Day Trips
RV Museum in Amarillo shows how Americans take the edge off of roughing it
By Gerald E. McLeod, Fri., March 7, 2014
Jack Sisemore's RV Museum in Amarillo is a timeline of America on the move. The story of recreational vehicles started simple and became a tale of ever-increasing luxury.
The most tedious part of camping is the packing and unpacking. Soon after the invention of the automobile, someone thought of packing his camping gear in a trailer, and he was ready to head to the lake at a drop of a red and white bobber. Then his wife told him to put a tent on top of the trailer with a commode inside, and the recreational vehicle was born.
The museum follows the evolution of RVs from a 1921 Kampcar on a Model T chassis to the first Winnebago Itasca. Along the way we visit pop-up tents, shiny Airstreams, a VW microbus with a peace symbol, and a 1948 bus that was a movie star. The 15 homes-away-from-home in the collection all have one thing in common – smoothing the edges off roughing it.
Jack Sisemore's RV Museum is at 4341 Canyon Dr. (I-27) on the south side of Amarillo behind Traveland, the oldest RV dealership in Texas. The museum is an art gallery celebrating the beauty of more than half a century of innovative American industrial design using polished wood, shiny chrome, and pastel-colored plastic. Admission is free to the exhibit; closed Sundays. For more info, call 806/358-4891, or go to www.rvmuseum.net.
1,179th in a series. Collect them all. Day Trips, Vol. 2, a book of "Day Trips," is available for $8.95, plus $3.05 for shipping, handling, and tax. Mail to: Day Trips, PO Box 33284, South Austin, TX 78704.
