RV LINGO

Almost ten years ago, we bought a Winnebago View and have made it our home for weeks or months at a time. Though my partner was familiar with the RV (recreational vehicle) life, it was all new to me. By talking with other RVers, and reading magazines and online forums on the subject, I’ve picked up a lot of information and learned much of the language.

The special RV lingo mystified me for a long time. Why would anyone pull a “toad” behind an RV? Isn’t that animal cruelty? Is a “genset” a person’s gender at birth? And so on. I had a lot to learn.

Towed

Now at least I know some basics: a “back-in site” is a campground site that has to be backed into. Carefully.  In contrast, a “pull-through site” can be driven into at one end, exited at another. Pull-throughs are more desirable because of their convenience, but campground managers tend to reserve them for the large RVs that need them more than we do. Luckily, the View is very maneuverable.

As on a boat, the kitchen in an RV is called a “galley.” Thank heavens, the bathroom is called the bathroom rather than the head.

Hookups are not what may first come to mind. They are connections for electricity and water in campground sites. Some campgrounds also have hookups for cable TV.

RV resorts are campgrounds with an attitude. They are likely to have a lot of expensive extras that seem antithetical to the informal RV life.

Boondocking, which we do often, is camping where there are no hookups. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management campgrounds, for instance, are usually in the boondocks, though some of them have water available.  RVers often refer to staying at Camp Walmart, a specialized type of boondocking.

Like a truck, an RV is often called a “rig.” It may be a “puller” (a trailer that is pulled by a truck or other vehicle) or a “pusher” (rear-engine diesel rig that doesn’t have to be pulled, as opposed to a front-engine rig). “Duallies” (the spelling varies) are those pairs of tires at the rear of an RV. They have valves that are hard to reach and cause a lot of the cussing you hear in campgrounds.

There are tons of other terms used in manuals and conversations. Googling for RV lingo will bring up many I have not mentioned.

And finally, a “toad” is not an amphibian; that’s a pun on “towed,” and can refer to a trailer, small car, or other towed object. A “genset” is a combination of a diesel engine and an electric generator.

Language can unite groups or divide them. In some cases those who have a common language feel superior to others, or to feel alienated from them. That doesn’t seem true for RVers, though. Even those who don’t know much terminology can be quickly included in the fraternity. Some aspects of RVing will always be out of my reach, and I don’t care to know about some others. I do feel comfortable with the lingo, though.