Nomads : On Labor Day in a Motor Home Park, Campers Get Away From It All--and Bring It With Them

Tired of the stressful life in Sylmar, John Ashby packed up the family and hit the Great American Highway in his 26-foot motor home.

The overtaxed auto worker kept his foot on the accelerator for a good 15 minutes. Then, the cares of the city falling away like a second skin, he swung his Palm Beach rig majestically into Fiesta Resorts Travel Village, located a gear shift away from the Golden State Freeway near Magic Mountain.

“I get up here as often as I can,” he said Saturday, working on his 1970 Corvette over the dull roar of passing semis out on Highway 126. “I like to get away from the city life.”

Ashby was one of hundreds of motor home owners settling in for another sizzling Labor Day weekend at this 45-acre recreational vehicle mecca, an insular world populated by people who have elevated the traditional American camp-out to such a stylized, mechanized art that nature has become nearly irrelevant.

Beer and Movies

And hey, if getting axle grease on your hands is not your idea of getting back to nature, go get blisters and shin splints on some hiking trail. Down here at Travel Village, they’re drinking beer around the barbecue pit and watching R-rated movies in the adult lounge. They may not have freeze-dried food, but they’ve got trail mix and lemonade over in the bingo lounge.

“We have more fun than people,” exulted Bridget Bennard, 63, of Lancaster who owns a 29-foot Winnebago and represented the high-spirited seniors contingent. “That’s sex, not six,” she would sing out whenever any of her companions rolled threes in a dice game for pennies.

“We live in a senior citizens complex,” Bennard said. “You’ve got to get away from all them old farts getting ready to die.”

Bristling With TV Antennas

But is cramming in 300-odd motor homes, door-to-door, antenna-to-antenna, really getting away? “This is camping for the ‘80s,” said Debra Potter, who put some ribs on the Weber stove Friday night and spun the television channel selector in search of “The Love Connection.”

For all this, visitors pay a premium. The RV area is open only to members, and memberships cost $5,000 and up. Since the park has sold about 1,300 memberships for 300 or so spaces, mere membership doesn’t guarantee a camping spot with the treasured “hookups” for sewer and electricity.

As a result, the holiday weekend for many began even before Friday as they rushed up early to get the best spots and to avoid being shunted off into “Beverly Hills.” The term “Beverly Hills” is a euphemism invented by Doc, a security guard and sometime ghostwriter who buzzes around the park in a golf cart, for the overflow area out by the wooden fence along the park’s perimeter. It was clever salesmanship since this Beverly Hills has little to do with luxury and status.

City on Wheels

As night fell Friday, the Cavemen, Prowlers and Invaders were still sliding majestically, like docking battleships, into their parking spots. A new city on wheels sparked to life, as hundreds of air conditioners, microwaves, and video game systems clicked on. Chuck Hindal, his chest and arms tattooed with a variety of predators, was, as usual, beating his wife, Ellen, in a game of Sorry, and, nearby, Lance Lawrence, 17, was sneaking puffs from a pack of Benson & Hedges he had chanced across.

The company fact sheet says the resort, fronting California 126 in Valencia, is set in a “lush valley surrounded by towering mountains.” In reality, the valley is, like much of Southern California, rather brown although the park has planted plenty of trees inside its perimeters and is working hard at growing grass. The management tries to keep everyone busy with activities, according to his or her inclination.

Pancake Breakfast

On Saturday, there was a pancake breakfast, croquet and shuffleboard, ham and turkey sandwiches at the Village Hall, a children’s Olympics with Randy the Clown, a steak dinner and music by a band called “The Legends,” a Baby Boomer revival group.

The closest anyone gets to wildlife is the bucolic roar of the semis, out on the highway.

“I come from Michigan. When we went out camping, we had a half-acre campsite, and the pines smelled so good,” said Ken Hoel, sales and marketing director for the resort. He goes out walking at night sometimes and listens to the semis and cringes. “I think, ‘I don’t think people are going to like this.’ Then, the next morning at breakfast they tell me they had the best sleep.”

To some people, the sound of a semi is restful compared to what they get at home. “We’ve had two cars in our yard” in Carson, Ellen Hindal said. “One was a stolen car. We live on a corner where there’s never a dull moment.”

Peaceful Crowd

Next to that, she said, Travel Village is peaceful, even with motor homes crowded in together like whales beached in a mass suicide.

The park attracts a cross-section of younger and older people, many of whom seem to be un-tethering themselves from society at large. “I will never have another house,” said a woman named Dee, who lives semi-permanently with her son in a 1-bedroom, 35-foot fifth wheel motor home with air conditioning and a microwave oven. There is too much wasted space in a house, she feels.

Ron and Joyce Kagy, who have been living on the road with four kids since 1979, feel much the same. Their children, the youngest of whom is 16, sleep on the floor, and happily. “Beds are too soft,” said Dennis, a budding rodeo performer who lays out his bedding by the door.

Comforts of Home

But then, neither they nor other Travel Village campers are willing to sacrifice what the modern, electric, shortwave, satellite world has wrought. While campers on the trail look around at the end of the day for flat ground on which to pitch their tents and a good tree from which to hang their food out of reach of bears, DeWitt Hooks looks for the space closest to the bathrooms and showers when he arrives at Travel Village. If he can be near the tennis court, that’s gravy.

“I’ve camped in the wilderness and I prefer this,” Hooks said. In fact, he considers motor home camping in Travel Village to be the best combination possible, between the whole hiking and tenting routine and staying home and camping out in front of the refrigerator and television.

Terry-Sue Berg, who operates a dating service in San Diego and Beverly Hills, said she wouldn’t be camping at all were it not for RV parks. “I was a Hilton person, Holiday Inn, until I saw this concept,” she said.

Swimming Pool

She owns a swimming pool but doesn’t use it. On Saturday afternoon, with the thermometer registering 108 degrees outside Hindal’s motor home, Berg grabbed a towel and made her way over to the park pool, filled with splashing people. How sensible is it to drive several hours to use a crowded pool, when you have an unused one at home?

Very, according to Berg. It’s not all people that she wants to get away from, she pointed out. Rather, she said, “The ones on the 405 freeway, that’s the kind of people we want to stay away from.”

“Out here, you can do things you’re not allowed to do at home,” she said. “Like drink beer at 12.” That’s nice, but it’s hardly a description of the wilderness experience. Then again, whoever said camping out had to be some kind of hormonal challenge?

“I wanted to tell you we were roughing it, but I can’t lie,” Berg said.