Cathy Witt and Rosebud enjoy a sunny fall day outside her 117-square-foot trailer home. The Pilot/Steve Kadel

Cathy Witt is happy making a small footprint on the Earth. 

Mo O’Leary appreciates the freedom.

But all have one thing in common: They like calling their RV home.

Many Americans forgo the traditional three-bedroom house for a set of wheels. It’s often as much by choice as economic necessity.

O’Leary and Richards, a couple for more than 30 years, wouldn’t trade their 34-foot ElkRidge for anything. They have parked it at Riverside RV Resort off North Bank Chetco River Road for the past seven years.

It keeps their options open.

“I can be on the road within a day,” said Richards, 60, who still works full time as owner of Clyde Wired Electric.

“Somebody else mows the lawn and, if we want, we can pick up and go,” agreed O’Leary, 65. “We like to stay on wheels. We’re free-wheelin’ people.”

Like most permanent RV inhabitants, they’ve fine-tuned the interior with lots of comforts. There’s satellite television, secure Internet access from the resort office, and even two big reclining chairs in the living room.

It has attractive cherrywood cabinets all around and even an overhead fan.

The couple didn’t plan to stay in the Riverside park long, but somehow the years rolled by. Now Clyde has fishing friends who come back each summer, and there are plenty of friends among the year-round residents.

“It’s a real social group,” he said.

O’Leary, an artist, jokes that if they get on each other’s nerves she can just go outside to her studio, a small wood building where she keeps her paints.

Cabin fever can be a real concern, though. Resort co-owner Carolyn Derricott warns those considering the lifestyle about the dangers of too much time with a spouse.

“I ask, ‘Have you ever spent longer than a week together in a rig?’ If it’s raining day in and day out, that rig gets smaller and smaller.”

It can’t get much smaller than Cathy Witt’s 117-square-foot trailer, a snug  nest she shares with her  standard poodle Rosebud and two cats.

“Every inch counts,” she said with a laugh.

The 50-year-old substitute teacher has lived in the little trailer for three years at Riverside. She moved in after downsizing from a 1,000-square-foot home in Harbor.

She wanted a lifestyle that required minimum financing, preferring a life of travel to being rooted in one place.

“I’m getting the itch to travel again,” she said this week.

Much of Witt’s desire to go small stems from her wish to consume less. After exploring Mexico and teaching in an English language school in China, she realized the average American home is bigger than it needs to be.

Seeing how others lived changed Witt’s perceptions of what is important.

“I also like having something I own, that can’t be foreclosed upon,” she said.

Witt considers herself part of a small-home movement that’s been gaining popularity in the U.S. during the past decade.

“It has mushroomed,” she said, “but it’s not for everybody.”

Her abode, though tiny by most people’s standards, isn’t without the basics. There’s a bathroom with shower, toilet and sink; a kitchen with a two-burner stove, sink and refrigerator; a bedroom in a loft; a room she uses as an office but could be a second bedroom; and a living space Witt calls “the great room.”

Somehow, there’s a place for everything and every creature. And the house can be towed by a pickup truck.

Websites back up Witt’s contention of a small-is-good movement. At www.escapees.com, those thinking  of chucking the rat race can get step-by-step guidance.

The support network includes a list of discount RV parks, a monthly magazine with tips, and books such as “Full-Time RVing: Is It For You?” and “Home Is Where You Park It.” Coffee mugs, bumper stickers and shirts with slogans touting the freedom of the road also are for sale.

Some RV devotees move with the seasons. Rob Milton spends summers in campgrounds in Curry County and other Pacific Northwest spots, then heads south to California in the winter. He stays in one spot during winter months to work, collecting enough money to fund his travel for the next six months. 

He knows many people who live in RVs for several different reasons.

“Technically, many are homeless,” he said. “Some are just retirees out to see the world. Some are low income,  and space in an RV park is all they can afford.

“Some find places where they can park for 14 days, then move to the next spot. I don’t eat out, go to movies or spend any money I don’t have to. I park in free spots most of the time, so I am just getting by.”

Milton, 62, began taking Social Security benefits this year because he needs the money. He’ll get a state pension in another three years, but plans to continue living in his RV.

“I enjoy it,” he said. “This lifestyle can be pretty good.”

It could hardly have been better for Bob Grosland on Monday as he sat in the warm afternoon sun on a bench watching graceful double-crested cormorants fishing in the Chetco River.

The Iowa native, 74, bought his first RV when he retired in 1999. He and his wife, Myrna, traveled together for years before her death, including a trip with other RV friends to Alaska and back.

Grosland, now single, is still sold on the way of life, saying, “You meet a lot of nice people.”

But what about a husband and wife living so close together all the time? Did he ever find it too confining?

Grosland grinned.

“Let’s just say there was a lot of hugging going on.”