Camper Cheryl Sounds Off

October 15 is Blog Action Day. Bloggers everywhere are asked to blog about anything pertaining to the environment. This is my opportunity to stand on my soapbox, so humor me.

I'm sensitive to the environment. I'm not wasteful or destructive. I save aluminum cans, newspapers, and egg cartons for recycling. But I'm tired of being put on the defensive about RVing by folks I call hypocritics. (Hypocritical critics) You know the type who love to berate you for ruining the environment when they don't practice what they preach, the type who criticize me for driving a comfortable Buick that gets 32 mpg on the road when their ugly hybrid import gets no better.

I love traveling and I love camping. Yes, our mini-motor home gets 10-11 mpg, which makes it a gas hog. But that doesn't make me an enemy to the earth. RVers are by far the most conservation-minded folks in the USA. We drive around 60 MPH on the interstates while others whiz past us going 80.

I'll bet few people know how to conserve water as well as we do. A motto of the Good Sam Club is to leave a campsite better than you found it. That means not only picking up after ourselves and our pet but others, too.

We have to conserve power, even when hooked up to shore power. I keep a Volt-meter in my kitchen and manage my power usage, which means I identify and turn off power-hungry appliances. Do the hypocritics have any conception how much electricity they use at any given time? Do they capture dish water and reuse it for flushing the toilet? Do they know about treating holding tanks with environmental-friendly chemicals that won't harm septic systems? Do they understand Gross Vehicle Weight and managing their loads to maximize fuel economy? Do they understand stack-cooking to conserve LP?

RVers do.

So please don't suggest that because we own an RV, we're anti-environment. We were conservationists from the beginning.

Camper Cheryl