you might want to think about is whether you want to hire an RV with a built in cab or one that is towed. We were restricted as to where we could take the RV and if for example we wanted to pop to the supermarket for BBQ stuff, we all had to go.

Hope that helps

XP and I spent two weeks in an RV in Florida with four year old DD this February. It was brilliant and I would recommend it. We had an RV with two double beds so that we could put her to bed at her normal time and we could sit up and go to bed later (booked through Trailfinders).

Great thing is she could have all her toys in the same place (in hindsight wished we'd taken a lot more) and we didn't have to pack/unpack all the time, yet did a fair bit of travelling.

Also it was really useful being able to cook, e.g. breakfast, sandwiches at lunch but we still ate out when we wanted. Helped us budget as well. Roads and parking weren't a problem as roads and car parks are on a large scale over there.

My handy hint is to stay at the RV parks in the state parks (not national parks). Beautiful natural settings, much larger pitches and much cheaper (US$15-25). I was quite underwhelmed by the KOA sites.

I'm thinking of going to New England with DD on my own this summer, so will watch with interest. Not sure I'm confident enough to drive an RV myself, but would definitely recommend it.

Thanks for all advice and interesting to see different experiences. I am researching over next month or so then I will have to make a decision. We often travel around a lot in Europe and we aren't great at doing a holiday in one place so the RV appeals for this reason. Having said that we could always fly into New York and do 4 days there then fly Boston and do 4 days there and hire a car to get further afield. I watched Around the World in 80 days children in need show last night and really want a great big Winnibego (spell check!!) like the one they had!!! Will report back when decision made