Jack Sisemore’s RV Museum in Amarillo is a timeline of America on the move. The story of recreational vehicles started simple and became a tale of ever-increasing luxury.
The most tedious part of camping is the packing and unpacking. Soon after the invention of the automobile, someone thought of packing his camping gear in a trailer, and he was ready to head to the lake at a drop of a red and white bobber. Then his wife told him to put a tent on top of the trailer with a commode inside, and the recreational vehicle was born.
The museum follows the evolution of RVs from a 1921 Kampcar on a Model T chassis to the first Winnebago Itasca. Along the way we visit pop-up tents, shiny Airstreams, a VW microbus with a peace symbol, and a 1948 bus that was a movie star. The 15 homes-away-from-home in the collection all have one thing in common – smoothing the edges off roughing it.
Jack Sisemore’s RV Museum is at 4341 Canyon Dr. (I-27) on the south side of Amarillo behind Traveland, the oldest RV dealership in Texas. The museum is an art gallery celebrating the beauty of more than half a century of innovative American industrial design using polished wood, shiny chrome, and pastel-colored plastic. Admission is free to the exhibit; closed Sundays. For more info, call 806/358-4891, or go to www.rvmuseum.net.
1,179th in a series. Collect them all. Day Trips, Vol. 2, a book of “Day Trips,” is available for $8.95, plus $3.05 for shipping, handling, and tax. Mail to: Day Trips, PO Box 33284, South Austin, TX 78704.
This article appears in March 7 • 2014.
