One of the oddities of RV culture is its schizophrenia: it bandies romantic cliches about adventures, dreams, and the freedom of the open road, while it harps on practical matters. Why so?

RV wannabees and newbees are so insecure that they can never get enough  'how-to' tips. Commercial blogs target these naifs because they have the greatest number of purchase decisions still to be made. And they believe ads.

The same is true of individual RVer's blogs that make reader's eyes run a gauntlet of google ads, perhaps to a lesser degree. (I wouldn't mind the ads if they were more pertinent.)

RV clubs think of themselves as being quite distinct from the RV industry, proper, but they too sell things to RVers: memberships and dues. And they too aim their practical tips at wannabees and newbees because it's what makes them cough up the dues.

All of this is as it should be. People need to make a living and neophytes need advice. But what about experienced RVers?

Now let's talk about non-commercial (ad free) RV travel blogs run by individuals. Maybe you too are in the habit of running across RV travel blogs with high hopes and then becoming disillusioned.

For instance, the blogger starts off promising to talk about personal transformations that can occur in an alternative lifestyle. That could certainly be interesting! But then he expostulates on how two blocks of wood can be screwed together, in such and such a way, to make custom leveling blocks.

They lure the reader's eyeballs with buzzwords like 'adventure' and 'dreams,' and then you learn that the adventures are just the motor vehicle-based sightseeing that any July tourist would do, and their dreams are just escapism.
 
Why do RV bloggers tell you whether they did laundry today and what they had for breakfast?

Sigh. Truly, RVing on the Net is a vast wasteland of thinly disguised infomercials, or the dreariest prose, replete with turgid descriptions of picayune details.

Perhaps the non-commercial blogs by individual RVers are just imitating the rest of the industry. That's a shame because it's such a missed opportunity.

Well now, I feel better. Then again, maybe it was the special lunch I had today. Mmm...maybe it was those prairie dog/veggie wraps I cooked up using my new tri-mode, Nuk'nNuggets brand of solar-powered, satellite-controlled barbecue, set at 375F for 24 minutes and then...