Bill Andrews, senior sales consultant at Marty’s USRV of Berkley, Mass., guides a vehicle into its spot at the R.I. Convention Center.

Take a vacation without leaving home. It’s not just possible, but readily viable and amply available.

See for yourself at this weekend’s 15th annual Rhode Island RV & Camping Show, where you’ll find everything from small pop-ups to large motor homes that allow you to take all the conveniences and luxuries of home — thermostats, hardwood floors, granite countertops — on the road.

If the chance to check out a half-million-dollar, 42-foot-long RV with slide-out walls isn’t enough to bring you to the Rhode Island Convention Center, consider that this is your last year — sort of — to see the RV & Camping Show. The three-day event, which draws about 10,000 people to the Rhode Island Convention Center, involves 100 vendors, 175 recreational vehicles and 100,000 square feet of exhibition space, is changing its name to better reflect its focus.

“Next year, it will simply be the RV Show,” says James McLaughlin, CEO of MAC Events, the show’s producer. “There are no sleeping bags there and there are no tents there. Camping is a misnomer.”

Satellite television, a firm mattress, a complete kitchen and indoor plumbing is hardly considered roughing it. And that may explain the popularity of modern-day camping.

“RV to some people means camping. It goes back to the pop-up trailers, which were considered tents on wheels.”

If it’s an RV, chances are it will be part of the show, which features models from 45 manufacturers, including Starcraft, Jayco, Keystone and Winnebago. “A lot of people call any motor home a Winnebago,” says Mark Donilon, sales manager of Arlington RV Supercenter in East Greenwich. “Winnebago is still the name people associate with motor homes.”

RVs are of two families, towed vehicles and motorized vehicles, each with benefits and drawbacks. The towed ones, including the large and often grand fifth-wheel trailers, can be unhitched from your vehicle at the camp site, allowing you to roam. However, while traveling, the trailer is inaccessible to the driver and the passengers of the towing vehicle.

A motorized home is luxurious and offers complete access while driving. But unless you’re towing a car behind the motor home, excursions from the camp site aren’t as convenient.

And that’s the selling point for RVs at this show: convenience and economy.

“The theme this year is about buying a vacation home for less than $25,000 that you can move wherever you want,” McLaughlin says. “That’s instead of going to Newport and trying to buy a home for $1 million.”

The economy is declining. Gas prices are rising, but not nearly enough, according to McLaughlin, to seriously detract from an RV’s appeal.

“If someone spent $100 in gas to take a trip last year, this year that trip will cost about $130,” he says.

According to PKF Consulting, a travel and tourism company, a family of four can spend 50 percent less on an RV vacation than a conventional vacation because of the spared expense of hotels and restaurants.

While gas prices have caused what Donilon calls a slowdown in RV sales, he says sales of smaller, more gas-efficient RVs, particularly trailers, are up, since many people already have the means to tow one.

“A lot of people own pickup trucks now for their everyday vehicle.”

One of the ongoing developments in RVs is the slide-out. On a motor home or trailer, a wall or portion of one can be pulled out at the camp site, kind of like an accordion, expanding the width of the vehicle from eight feet to as much as 13 feet.

“They pull out like drawers,” McLaughlin says.

Another development in RVs is so-called “toy haulers.”

“RVs have a garage in the back where people bring their motorcycles, bicycles, Jet Skis and snowmobiles,” Donilon says. “It used to be that people would have to make a choice of what they would bring along. Having this garage allows them to bring all their toys with them.”

And when those toys are unloaded at a camp site, the garage can be used for living space.

“Some of them have couches and beds back there with LCD TVs,” Donilon says. “It’s not wasted space.”

Since recreational vehicles are mobile, it’s kind of surprising to hear that some of them actually come with “basements.” The large motor homes, known as “diesel haulers,” have raised-rail chassis and storage area under the floor that according to Donilon can be as high as three feet.

The most expensive RV you’ll see at the show will be a diesel hauler, which, naturally, has a diesel engine in the back; it’s 42 feet long and has three slide-out walls. It costs $500,000.

The primary purchasers of RVs, according to McLaughlin, are the same people they’ve always been: those 35 to 64 years old. But this is not to suggest that only people planning on making purchases will attend the RV show. Yes, there will be buyers. But there will also be gawkers.

“Judging by the attendance at shows, I’d say it’s entertainment,” Donilon says. “You see a lot of the same people at multiple shows.”

People can peruse and purchase RVs online, but McLaughlin thinks it’s always a better idea for people to buy vehicles from dealers near them, and to actually see and feel what they’re buying.

“At an event like this, you can see a couple of hundred units. You can get in them and sit behind the wheel and let the kids bounce on the beds.”

The Rhode Island RV & Camping Show is tomorrow through Sunday at the Rhode Island Convention Center, One Sabin St., Providence. It’s open tomorrow, 1 to 9:30 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is $9, $7 for seniors (on Friday only), $6 for children, 12-17, and free for those younger. On Friday and Saturday after 6 p.m., two adults will be admitted for the price of one. Many places to camp in R.I.

If you’ve got your camper and your gear, perhaps you might consider camping. You’ve got lots of options in Rhode Island, about three dozen sites, some public, some private.

The Rhode Island Tourism department provides a complete list of public camp sites on its Web site: www.visitrhodeisland.com/recreation/camping.aspx. And the Department of Environmental Management is in its first season of offering a campground reservation system, online or on the phone, for five parks: Fisherman’s Campground in Narragansett; Burlingame State Campground, East Beach and Charlestown Breachway in Charlestown; and the George Washington Campground in Glocester.

The system may be accessed 24 hours a day through www.riparks.com, and also by phone April 15 through Labor Day at (877) 742-2675, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekends. There’s a reservation fee of $10 by phone and $9 by computer. Walk-ins are welcome at camps, but you’d be taking your chances. Fisherman’s is already booked for the entire summer, according to DEM, and Charlestown Breachway is filling up fast.

Here’s a list of all the other campgrounds, arranged by region.

Newport County

Fort Getty Recreation Area, Jamestown, 423-7211.

Meadowlark Recreational Vehicle Park, Middletown, 846-9455.

Melville Ponds Campground, Portsmouth, 682-2424.

Paradise Park, Middletown, 847-1500.

Northwest

Bowdish Lake Camping Area, Glocester, 568-8890.

Camp Ponagansett, Glocester, 647-7377.

Dyer Woods Nudist Campground, Foster, 397-3007.

Echo Lake Campground, Burrillville, 568-7109.

Ginny-B Family Campground, Foster, 397-9477.

Holiday Acres Campground, Glocester, 934-0780.

Oak Leaf Family Campground, Glocester, 568-4446.

Whippoorwill Hill Family Campground, Foster, 397-7256.

South County

Colwell’s Campground, Coventry, 397-4614.

Frontier Family Camper Park, Hopkinton, 377-4510.

Hickory Ridge Family Campground, Coventry, 397-7474.

Holly Tree Camper Park, Hopkinton, 596-2766.

Legrand G. Reynolds Horsemen’s Camping Area, Exeter, 539-2356, 277-1157.

Long Cove Marina and Campground, Narragansett, 783-4902.

Oak Embers Campground, West Greenwich, 397-4042.

Timberly Creek RV Resort, Westerly, 322-1877.

Wawaloam Campground, Richmond, 294-3039.

Westwood Family Campground, Coventry, 397-7779.

Whispering Pines Campground, Hopkinton, 539-7011.

Worden’s Pond Family Campground, South Kingstown, 789-9113.