An Interesting Mix In Year Six

Wow! Can we really be coming to the end of our sixth year on the road? We don’t feel we’ve even scratched the surface of things to do and see!

From May 2017-May 2018 we covered many miles as you can see in our route map below. We almost made a spoon shape route. We went from the Rockies to the Atlantic coast to the Great Lakes while juggling health and RV repair issues. Challenges… yes. Adventure galore! Drop dead gorgeous scenery… you bet! Good eats … mmmmm.

We are starting a new composite map for years 6-10 as continuing to layer our routes would make it unreadable. However just for fun we’ll post a composite so you can see what 180,000 miles looks like.

Join us for Year Seven as we explore summer in northern Minnesota, head back to Indiana for (we hope) our last major repairs and on to a glorious winter in Arizona. See you on the road!

 

Our 6th Year On The Road

 

Composite Of Our First Six Years

Where To Next? #11

Four months seemed like a long time to be in one place when we arrived at the Sacajawea Center in Salmon, Idaho last May. In the blink of an eye, here we are in mid August and it is time to plan our next journey.  All but one of these stops is new to us. We will be returning to Bandits Roost in NC where we visited often while waiting for our house to sell in 2012. We’ll be heading back east to volunteer at Cape Lookout National Seashore and in February 2018 celebrate Steve’s Mom’s 90th birthday. Although I spent 20 years in North Carolina, I never visited the southern part of the Outer Banks. Now we’ll have 5 months to play and explore. Along the way we’ll spend time in Cody, Wyoming and meet up with RV friends in Yellowstone NP, see the Black Hills of SD for the third time but in the Spearfish area, stop to see Steve’s brother in Wisconsin, visit 8 National Park Service sites, eat in 3 Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, take a steamboat cruise for Ocktoberfest and continue Seeing America Through A Bug Splattered Windshield.

From Salmon, ID To Cape Lookout NS, NC

Our Top Ten Campgrounds For July 2014- July 2015

Now that we are spending about 50% of our time volunteering we didn’t know if we’d have enough great places to recommend for another Top Ten post. Fortunately that was no problem. So here are our choices as we moved from Montana, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon and Washington. Again, this list in no particular rating order and is for folks like ourselves who travel via large RV. If dry camping was involved it is noted. Otherwise there was at least water and electric hookups. Some of the other campgrounds we used would be suitable for smaller units but proved challenging for us. We started with a list of 16 campgrounds we really enjoyed. After listing our 10 favorites we mention the runners up.

TOP TEN CAMPGROUNDS USED

 1) Bullards Beach State Park near Bandon-by-the-Sea, OR

 2) Le Page USCAE Park on the John Day River/ Columbia River, near Rufus, Oregon

 3) Lake Havasu State Park, Lake Havasu, AZ

 4) Dead Horse Ranch State Park, Cottonwood, AZ

 5) Farragut State Park, north of Coeur d’Alene, ID

 6) Hells Gate State Park, Lewiston, ID

 7) Riana USACE Campground, Abiquiu, New Mexico

 8) Curecanti National Recreation Area, Elk Creek CG Loop D, near Gunnison, CO

 9) McDowell Mountain Regional Park, near Fort McDowell, AZ

10) Angostura Lake State Recreation Area, Hat Creek CG,  near Hot Springs, SD

Sometimes it was very difficult to choose so here are the wonderful runners up:

Fort Worden State Park, Port Townsend, WA

Lake Cochiti USACE, Cochiti Lake, NM

East Canyon State Park, Morgan, UT

Big Creek Flathead National Forest CG, Columbia Falls, MT *** dry camping***

Langhor CG in Hyalite Canyon, Gallatin USNF, Bozeman, MT *** dry camping ***

Boulder Beach, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Boulder City, NV *** dry camping ***

Furnace Creek CG, Death Valley NP, CA *** dry camping ***

Codorniz USACE Recreation Area, east of Merced, CA

 

HAPPY CAMPING!!!!

 

Where Next #5 – Now For Plan B

With another round of repairs finished we drove eight hours to the Georgia side of Lake Seminole. Normally we don’t drive more than 4-5 hours between stops. We try to follow the 2-4-4 rule. That’s 200 miles or four hours or get there by four o’clock. We took three days just to relax at Eastbank COE campground.

Our next stop was to be another COE campground just north of Atlanta. Not knowing the layout of a campground can make it difficult when choosing a site online. Most of the time we get good sites. Unfortunately while this one looked good on the computer it had a very difficult back in with gullies on either side of the road and a S-curve entry.  Steve said “no way” which is unusual for him. The park was booked for the weekend and we couldn’t find another site. So we left and spent our first parking lot night at Cracker Barrel. It was chilly so we put Opal in the trailer vs. truck while we went in to eat. We didn’t think about the slides being in or that it was completely dark. As we came out of the restaurant we heard a very mournful “Awr-roooo! Awr-roooo! coming from the trailer. Opal was letting the world know she didn’t think much of this. I haven’t commented for a while but really now… they go in where it’s nice and cozy, sit down and have a meal and leave me squeezed in a dark, cold trailer. Who wouldn’t howl?

Then we headed on to McDowell Park in Charlotte for nine days of errands, appointments and seeing friends. By this time the parts for the awning arms were in at our RV dealer in Marion, NC so we headed for their campground. We dropped the trailer off for repair and drove up to Pennsylvania for a short visit to Steve’s family. Thinking repairs were finally behind us we made plans to head to Tennessee.

As we pulled into the Marion campground we saw the trailer was listing badly to the left. What now?!! Steve checked and found that when the mechanics had set up the trailer back on the pad, the locking pin on the landing gear didn’t go all the way through. The weight of the trailer had bent it and the footing had partially collapsed. It was Sunday evening and no one was around. Fortunately Steve is very handy and was able to stabilize things using jack stands. The next day the dealer repaired the problem so we could travel but … a part had to be ordered and would take a few weeks. Here we go again. As we write this five weeks later we are still waiting for the part.

So here’s our new itinerary for heading west to Montana.

Plan B Route Georgia To Montana