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RV camping in Alaska
Take the comforts of home with you
By Sonya Senkowsky / Anchorage Daily News
Most people try to leave the workplace behind when they go on vacation. But Bill Rogers, owner of Wild Bill's RV Alaska, takes his with him.
(Hey, would you trust an RV salesman who didn't like to tool around in one himself?)
So when he and his wife decided on a family trip from Anchorage to Washington state last summer, of course they did it in their 37.5-foot motor home.
Rogers has long enjoyed RVing; he's even written poems about it. But during this excursion, even he was surprised at the magic the experience worked on his 14-year-old daughter, Tiana.
"It was our first really long trip," he said, and frankly, he'd expected her to pull the typical-teen act, plugged into headphones the whole way. Instead, Tiana -- unplugged -- enjoyed sitting in the passenger seat and was "just enthralled with what she was seeing," he said.
Four black bears. Mountain goats. Her first deer sighting (in Anchorage there are only moose). She even started a scrapbook of plants she'd never seen before. "We stopped every 10 miles literally just to smell the flowers."
"Watching her have fun was one of the greatest experiences I've ever had," Rogers said.
And though their wheels never left this continent, you wouldn't know it by the atlas of fellow travelers they discovered. "You get people from Germany, Britain and Asia that are out there RVing," Rogers said. "It was a worldwide experience, and all we did was travel from Anchorage down to the Seattle area."
Roughing it with amenities
"It really is a lifestyle," Rogers said. "It's a wonderful, wonderful escape, and it's a family activity. The best memories that children have will be out camping with their parents."
Of course, in the case of RVing, "camping" includes amenities such as a mattress, a full kitchen with a microwave and a bathroom with hot-and-cold running water. And the comforts are getting more comfortable every day, according to Rogers.
His 2000 Mountain Aire sported a ceramic tile floor and stackable washer/dryer. Central ducted air conditioning, sophisticated climate controls and a "slide" or room expansion that can add 40 extra square feet of living space when parked are among the more innovative features in new models.
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