Of all the reasons to choose a travel trailer for our next home on wheels, hub and spoke travel tops the list. We sold our fifth wheel before installing the Project M on our Dodge Ram. And, in fact, our primary reason for selecting the Project M in the first place was a desire to do more hub and spoke travel. To be specific, we looked forward to doing more hub and spoke camping. You see, while living in the Project M on our way back from Alaska we discovered something very important. Living out of the back of our truck is great for camping trips. However, it’s not the best arrangement for full-time RV living.
We’ve now had some time to enjoy our new Arctic Fox trailer, and oh how I enjoy it! More on that to come soon. But we’ve also now enjoyed the first real camping experience in our Project M. After owning the new rig less than a month, we left it behind at a campground and headed for the mountains. This is what hub and spoke travel is all about.
What is Hub and Spoke Travel?
Traditionally, hub and spoke travel is usually defined as relating to air travel for vacations or globetrotting. As a result, the bot defines it as such:
Hub-and-spoke travel is a transportation model where passengers travel from smaller locations to a central hub, and then connect to other flights to reach their final destination.
– AI Definition of Hub and Spoke Travel
In this sense, the hub is a central point like an airport where many flights originate and arrive. In turn, the routes that planes take away from the hub are called spokes.
Redefining Hub and Spoke
We hope to redefine hub and spoke travel here for the RV lifestyle. When RVing, your hub becomes more of your home base. The spokes may be wherever you choose to find your next adventure. While RVing with a combination of travel trailer and truck camper, we can now enjoy hub and spoke travel just as we had hoped. And we have.
Our first stop with our new trailer was a KOA campground. Call this the hub, with all the comforts of home. And boy is it comfortable! As I said, more about that soon. But once detached – from our trailer and all its associated comfort – we were free to explore in the camper. So we headed for the mountains. The first spoke was a secluded spot in the foothills near Jefferson, Colorado.
Those crazy mushers invited us for a final training weekend before they headed back to Alaska. And we headed south for the winter. Getting to the spot meant dropping into four wheel drive, and crawling up a steep rutted dirt road. This is somewhere we’d never go with our trailer. And, that’s when I said to myself, this is what hub and spoke travel is all about!
The Project M is a lightweight truck topper that I built out with cabinetry and a galley. It’s perfect for camping adventures, and quite comfortable compared to sleeping on the ground. So it allows us to get back to our camping roots. As a result, we can spontaneously go on camping trips where we’d never take our trailer. And, with such a light camper, we’re able to tow a trailer behind us to our next hub.
More Hub and Spoke Travel to Come…
Set up a home base at a favorite hub with our trailer. This can be a comfy campground with full hookups, near friends, attractions, or anything we might need. Then, head out to soak in some adventure on spokes in our camper. This may be into the mountains, out to the beach, or anywhere in between. These trips have one thing in common. They’re not places we would take the trailer.
So, hub and spoke travel provides the best of both worlds. It allows us to hunker down, settle in, and get work done with all the comforts of home. Or hub, that is. Then, we can get out for some real camping again by finding all those spokes we’ve missed over the past 17+ years on the road.
With the Arctic Fox for our hub travel, we could haul a cargo trailer out on spokes if we wanted to. The one pictured here is where our musher friends sleep, with their dogs. Another benefit of hub and spoke travel? That’s not having to haul a trailer up steep logging roads, or through heavy traffic if your spokes take you that way.
I was glad we weren’t towing at the time when we hit nasty traffic when we got back to civilization. As it turns out, it’s not all that civilized after all. But I digress yet again. Finally, we never would have taken the trailer anywhere near New York City. But we did get pretty close in the Project M!
I’ll take the mountains over the city for my next spoke, any time…
But Wait.
The Project M isn’t only ideal for trailer based hub and spoke travel. It’s light enough that it’s perfect for folks towing a small truck behind their Class A. Park the bus at your next hub. Detach the toad with topper attached. And head out on your next spoke adventure. Check out Four Wheel Campers to learn more about the Project M truck topper. Then, tell us all about your hub and spoke travel.