>The asphalt gleamed under light drizzle. The Challenger, 35 feet long and at least 12 feet high, loomed before me, a cruise ship on wheels. My friends and I had loaded our duffel bags and lawn chairs, and now we stared at it, our one-bedroom, one-bath home, our mode of transportation, our rented recreational vehicle.

We’d just been through a bewildering 90-minute orientation on everything from the retractable hand-cranked TV antenna to the order of emptying sewage tanks (black water first, gray water second). Nick, our RV guru, closed with these words: “It’s easier to drive than it looks. The most common thing is people hit the pole when they’re leaving the gas station. You’ve got to remember, this thing weighs 50,000 pounds. Anything you hit is going to tear off.”

That short lesson in physics didn’t seem like enough to qualify us for piloting this leviathan across the Great Plains to east central Kansas and back in four days, but it was.

Our destination was an outdoor symphony concert near Emporia, Kan. The hotels and motels nearby were booked up. An RV seemed like a simple solution. We’d just drive our own hotel to Kansas. Full Story…

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