One of my personal highlights of the recent RV Trade Show was the speech by Herpetologist Dr. Brady Barr of National Geographic. He spoke of an RV trip he took as a young boy and how that adventure shaped his future. Today, he is the first person ever to capture and study all 23 species of crocodilians in the wild according to National Geographic. In speaking with him, you find he is as friendly and passionate in person as he is on camera. It was a pleasure.

He made me think back to my first camping trip with my Dad on Bear Mountain. Although our “RV” was a station wagon, the overnight in the woods, vision of campfire flames shooting into the air, smell of wood smoke, the animal sounds late into the evening and my first experience in a tent have stuck with me all these years.

I now realize that trips in RV’s, regardless of their design, reawaken the nomadic in each of us. Exploration, camping, adventure, RVing and communing with Nature reminds you that there is truly Dirt in Your DNA.

Today, scientists still debate the cause of bipedalism in the human family tree. For me, there is no question that our ancient ancestors stood to see around the bend in the path, over the next hill. They stood to see if they could walk to the rising sun or reach, on foot, the setting moon. They stood, and walked, for the sole purpose of exploration. In the debate between “Nature and Nurture,” wilderness exploration and adventure are a part of our very fabric. We needn’t learn it, it’s in us; the natural human tendencies of adventure and exploration are innate.

Though we may not all travel the world, have Doctorates and work for National Geographic or explore the wilderness full time, that does nothing to lesson one essential fact – RVers are 21st Century Explorers, the adventurers keeping the covered-wagon spirit of exploration and discovery alive.