A Year on the Road!

May 20, 2018

In some ways, we’re still RV newbies, but we’ve finished our first year on the road.

• 10,870 total miles
• 51 moves
• 20 states, 2 provinces
• Easternmost point:  Fort Pierce, Florida; Westernmost point: Denver, Colorado;  Northernmost point:  Regina, Saskatchewan; Southernmost point:  Harlingen, Texas [Nuevo Progresso, Mexico without the coach]

Tourist Appreciation Day in Nuevo Progresso, Mexico, March 2018

We are enjoying the RV lifestyle and find the uncertainties associated with it to be sometimes challenging but more often exciting and rewarding. Some things we don’t like:

• Cooking in the RV requires more thought and planning than cooking in the house ever did.

Kitchen in the house in Fort Pierce

Kitchen in the coach

• Researching campground reviews is no guarantee that showers will be clean or the wi-fi will work.

Campgrounds can look like this one at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds near Denver

Or they can look like Lake Falling Star near Mahon, Texas

Even nice campgrounds can host unwanted critters–like this scorpion Jane found in a shower

• We never expect to run into someone we know at the grocery store.
• A wrong turn in the RV can, at best, add time to the trip and, at worst, take us places we don’t want to go (turnarounds that require unhooking the Jeep, under bridges with inadequate clearance, into the path of rocks thrown by trucks).
• Our imaginations can’t predict what places will be like.  While we loved discovering the geography of western Nebraska, we weren’t so happy with the Rio Grande Valley.

Fort Robinson State Park, Crawford, Nebraska

The Thicket, Harlingen, Texas

Things that keep us on the road, in spite of the challenges:

• Learning what small towns are proud of and what makes them unique

Seafood Festival Parade in Cedar Key, Florida

Fourth of July Celebration, Custer, South Dakota

• The laid-back lifestyle.  We don’t need dress clothes.
•  Surprises like music in Custer State Park, living history on the Cold Harbor battlefield, and incredible geographic features like Monument Rocks in Kansas, the Black Hills in South Dakota, and Aires Arch in Wyoming.

View from Black Elk Peak, Custer State Park, Custer, South Dakota

What Travel Days Are Like

• We’ve developed a checklist for getting the coach ready that includes stowing furniture, personal property and yogurt in the refrigerator (before we’d reached the interstate on our very first trip, the refrigerator door flew open and yogurt splatted in the fridge and on the floor), checking tires and fluids, disconnecting campground utilities, programming the navigation system, turning on the inverter so the refrigerator and clocks have power as we drive, connecting the Jeep to the coach, putting the Jeep in neutral, connecting the auxiliary braking system, and checking the lights.
• We are usually on the road around 9:00 a.m. and aim for travel days of 200-300 miles.  Most of the time, Dave takes the first driving shift, and Jane relieves him after a hundred miles or two hours.
• Lunches have always been in the coach (many RVers stop at restaurants; one of us eats out of the fridge while the other drives).
• We occasionally stop at a visitor’s center or welcome station but usually are more interested in getting to our destination than stopping along the way.
• We generally are at our new campground between 1 and 3 p.m.  Set-up is quick:  Dave levels the coach with the hydraulic jacks and extends the slides; Jane hooks up the utilities.  Together we disconnect the car and are off to explore our new town.  Sometimes we find a nice walk, other times we pick up groceries, almost always we find a visitors center for advice about the must-see items in the area.
• Suppers, whether a travel day or not, are usually in the coach.  Occasionally we’ll head out for an evening adventure, but usually we watch TV or a movie, work on the blog, and catch up on e-mail and news.

What Non-Travel Days are Like

We each take turns cooking for a week and the person who is “off” for the week is in charge of the itinerary.  Lunch is usually eaten in an interesting local restaurant.  Suppers are back in the coach.

We are enjoying ourselves!