EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is an excerpt of an article by Mike Wendland, creator of the RV Lifestyle website, podcast and YouTube channel, in which he discusses “Dolly Parton Was One of Us: The RV Interview I Almost Got.”
Here is something most of the tributes will not tell you. Dolly Parton and her husband Carl Dean were RVers. Not tour bus people, though she logged more miles on one of those than most of us will ever drive. I mean actual RVers, the kind who load up a small van and disappear into the hills for a couple of days.
I found out about it by accident. This was back around 2014 or 2015, and I was writing a blog called Roadtreking.com, which years later grew into what you are reading now, RV Lifestyle. Roadtreks were my thing. Small Class B vans, built on a van chassis, no towed car, no leveling jacks, nothing to set up. Word reached me from somebody in the industry that Dolly owned two of them.
I did what reporters do. I sent a note to her publicist asking for an interview, and I fully expected to hear nothing back. You aim high, you get ignored, you move on to the next story. That is the job.
A couple of days later the answer came back, and it was yes. Not a polite brush-off yes, either. Dolly would be delighted to talk about her RVing. And here is the part that still gets me: I was told she already read my blog. She loved Class B vans. She owned two, one she kept out in Hollywood for the stretches when she was working on music and film projects, and one at her home in Tennessee.
So we started setting things up. The plan was to meet her in Nashville. We nailed down a date and I booked the flight. I told Jennifer. I told a couple of friends. I am not sure I have ever been more excited about an interview, and I have interviewed presidents.
Then I got the flu. Not a sniffle, the real thing, flat on my back for days.
