Is the Nomadic RV Lifestyle Conducive to Making Lasting Friendships?

Pearl and I were making a video today about our time in New England and while editing it, I noticed we were spending much more time talking about the people we had met instead of the things we had seen and done.

It caused me to ponder about the importance of friendships and how hard it was to nourish and maintain these nomadic friendships. It seems that we no sooner get to meet and know someone and then one or the other  of us is moving out to their next destination, potentially never to be seen again.

We have developed a couple of friendships that have withstood the distance of the nomadic lifestyle but they are few and far between. The first couple we met while RV'ing that we were able to overcome the nomadic distance with our friendship was a couple from Kingman Arizona (Pete & Debbie) . We met Debbie when she was walking their two dogs (CoCo & Buddy) and stopped in our camp to met our puppy Tinker, while we were camping in Watchman Campground in Zion National Park back in 2015 shortly after we had retired.

We got to know Pete & Debbie pretty well and although they were 20 years younger than us, and lived 100 miles away, we kept in contact and met at a couple of different campgrounds with them over the years and even stopped by their home in Kingman  AZ. a couple of times, where they have an RV Pad at their home and they let us park and spend the night when going through their area.

I think these friendships are fairly common within the RV community, but they don't happen by accident and take a lot of nourishment to keep them from evaporating into thin air once the two couples move on down the road. We have not duplicated this type of friendship with any other RVing couples we have met, but part of that is because we are constantly moving and haven't returned to the same area to revisit friends that have a fixed home to be able to meet up at.

Most of the couples we have met are also traveling and since we generally don't come back into contact with them in person, we have to keep the friendship alive and well through email and videos. This simply does not work as well as getting to see each other regularly by meeting at campgrounds or in hometowns.

So, with all of that said, here is a short update of our time in New England and most of the people we met while in this part of the country and with a little work and good luck we will get to met them all again in the not too distant future when and if our paths cross again.