Whether you are a weekend warrior or a full-time family, your RV adventures can take you to some unbelievable places. Our country has a plethora of unique spots with stunning natural beauty, full of deep, rich history. Sometimes though, the distance between each major stop can mean you get to enjoy small town RVing for a week or two while you make your way to the next sight-seeing experience.
While these “in-betweener” stays can certainly leave you with fun memories, they often mean that you must find ways to make your own fun. Below are 6 ROADWORTHY HOBBIES to scratch that itch for the serial hobbiests among us. We’ll start with a FREE hobby and gradually get a bit more spendy. Hopefully one of these will hit you square in the kisser.
Geocaching
It could be a 1990’s N’Sync CD or an ammo box full of marbles, but for you and the thousands of people before you, it might as well be Blackbeard’s Pirate Treasure. Geocaching has grown in popularity over the last decade as more and more hidey holes have been planted with random knickknacks.
To participate, head to geocaching headquarters, create an account and hit the fields, forests, and parks in search of treasures. During my research, one avid geocacher stated, “I like the ones that are more extreme. Some of my favorites include one in Hawaii that involved climbing up waterfalls and swimming through a lagoon, underground caches that took me hundreds of feet under parking lots, one that required crawling in a cave, and [even] gadget caches that involve solving a field puzzle.” Talk about exciting! Just remember to always be safe and don’t trespass.
If you’re around the Beavers Bend area in Oklahoma, there are literally hundreds of fun geocaches to hunt down!
And make sure you add your name to the list once you’ve found your treasure!
Disc Golf
Currently one of the fastest growing sports in the nation is disc golf. New courses like the Lion’s Club Disc Golf Course in Mena, AR are being established in towns all across the nation in city parks and private property. Free apps like UDisc can help you find out if you have any courses nearby.
Disc golf has a relatively low financial entry point with a starter set hitting your pocket book for $30-$50 and the vast majority of courses are free to play! If you want to pick out your own assortment of discs, you’ll need a putter and a driver at a minimum.
Bocce Ball
Another off-the-wall game that you may not have ever heard of is Bocce Ball. In Thurber, TX
they have traditionally hosted the self-proclaimed *World Championship Bocce Ball Tournament*. It consists of a handful of salty old fellas who will absolutely stomp you into the ground when it comes to their favorite pastime.
I guarantee if you spread the word among your fellow RV park patrons, you’ll find a few folks willing to give it a try. It’s an accuracy-based game and can be played anywhere you have a few hundred square feet. Play on a hillside, heavily wooded area or flat ground depending on how frisky you feel like getting.
Your typical bocce ball set will run you around $40, making this a very affordable hobby to pick up.
Kan Jam
With Kan Jam, all you truly need are a few small plastic trash cans and a frisbee to have hours of fun anywhere you go! If you’d rather buy a made-ready kit, they certainly sell those too. You can get into the sport for around $60 for a name-brand set. The game consists of finding a flat, open area and setting up two trashcans with a small slit cut out big enough for a frisbee to go through and a circular hole cut from the bottom of the can.
Here are the official rules, but the goal is to throw your frisbee in an effort to hit the kan while your partner stands at the opposite kan ready to jam it in hole if it flies over the top. Throw it through the slit and you are an instant winner!
Find a few new friends at the RV park where you’re staying and invite them to join in the fun! You might end up with either new best travel-friends, or mortal kan jam enemies! It’s a win either way.
Artifact Hunting
Around southeast Oklahoma, members of many different indigenous tribes lived on the land for hundreds of years. If you have a sharp eye, you can find many signs pointing to how these civilizations lived. Arrowheads, clay pots and more can be found if you just study up on what you’re looking for.
If you want to up your game a bit, a good metal detector may be the way to go. You can spend as little as $100 up to thousands, but we have found that many great options under $200 fit the bill for a traveling hobbiest. People have found everything from old nails and tools, to buried vehicles, to priceless artifacts using simple metal detectors. To get you amped up for finding your own treasures, here are the 15 greatest metal detector finds of all time.
BBQ/Grilling/Smoking
The last one on our list is certainly the best tasting hobby we found. If you walk out of your RV to a wafting scent of a smoked pork butt, you may find yourself making new friends before dinner.
RVs don’t typically have a ton of extra space for big pellet smokers or grills, but we found that the Ranger by Traeger Grills (appx $450) is a great fit for the top campground chef. This typically comes with a little higher price point but can be invaluable if you are not in a town with many food choices.
Smoking meat is truly an artform and can keep you engaged for hours, making sure everything is just as it should be.
No matter how you keep yourself entertained, though, make sure to take in what nature and history have provided for you. Enjoy a good dose of Vitamin D and experience the great outdoors!
Travel Happy!
