Family trips have a way of becoming math problems. Ours started as “a week somewhere with a lake” and quietly turned into a spreadsheet comparing resorts, cabins, and one place that appeared to charge extra for the concept of a balcony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We’d nearly settled on a $1,200 package: five nights, two double beds, and a continental breakfast that closed before any of us were conscious enough to eat it. It wasn’t what we wanted. It was just the thing we were tired enough to say yes to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What changed our minds was realizing we didn’t actually need a hotel at all. We ended up renting an RV directly from its owner through a site called RVezy<\/a>, and driving the trip instead of checking into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few things surprised me. First, the owner wasn’t a company. He was just a person who owned an RV, used it a few weekends a year, and rented it out the rest of the time. Which is a fairly reasonable use of a vehicle that otherwise spends most of its life parked in a driveway looking expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, it came with the kind of coverage I didn’t expect from renting a stranger’s vehicle: up to $2 million in insurance, 24\/7 roadside assistance, and a real person to call if anything went wrong. Nothing did, which was slightly anticlimactic after all that reassurance, but I’ll take it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We ended up paying less than the resort’s cancellation fee for the whole week, and got a version of the trip that didn’t involve a breakfast schedule set by someone else. There’s also a $25-off code for US bookings (RVEZYUSA25) and Canadian ones (RVEZYCAN25), which I mention only because I wish someone had mentioned it to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n