RV Podcast - Stories From The Road

Is Harvest Hosts getting too big? Choice Hotels is buying the RV overnight membership company, and members are asking what comes next for prices, reservations and the small-business experience that made it popular.

In the October 5, 2026 RV Podcast News Edition, Mike Wendland examines the deal, the membership growth and the questions RVers should ask before renewing.

Also this week:

• Class B camper van makers are changing hands. We examine the ownership changes at Midwest Automotive Designs and Roadtrek, plus a preliminary report about Outside Van.
• A quieter Elkhart RV Open House offers clues about the market for 2027 models and your bargaining power.
• Hungry bears are moving through campgrounds. Mike shares encounters from our Pigeon Forge rally and practical steps to protect your campsite, pets and the bears.
• Meet Backpack, the winner of Fat Bear Week.

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John and Cindy are taking their RV across the country on Route 66, and high fuel prices are not stopping them.

In this Stories from the Road edition of the RV Podcast, Mike and Jennifer Wendland talk with the couple about their trip, the cost of fuel, and why they decided to keep going. It is a firsthand look at what a Route 66 adventure means to RVers who are determined to make the miles count.

Would today's fuel prices change your travel plans? Tell us in the comments.

More than 80 RVers made it to our Smoky Mountains rally despite diesel prices as high as $7.27 a gallon along the way. Mike reports what they are saying about fuel costs, RV quality, and noticeably quieter campgrounds.

In this episode:

• What rally attendees paid for diesel
• Hershey attendance and the outlook for Elkhart
• Forest River's new rules for content creators
• The legal challenge to the Patrick-Lippert merger
• Proposed national forest access changes
• When to see fall color in the Smokies

Sources for each story are linked at the end of the episode under the transcript tab above

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Mark and Barb Douyard, 72 and 77, rented out their Delaware home, packed up their fifth wheel and set off on a two-year RV adventure across North America. We talk with them in the middle of their first year about how they made it happen, what surprised them, what has been hard, and what has been the best part so far. Also this week: Jennifer answers a listener whose husband wants to go winter camping in their Class B van, and Mike explains why October mountain campsites are so hard to find and how to still get one. Plus, we head to Pigeon Forge for our fall RVCommunity.com rally.

Hershey drew its biggest opening-day crowd since 2021 while RV shipments stayed down almost 14 percent for the year. We separate the show buzz from the industry numbers and show you where the leverage is if you are shopping this fall.

Also: Alliance RV opens its Elkhart Open House to the public for the first time, the BLM reviews a dozen AI data center proposals on public land, the Lippert and Patrick merger hits an antitrust delay, and Elon Musk moves into an Airstream in Memphis.

Full transcript and every source link at RVPodcast.com.

One note on the YouTube description. The first two lines are all anyone sees before the "more" cutoff, so I front-loaded the contradiction and left the workshop and newsletter links below it rather than burning that space on housekeeping.

Click transcriot tab for source list.

We flew to Atlanta for a family wedding instead of taking the RV, and the two hour flight turned into an eight hour day. In this episode we run the real numbers on driving the rig versus flying and getting a hotel, with diesel now over six dollars a gallon, and we land on the one question that actually decides it.

We cover why flying saves you almost nothing on a trip under about 500 miles, what 1,400 miles costs in a 14 mile per gallon diesel Class C now compared to a year ago, what the world's busiest airport looks like from a wheelchair and the free help most travelers never ask for, why the hotel and not the venue is the end of the trip that decides whether you bring the rig, and why you should always take the earliest flight of the day.

Then two listener questions. Terry and Beth ask whether living in a park model RV counts as living the RV lifestyle, and Jennifer answers. Steve asks whether to carry a spare tire on his Class C or rely on road service, and Mike explains why that is not really an either-or.

Diesel hit $6.05 a gallon Friday. That has never happened before. Not in 2008. Not in 2022. Never. I paid $6.29 in Michigan the morning I recorded this. California stations are posting $9.99.

Then Thor Industries dropped a leadership shakeup Thursday night and never mentioned the man who has run Keystone for a decade. Sources close to the company tell me Jeff Runels is out, effective that day, and that big changes are coming to Keystone.

All of it lands the same week America's Largest RV Show opens in Hershey with 1,500 RVs on the lot and dealers who need to move them.

Here is what is in this episode:

Record diesel, why it is not coming back down with oil prices, and six things that cut what you spend on fuel this fall.

America's Largest RV Show opens Wednesday. Dealer lots are not overflowing the way you have been told, and the real reason you have the upper hand this week is something else entirely. Five questions to ask before you sign anything.

Thor reorganizes its own reorganization seven months later. What the announcement said, what it did not say, and what centralizing a decentralized company usually means for the rig you own.

Jason Lippert ran the biggest parts supplier in the business for 32 years. Leigh Tiffin had his family's name on the coach. Both went to work for dealers this year. I think they are seeing the same thing you and I see from the campsite.

And 23 million Americans are going RVing this fall anyway, at $6 diesel, most of them staying within a tank of home.

After years of traveling almost entirely in fifth wheels, Mike and Jennifer added a second rig: a new-to-us 2026 Winnebago View, 25 feet long.

They took it to Michigan's Upper Peninsula last week, and it changed how they traveled. The Brinkley isn't going anywhere.

But somewhere in those years of towing 35 feet, they quietly stopped wandering, and never noticed they'd stopped.

In this conversation they walk through the five things the small motorhome gave back, from pulling over anywhere to nap, to parking at Kitch-iti-kipi on a busy day, to taking the turn when you see a sign and wonder what's down there.

Plus two listener questions: needing an hour to yourself when a spouse retires, and how to tell when RV tires are too old even though the tread looks fine.

LINKS Michigan Upper Peninsula and Lower Peninsula guides, both for $29.99: https://rvlifestyle.com/uplp

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Show notes and full transcript: https://rvpodcast.com

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Judy Feigel was already an RVer before her husband died. Short trips, sometimes with her granddaughter, sometimes with a group of women friends. A small thing that was hers.

When her huband died four years ago, the question wasn't what to do about the RV. It was what to do with the rest of her life.

Four years and four RVs later, she's in a rig with a music studio and a quilting studio built into it, traveling with a 100-pound Bernese mountain dog named Winston, and surrounded by a community she built one campground at a time.

In this conversation she talks about what it meant to already have something of her own, what she wants couples to hear, and how a solo traveler finds people on the road.

Plus: Mike and Jennifer are back from their first trip since Jennifer's summer of cataract surgery and knee replacement, and two listener questions, on learning to back a trailer at 68, and on leaving a big dog in the RV safely.

Full transcript, chapter markers and every link are at RVPodcast.com

RV parks are quietly turning into industrial worker housing. A $100 billion SpaceX spaceport in Louisiana and a wave of data center construction in Texas and the Midwest are filling campgrounds with long-term crews, and recreational campers are the ones getting squeezed out.

In this week's Monday News Edition:

RVs as work camps. SpaceX announces a $100 billion spaceport in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, new RV parks are expected to house the construction crews, a Texas park near Abilene advertises 2,300 monthly sites for data center workers, and eastern Iowa campgrounds are already running full year-round.

Monsoon season is doing real damage. Eleven hikers are rescued with hypothermia at Bryce Canyon in August, and about 50 people are airlifted out of the Grand Canyon on Saturday after flash flooding tore through Bright Angel Canyon. Phantom Ranch and the North Kaibab Trail are closed until further notice.

Why all the rockfalls? A large rockfall closes the Zion Canyon scenic drive, a Glacier National Park visitor is killed by a rock that came through his car roof, and researchers explain the link between heat and falling rock.

A Colorado startup wants to cut camper van prices in half. Hunker's removable pod drops into a Ram ProMaster and starts at $55,000, but there is a catch worth knowing about.

Twelve years later, a microchip brings Flor home. A chihuahua missing for 12 years is reunited with her Evanston family after a shelter in Indiana scans her chip, plus what every RVer traveling with a pet should check this week.

LINKS Free daily RV Lifestyle newsletter: https://rvlifestyle.com/newsletter Show notes and full transcript: https://rvpodcast.com RV Community: https://rvcommunity.com The Complete Guide to RVing in Retirement: https://rvlifestyle.com/retirementguide