Life Is Better When You Are RV Camping
Life can get serious very quickly. Between work, relationships, and everyday responsibilities, it’s easy to let the stress and frustration build up, which can eventually start to overwhelm you. RV camping provides you with a necessary outlet to get out into nature and relax.
Here at Bowlus, we believe that life is just better when you are RV camping, especially when you’re in a Bowlus travel trailer. If you’re not yet convinced, we’re here to tell you exactly why you should plan your next trip as soon as possible.
Camping Is Great For Your Physical Health
For starters, camping is physically great for you. Even the act of setting up camp, starting a fire, and hauling around all of the gear required to camp successfully burns calories. And that’s before you even participate in any outdoor activities!
It’s estimated that hiking burns around 500 calories an hour, even without a lot of effort. It helps to counteract what can often become a sedentary lifestyle of sitting behind a computer desk for eight to ten hours a day, five days a week. And there are other options as well, like swimming, biking, rock climbing, and even fishing. You can burn thousands of calories in a single day, all while having fun out in nature.
However, as amazing as that is, camping’s physical benefits don’t end with burning calories. Spending more time outside in natural sunlight also gives your body access to vitamin D. While the benefits of vitamin D have been linked to potentially helping reduce the risk of certain cancers (like breast and colon cancer) and high blood pressure, as well as minimizing symptoms of depression and stress. It really is a wonder vitamin, and when you’re camping, you won’t even have to pay for it!
Also, if you’re one of the many people across the United States who suffer from asthma, you likely understand just how much the air pollution in larger cities can worsen it. In fact, according to the United States’ EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), air pollution is one of the top causes of asthma and other issues relating to breathing, which are said to affect up to 30 million people. The trees and other plants that are found in abundance in nature help to filter the air, making it much purer and less likely to trigger asthma symptoms.
Exercise, like hiking, also triggers the release of dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is responsible for feelings of “pleasure.” In this way, camping impacts our physical bodies, which goes on to impact our minds as well!
Camping Can Help You Sleep Better
When you go camping and spend longer amounts of time out in nature, your body is able to get back in touch with its circadian rhythm. Our circadian rhythm is a natural process that occurs inside of the body to regulate its sleep-wake cycle. It repeats once every 24 hours, and if it gets out of whack, it can lead to issues like weight gain, slower thinking, decreased mood, and impulsivity.
This is mainly because when you hike, you’re away from all of those artificial lights that can trick the body into thinking it’s a different time of day from what it really is. You’re also not as subjected to the blue light from cell phones, tablets, and computers, which can often affect your body the same way (as well as your mental health, which we’ll discuss in more detail later on).
Plus, it’s just far more peaceful to sleep without all of the noise that often comes with living in a city. Falling asleep to the sounds of nature and the wind blowing through the trees is a type of relaxation that you didn’t know that you were missing.
All of this hinges on a comfortable sleeping space, though. That’s where luxury RV camping really shines. Being able to spend all of your time out in nature during the day and coming home to sleep in your comfortable, temperature-controlled room really is the best of both worlds. That’s why we used only memory foam mattresses when we created our Bowlus travel trailers.
Camping Helps Your Mental Health, Too
Stress is a killer, literally. As humans, we tend to run ourselves ragged trying to achieve impossible goals, only to follow those up with even more unreachable ones. Camping is a way to counteract all that by removing most of the stressors that come with the workweek, bills, etc.
Spending time in nature has been proven to help with multiple mental health issues like anxiety and depression and other similar problems like irritability and insomnia. In fact, after only just a few minutes in nature, cortisol levels go down, and endorphin and dopamine levels go up. Not only does that create a greater sense of relaxation mentally, but it also decreases blood pressure and muscle tension.
It’s time spent without distractions so you can clear your head and reground yourself. You’ll be amazed at how much better you feel without the constant dinging of your cellphone dragging down your mental health.
That being said, with the Bowlus travel trailer, you get a cellular booster and even a mobile router so that you won’t miss that important work call if you really need to be plugged in.
Go Camping To Improve Your Relationships
When you go camping with your loved ones, you’ll have good days and bad days. There will be times when you’re tired, cranky, hungry, and dirty and the natural inclination is to bicker. But, if you push past that, you’ll find a level of intimacy and closeness that you might not have experienced with each other before.
When you camp and spend time together without distractions, you’ll be forming lifelong memories that you’ll be able to reminisce back to time and time again. You’ll also have to learn to really communicate with each other and rely on each other in different and important ways.
This relates to every type of relationship— friends, parent/child, lovers, etc. It brings out the best in everyone, and you’ll often end up arriving home having learned a lot about each other, and with a deeper appreciation of your relationship.
Life Is Better When You Are RV Camping… By Yourself
Even though camping with friends and family is a great way to bond and grow closer, camping by yourself has its own unique benefits.
We don’t often get much time to ourselves, really to ourselves, without anyone disturbing us. In fact, many people consider time alone like that to be scary. It’s hard to face what exactly you may be thinking without anything to sugarcoat it or dull the real emotion. We get really good at repressing our feelings so that we can get through the day, so much so that we can forget we’re even doing it.
Solitude, however, is way more beneficial than it may seem. Camping solo is similar to a self-care retreat, where you can take time to refocus and really connect with how you feel and what is bothering you. It gives you time to truly reflect, without any external influence, and learn who you really are.
Life Is An Adventure
Spontaneity is something we tend to be majorly lacking in modern society. So much of what we do every single day of our lives is planned and scheduled down to the minute. We plan our lives out for years in advance but often forget one of the most important things to living a happy, fulfilled life— a sense of adventure.
Adventure doesn’t always have to be big and flashy. Having the ability to head out on a whim, whenever you want to, can bring a sense of adventure back into your life. Your Bowlus travel trailer is a great investment in spontaneity, allowing you to get out into nature and onto the road without having to book a hotel room or plan a route.
If that much spontaneity makes you nervous, planning a route ahead of time doesn’t kill that sense of adventure. It’s the feeling of freedom that comes from the open road that really makes a difference.
To Summarize…
Camping is great for the body, mind, and soul. Science has proven that life simply is better when you camp, and camping with a Bowlus travel trailer can help make that an even more relaxing, enjoyable experience. Not to mention that it provides all the amenities that you could ever need when you’re taking some time out in the wilderness. Everyone needs a little more nature in their lives.
Sources:
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/camping/why-camp.htm
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-13-407
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-flux/201410/the-importance-being-alone