Word: rvs
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Later we pitched our tent in Chaco Canyon, just at dusk. Presently there rumbled into the campground five or six rhinoceros RVs, behemoths with generators on their roofs that hummed and groaned all night to power the people's TVs and air conditioners. They slept sealed up inside the beasts, and in the morning the rhinos rolled off single file down the blacktop, heading for Zion...
...technically it's the RV/Manufactured Housing Museum, Hall of Fame and Library--doesn't have the appeal of Cooperstown, N.Y. But the lines are shorter. The day we pulled up, in fact, there was nobody in the place but caretaker Al Hesselbart, so we got a personal tour of RVs that date all the way back...
...three Coachmen started in a two-car garage in 1962 and made 12 trailers the first year. Last year Coachmen, the largest among 72 RV manufacturers in Indiana and one of the top three nationally, sold 28,000 RVs for $661 million. "It was the best year ever, and the numbers are up for this year," says president Keith Corson...
They're up industry-wide, 11.6% in the first quarter, to their highest level in 20 years. People want bigger and better RVs, says Corson, who sells everything from a $3,500 folding trailer to a $160,000 motor home the size of the Love Boat. They want AC, microwave, satellite dishes, PC stations, hydraulic slide-outs to expand room size when parked. If Coachmen could figure out how to make one with a back lawn, some Joe's going to buy the damn thing and mow it while Ethel does 65 on the interstate...
What's more, RVs aren't the difficult-to-maneuver, hideous-to-look-at, cramped behemoths they once were. O.K., most are still resolutely unstylish, but virtually all have power steering, power brakes and automatic transmission. Some carry a rearview TV camera on the roof with a monitor on the dashboard to make parking a cinch. Fleetwood Enterprises' Bounder, the best-selling motor home in America, has a computer stand and prewiring for a satellite dish as standard features. There's more home in them too, with options for queen-size beds, glass showers, bathtubs, washer-dryers, TVs, VCRs, solar...