As mentioned by someone else, save your money and get a comfortable car to travel in and stay in hotels. You can stay in lots of nice places, in nice car, with lots of good food, for multiple trips before you even come close to the cost of an RV. Add the cost a maintenance and what you'll spend outfitting supplies, and there are a couple more trips. RVs are expensive and you really have to need/use one to justify it.
Last couple of years I worked as part of a motorsports team that traveled nationwide. One of my jobs was to drive one of the RVs to each race. The one I drove and slept in was a big diesel pusher built on a freightliner, and cost like 400k. It was nice, but the experience has forever pushed me away from RVs.
It will break. A lot. Not only mechanical but the little things inside. Unless you have the ability to fix stuff yourself, you will be out a bunch of money for repairs.
Sleeping and driving isn't really an option. You'll never be comfortable bouncing down the road, so you'll be stopping a lot anyway to sleep.
I got stir crazy in the one we were using, and it got to the point where I hated going across the country for a race. You spend all day driving in it, you eat and sleep in it, it has to be cleaned like a house because it gets dirty like a house, it honestly became a grind with no way personal space. Even the husband/wife of our team got crossways over personal space in their RV. Add in others, and yeah, not a great situation.
Like boats and airplanes, the worst thing you can do with one is let it sit. They need to be used regularly.
If you decide to get one, which you probably will if you've been planning since 1980, I do have some advice. Flying J's are very RV friendly and have good showers, you'll be taking a lot of showers in RVs because of the water usage management. Learn to use google maps - their satellite photos in particular - because parking can get tight and it is easier to plan stuff out in advance than try to wedge one into a tight spot on the fly. Don't just go expecting to park anywhere, even a smaller one. Watch people on the road, they don't understand that you cannot drive like you are in a car and they will put you into bad situations just because they are ignorant of that. You have to be very defensive in an RV.
Mostly, I would tell you to take a hard, hard look at what traveling you would like to do and how much, balance that against the upfront and ongoing costs, plus the depreciation of it, all the headaches that will be involved, and then make a decision.
