You <i> Can </i> Take It With You, RV Lovers Find : Outdoors: Camping in O.C. can mean ‘Melrose Place’ and microwaves.

As the sun sets over the Pacific Ocean and tinges the majestic beach bluffs with purple, campers switch on their television sets.

They wash the dinner dishes in tidy camper kitchens and pop movies into their VCRs. And when dusk settles on the campground at San Clemente State Beach, strings of jewel-colored RV awning lights lend the scene the festive aura of a trailer park at Christmastime.

Welcome to camping 1990s-style, as a boom in recreational vehicles reshapes the social fabric of the nation’s campgrounds. While an earlier generation had to make do with toasting marshmallows around the campfire, today’s families can stick the popcorn in the microwave and tune into “Melrose Place.”

The number of RVs on the road has grown in recent years, from inexpensive pop-up tent campers to sleek $400,000 motor coaches fit for a rock band. A key reason, some industry experts say, is that aging baby boomers have grown less eager to contend with missing tent stakes, leaking air mattresses and cantankerous camp stoves.

“Tent camping’s fun, but it’s hard, “ complained Carol Cornwell of Highland, whose family vacationed at San Clemente last week amid the comforts of two RVs and three television sets.

And as Labor Day approaches, the ocean-side campgrounds of Orange County glint with aluminum and fiberglass, with villages of RVs dwarfing more rustic tents.

Camping purists are dubious.

To them, real campers sleep on the ground under a thin nylon roof or a star-studded sky.

How can RVers call themselves campers, they ask, if they’re carrying their homes along with them like turtles encased in big fiberglass shells?

But RV aficionados seem unfazed by such skepticism. In fact, many vacationers settling in for the holiday weekend described themselves as reformed tent campers who now extol the glories of RV life. In a virtual chorus, they summed up the switch with one word: convenience.

“You have your own restroom. You have water, a stove, a microwave--the whole works,” said Norma Box, 60, who was camping with her husband in a gleaming 29-foot motor home at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point.

Tent camping may be fine for the younger set, say RV loyalists, but there comes a time in every camper’s life when the joys of “roughing it”--scrubbing food-encrusted dishes sans sink, stumbling over tent stakes on a post-midnight trip to the latrine--just grows, well, old.

“I’d never go back to a tent,” vowed George Gruenwald, 39, of Fontana, whose RV can sleep seven in its mauve-and-blue interior equipped with air conditioning, stereo and built-in microwave.

And even some Doheny tent campers unloading their ice chests and cookware in the searing-hot midday sun spoke wistfully of how RV owners can drive right into a campsite with refrigerators and well-stocked kitchens aboard and virtually no set-up required.

“We’ve been here an hour and 15 minutes and we’re not even halfway,” reported one Fontana mother as her family pitched tents at Doheny.

Several tent campers confessed that they plan to buy RVs--just as soon as they can afford it.

Others remain unconvinced.

“RVs aren’t camping. It’s like being in a hotel,” said Connie Aguilar, 43, who was tent camping with her husband in a mountainside glen high up the serpentine Ortega Highway in the Cleveland National Forest.

Here, four tents outnumbered the single RV one quiet evening last week--a stark contrast to the RV-lined beachfront campgrounds down the mountain. The mood: staunchly pro-tent.

RV life “is not like the right feel of camping,” said Jeremy Seely, 20, as he and a friend huddled around a burning citronella candle to ward off the pre-dusk bugs. And two visitors from the Netherlands described with quiet amusement how, on their Western travels, they watched an RV cause a traffic jam when it proved too big for a tunnel at Zion National Park.

Some campers simply eschew the campgrounds that attract RVs.

“I don’t leave the city to go to another, RV city,” said Donna Specht, 57, of Huntington Beach, who prefers to backpack miles from the nearest road in the High Sierra. As for RVers: “They think they’re getting out there. That’s OK. We don’t want too many people in the backcountry.”

RV loyalists bristle at the notion that they’re not real campers.

“They are motor home owners, and they are proud of it, and they’re just as much campers as anyone else,” said Tara Calton at the Camarillo-based Good Sam Club, a club for RV owners.

The popularity of RVs has received new attention this summer, in part because of reports that baby boomers are embracing a lifestyle once associated with retirees.

A recent study conducted for the Recreation Vehicle Industry Assn. showed that more than half of likely RV buyers are 30 to 49 years old, according to the industry group based in Reston, Va. And, defying the stereotype, the average RV owner is younger than 50, spokesman Bill Baker said.

“A lot of baby boomers grew up camping. They want to do the same thing with their kids,” Baker said. “I think they want to do it with a little more comfort, and the RV is perfect for that.”

Fully 8.2 million American households owned RVs last year, up from 5.8 million 1980, he said.

In Orange County’s campgrounds, workers report that motor homes and coaches seem to be growing ever more luxurious.

They come loaded with so many appliances that they strained the San Clemente park’s electrical system, spurring an upgrade.

“They’re here with their cellular phones so they can call their Aunt Mabel in South Dakota. They’ve got their color TVs. They’ve got everything,” senior park aide Tony Pardee said.

One sought-after section of the San Clemente park is equipped with 72 electrical, water and sewer hookups for RVers. After dark, it glows with televisions, lamps and patio lights, exuding a carnival-like flavor.

Hookups are lacking in another section of the park, and park rules require that RV generators be turned off at night.

So on a recent evening, families huddled around Coleman lamps in the darkness--a throwback to an era before campgrounds were wired for light and sound.

But Southern California parks are growing more RV-friendly. Nearly 70 water and electrical hookups were added several years ago at the San Mateo campground of San Onofre State Beach. Now, state park officials hope to install RV hookups at Bolsa Chica State Beach in Huntington Beach both to meet demand and to generate revenue. Doheny, too, may get hookups in time.

Orange County parks officials are taking a similar tack by installing 19 RV electrical and water hookups as part of flood restoration at the county-owned, privately run Canyon RV Park near Yorba Linda. Their hope: that the hookups will yield more money for the financially strapped county, which lost $1.7 billion in its investment portfolio.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that parks that don’t have these facilities, they lose RVers,” said Tim Miller, manager of Orange County Regional Parks.

But services at these public parks dim when compared to the amenities at Newport Dunes, a posh RV resort that offers cable television, a pool and spa, gym, grocery store, children’s crafts classes and even video rentals.

Summer rates are pricey, from $29 a night for a small lot to $65 for a larger beachfront site on weekends. And the resort draws some of the region’s largest, best-equipped RVs, like the 40-foot-long coach lined with myrtle wood where Richard Bowyer, 63, of Pasadena and his family were vacationing last week.

The former Trailways bus boasts two color televisions, multiple stereo speakers and a full kitchen with tile counters. On one side, a door lifts up to reveal a convenient ice maker.

But even as RVs grow ever longer and sleeker, some campers remain tied to their tents.

Among them is Arlyne Reccia, 55, of Orange, who bought a $50 canvas cabin tent 23 years ago at a sidewalk sale.

Last week, amid a sea of RVs at Doheny, Reccia resolutely raised the blue-and-yellow cabin tent once again.

Over the years, she has replaced the zipper and mended a few holes with duct tape. Then, during last spring’s rains, she discovered that the waterproofing was finally wearing thin.

Still, Reccia has no intention of buying an RV.

“I just like sleeping outside in the fresh air. And hearing the ocean,” she said.

Instead, Reccia soon may trade up to a new tent--a modern, light-weight style, this time. Fully waterproofed.

To her, that’s comfort.