Leaving aside the song from the 1960s musical/film Sweet Charity, watching the comings and goings at a couple of showgrounds this trip has got me wondering: what pace do people live at that drives them to only stay at a place for a single night?
I know we’re only really new at all this caravan tripping/grey nomad stuff, and this is really only our second serious trip, but it only took us the trip down to Echuca last Christmas to realise that staying only overnight left us feeling rushed and frazzled and worse, denied us the opportunity to see what a town had to offer. For the trip back up after Christmas we stayed two/three nights at each place, which was better; and this trip we’re planning between four and seven nights in each location (and we’re currently part-way into our second stop of a week).
However, I’ve been amazed and a little bemused by the cyclic turn-over at each of our two stops—by far the majority of people are only in for a single night. I’ve not really kept numbers, but I’d guess that majority to be as high as perhaps 80%. I don’t think it’s demographic-related, as even though most travellers are couples visually of about our age-range (±10 yrs or so 🙂 ) with a smattering of singles and families, the short-stay syndrome seems to cross those boundaries.
Relatedly, scanning a couple of fifth-wheel-related groups on Facebook shows a similar pattern, with perhaps a lower percentage of short-stayers (that could possibly be explained by the larger size and greater liveability of fifth-wheelers in general).
As I noted in the “Lessons… learned” section of our review of our first 12 months, we’re definitely happier living at a little slower rhythm. If you’re reading this, maybe you should try it, you just may like it as much as we do!