Top 10 Memoirs About RV Travel

By BRVR Staff
July 2019

This article reviews the top 10 memoirs about RV travel available online.

RV travel represents a whole, awesome, separate world, hobby, and even lifestyle for many folks. This is because living and traveling on the road via RV presents its own unique beautiful moments and adversities alike. For those interested in learning more about RV travel or simply taking a trim down nostalgia lane, reading about RV travel can be a great option.

In that same spirit, the personal memoirs, specifically, of those who have traveled in RVs a good share are often the very best option for learning, nostalgia, and even plain entertainment along these lines. What have these seasoned RVers seen, heard, and learned along the way? Here is our quick review of the top 10, best memoirs about RV travel out right now.

1. Travels with Chesky: Rediscovering America

Travels with Chesky: Rediscovering America - Memoirs About RV Travel

This is the memorable story of how the author, Heather Phelps, decided to take on a personal mission to better understand what it is to be an American during election season 2016. In doing so, she got an RV and went on a ground-level and very intimate tour of the heartland, and the realizations she has along the way are some of the kinds readers can really benefit from as well. Then there is Chesky – the author’s pup, who like many pets, can be a lifesaver and can offer deep dilemmas as well.

2. Take Risks: One Couple’s Journey to Quit Their Jobs and Hit the Open Road

Take Risks: One Couple’s Journey to Quit Their Jobs and Hit the Open Road - Memoirs About RV Travel

This inspirational tale is that of the author and his wife’s decision to ultimately take life by the horns, leave the day-to-day rat race, and take on a life of RV travel and living. Many of us plan to eventually enjoy such a lifestyle, but it will never truly happen until a foot is put down and a decision is made. The Russos tell the story here of how it all worked out for them, what they learned, saw, and felt along this life-changing journey.

3. Tales From the Open Road: The Adventures and Misadventures of RV Living

Tales From the Open Road: The Adventures and Misadventures of RV Living - Memoirs About Travel

This followup to the above-mentioned Take Risks: One Couple’s Journey to Quit Their Jobs and Hit the Open Road is a real necessity, especially for those who read that first story. In this book, Joe Russo goes into depth on the inner-workings of making this life decision actually happen. For the reader, there are plenty of learning lessons to be had here, in the generalities of life as well as in making the transition to RV life in particular.

4. The Road Has Eyes: A Relationship, An RV and a Wild Ride

The Road Has Eyes: A Relationship, An RV and a Wild Ride - Memoirs About Travel

This is the story of Art and Fox, a photographer and a Native American descendant wanting to explore her bloodline and heritage. Together, they decide to ditch the normal, residential and very fixed life for one on the road in an RV. Experience this couple’s collective and individual obstacles, feelings, triumphs, and insights as they tell the story of their great leap into the unknown.

5. Confessions of a Middle-Aged Runaway: An RV Travel Adventure

Confessions of a Middle-Aged Runaway: An RV Travel Adventure - Memoirs

Heidi Eliason sees the transition to RV life a little differently. At 45, she decides she needs adventure and a possibly permanent escape from routine. This is her story of how it all worked out. How did Mr. Wrong nearly completely derail her journey in Mexico? Will she ever satisfy her attention-gluttonous RV, “The Green Monster”? A single woman, an RV and the road combine here for a great life story for male and female readers alike.

6. Growing Up Roadschooled: Stories, Lyrics, & Lessons Learned From Full-Time RVing & Life After Roadschooling

Growing Up Roadschooled: Stories, Lyrics, & Lessons Learned From Full-Time RVing & Life After Roadschooling - Memoirs About Travel

This is the uniquely telling rendition of RV life from a child’s perspective. Kelsey Henry takes the reader on a great story of how her life was as a child and teen growing up and schooling amidst an RV life. She then helps readers understand how that life ultimately affected her and made her the person she now is today. Would she do it all over again if given a choice? Read on to see!

7. Steeles on Wheels: A Year on the Road in an RV

Steeles on Wheels: A Year on the Road in an RV - Memoirs About Travel

Steeles on Wheels: A Year on the Road in an RV is a standalone gem in the field of books about RV living. Here, authors and RV-dweller couple Mark Steele and Donia Steele take readers down the road for an unfiltered glimpse into their RV life as a fifty-something couple. Sewer hookups, close-quarter living and getting along, life without a phone, and choosing camping locations – there are few stones left unturned by this often humorous but always very real story of life on the road by the Steeles.

8. Echoes of Walden: How We Escaped Our Life of Quiet Desperation…And What We Learned Along the Way

Echoes of Walden: How We Escaped Our Life of Quiet Desperation...And What We Learned Along the Way - Memoirs About RV Travel

Caroline D Grimm does a great job of setting the reader into her world. This is certainly, at least at first, a stressed and very distraught place, until she and her husband embark on a complete transition to RV life to try and escape it all. Insightful and poignant, this read will make you wonder about all of life’s “what ifs” and really consider what it all means to let loose and live a free life.

9. The Airstream that Ran Away with the Spoon: Discovering a New Home and a New Life with Chronic Fatigue

The Airstream that Ran Away with the Spoon: Discovering a New Home and a New Life with Chronic Fatigue - Memoirs About RV Travel

Author Mary K.D. D’Rozario does a great job in this excellent story of shedding light on the unique aspects of living an RV life while also affected by a chronic health ailment. Hitting the road in an RV was her attempt to get a better hold of her disease but also to reconnect with a country she felt not entirely connected to. Does RV life ultimately help her condition? Read this one to get a great and very unique take on RV living when health is an ever-present issue to contend with.

10. #RVLife: Seeking Happiness Through A Nomadic Life

#RVLife: Seeking Happiness Through A Nomadic Life - Memoirs About RV Travel

#RVLife: Seeking Happiness Through A Nomadic Life is a tale that will draw you in with real emotions, hardships, and a love worth saving. After three years of combat and resulting, severe PTSD, John’s marriage is nearly over. He and his wife, however, make a last-ditch, crazed effort to save it all when they move themselves, their two dogs, and cat into an RV for a life on wheels. What happens as a result of this leap of faith serves as a learning lesson for us all.