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 “The Great RV Aging Revolution: Why More Americans Are Hitting the Road After 70.”
A few years ago, at one of our RV Lifestyle rallies, I met a man named Loren.
At the time, Loren was already in his 80s. He had driven himself to the rally in a well-worn Roadtrek Class B motorhome that was already old enough to qualify as a classic. Taped on the dashboard was a framed photograph of his wife, who had passed away a few years earlier. Her picture traveled everywhere with him.
Loren wasn’t there because he was trying to relive the past. He wasn’t there because he was lonely. He was there because he was still actively living his life.
Over the years, we’ve stayed in touch. Last week, after sharing publicly in a post that I had turned 80, I reached out to him again. I wanted to see how he was doing. And to get a little perspective. He turns 95 next month.
The answer was classic Loren. He’s still traveling. In fact, he’s preparing for another trip to Alaska. It will be his fourth journey there and will last two months. This time he’ll be traveling with his 62-year-old daughter as they make the long drive across Canada and into America’s Last Frontier.
His 1994 Roadtrek now has nearly 393,000 miles on it. Last summer, he replaced the engine and transmission. Think about that for a moment. A man well into his 90s plans to keep traveling.
That check-in with Loren stayed with me because Loren isn’t some isolated exception. In many ways, he represents something I’ve been seeing more and more often throughout the RV community.
For years, social media has presented a very specific image of RV travel. Scroll through Instagram and you’ll often find young influencers posing in front of mountain sunsets, flying drones over desert campsites, and posting carefully staged photos from exotic destinations. Good for them. They are having adventures and sharing them with the world. But that isn’t the whole story.
