Diamonds in the Rough : Some Purists Don’t Consider It Camping, but RVs Are on a Roll

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 popup 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, “ said Carol Cornwell of Highland, whose family vacationed at San Clemente last week amid the comforts of two RVs and three television sets.

Camping purists are skeptical of the RV wave. 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 are carrying their homes along with them like turtles encased in big fiberglass shells?

But RV aficionados seem unfazed by such skepticism. Many 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 last weekend 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 when the joys of “roughing it” just grows old.

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

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 setup required.

“We’ve been here an hour and 15 minutes, and we’re not even halfway,” one Fontana mother said 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.

There, four tents outnumbered the single RV on 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.

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.

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

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 ages 30 to 49, according to the industry group based in Reston, Va. And, defying the stereotype, the average RV owner is younger than age 50, said spokesman Bill Baker.

“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.”

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.