The Last Generation That Knows How to Travel
There is a generation of Americans hitting the road right now that grew up doing something most people under 40 have never actually done: figuring things out without a screen.
They read paper maps, made campground reservations by phone, talked to strangers when they got lost, fixed things with their hands, and navigated genuine uncertainty with nothing but experience and nerve. Now they are retiring in enormous numbers, and they are taking every one of those skills on the road in an RV.
We just returned from a week-long RVCommunity.com rally in Hocking Hills, Ohio, and what I saw there told me more about the real state of RV travel in America than any industry report I have read this year. Eighty-eight of us gathered in one of the most spectacular landscapes in the Midwest, and not one of us was sitting in a lawn chair staring at a phone.
They were riding bikes and e-bikes, hiking the gorges and waterfalls of Hocking Hills, covering serious miles on foot at ages that would make a lot of younger people reconsider their screen time. We also canoed and kayaked.
And here is the detail that says everything about who these people actually are: I could not find a single outdoor television running at our rally. Not one. The RV manufacturers have spent years insisting that exterior TV hookups are a must-have feature, that buyers demand them, that the tailgate-and-screen lifestyle is what modern camping looks like.
Our members were too busy living outside to watch a screen inside. The Hocking Hills gorges, the waterfalls, the firelit evenings in a big circle of friends, that was the entertainment. No remote required.
At one campfire, with just over 50 members gathered under the darkening Ohio sky, I asked a simple question: How many of you bought a brand-new RV in the past year? Not used. Brand new.
Eleven hands went up. Think about that number for a moment. This is happening right now, in the middle of what the RV industry itself is calling its worst sales year in more than a decade. Shipments are down, dealer lots are piling up, and manufacturers are in full crisis mode.
And yet, a group of experienced RVers who have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles between them kept right on buying new rigs. Almost 20% of our crowd.
The scenes playing out around our campground all week were not ones you will ever see in an RV manufacturer's brochure. One of our members retired from a long industrial career and then, rather than slow down, went and got certified as an RV technician because he likes to keep busy. During the rally, he spent an afternoon on his knees in the gravel repacking the wheel bearings on a fellow member's travel trailer. No service appointment, no two-week wait at a dealership. Just someone who knew how to do the job, doing it.
That is what this generation does. They fix things.
Another couple, he is 79 and she is 77, drew a small crowd when they started giving impromptu lessons on the electric scooters they bought this year to complement the e-bikes they already travel with. They were not passengers in the experience. They were the ones teaching it.
Let me be clear about something, because the stereotype cuts the wrong way. We are not technophobes. We use GPS, apps, text messaging, and every digital tool that actually works well.
The difference is that we know what to do when the technology fails, or when it simply is not adequate for the task. We grew up building the skill set that sits underneath all of it. When the GPS routes you down a road that a 35-foot fifth wheel has no business being on, experience is what saves you, not a better app. When the weather turns and the campground's WiFi goes down, you figure it out the same way you always have. You look at the sky, you talk to your neighbors, and you make a decision.
You would never know any of this from watching RV industry advertising. The manufacturers run slick, expensive campaigns featuring toned twenty-somethings in immaculate campgrounds, which makes a certain kind of sense when you realize that most of those marketing departments are staffed by twenty-somethings.
The problem is that the people actually buying new RVs, fueling Camping World's used inventory push, and driving whatever bright spots exist in an otherwise grim sales picture are overwhelmingly Baby Boomers and older Gen Xers. The industry is systematically marketing past its own customer base, designing rigs around features like exterior TVs that their actual buyers walk right past on their way to the trailhead.
The skills that built this generation
The skills that built this generation of travelers are not glamorous by the standards of social media content.
Nobody is going viral for knowing how to repack wheel bearings, read a topographic map, or talk their way into a last-minute campsite with a phone call. But those skills produce something that no algorithm can replicate: real competence on the road, real confidence in the unknown, and real pleasure in the journey itself.
The people at our Hocking Hills rally were not performing travel for an audience. They were doing it, at 65 and 70 and 79, with a fluency that only comes from decades of practice.
The campfire conversations were the best.
There was talk about bucket list destinations yet to be seen, grandkids, and funny stories from the road. Inevitably, some conversations drift toward knee replacements, cataract surgery, blood pressure medication, and the various realities of getting older. Jennifer will probably be part of those discussions. She's scheduled for knee replacement surgery two weeks after we get home. She planned the timing carefully because she wants enough time to recover and complete physical therapy before our next rally in September.
What strikes me is how naturally these two realities coexist.
People talk openly about aging. They acknowledge physical limitations. They compare doctors and surgeons. Then, ten minutes later, they're discussing a trip to Alaska, a month-long tour of New England, or plans to spend next winter exploring the Southwest.
Nobody here seems particularly interested in slowing down.
The RV industry would do well to pay attention. The generation that knows how to travel is not slowing down anytime soon.
If any of this sounds like your people, it probably is. RVCommunity.com is where this conversation keeps going, year-round, without the ads and noise that clutter every other RV forum and Facebook group on the Internet. It is a private, ad-free community of experienced RVers who share real information, honest opinions, and the kind of hard-won knowledge that only comes from actually being out there.
We gather online every day and in person multiple times a year at rallies and regional Meet-Ups, just like the one in Hocking Hills. Plus, Jennifer and I do two community-only livestreams each week. If you are ready to travel with people who know what they are doing and love doing it, come find us at RVCommunity.com.
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