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WheRVe we been? Our travels 2nd quarter 2022

Well how ’bout that? It’s not often you see my legs sticking out from under the truck (and please observe that they are crossed, so everyone knows that all those swear words are coming from a lady).

One reason is that Tim doesn’t have the same… photographic priorities?… as I do, so there just wasn’t a picture of me in said position until I asked for one.

Another is that a few years ago, he started getting wicked strong vertigo from jobs that involve lying on his back looking up at something close. Seriously. Like, he’s had to roll over and puke on the pavement, and then spend a few hours recovering from the dizziness and nausea. Not fun.

So as situations warrant, I take one for the team, scootch and wriggle my way under truck or RV, and do the best I can while Tim coaches from above. There’s typically lots of ratcheting and wrenching and volatile cursing, way more grime than I care to have touching me, and sometimes I earn bruises and busted knuckles as payment. True love.

In the photo above, I was installing the tow bar hitch thingie that makes it so we can put our bike rack on the front of the truck, instead of behind the camper, where it would block our one and only door. Having to remove the bike rack every time we need access is also not fun.

Why am I explaining this? Because it was the last thing we did in central Texas before we finally got underway in Road Island in April, and I can tell you right now, almost 3 months in, that buying the truck camper early enough to take it out for a test season before next year’s trip to Alaska?

Rather brilliant move.

By which I mean a fair amount of stuff has already broken, and we’ve fixed it. And a fair amount of stuff we’ve brought along has been deemed unnecessary (mostly kitchen items and clothing), but that’s greater than the amount of stuff we didn’t bring along but wish we had, so overall we did fairly well, and we already kind of knew there was no way we’d get it right the first time. Maybe next year.

So how about I get to the map and the whirlwind tour now?

13 states, 2864 miles — only as measured directly between overnight stops, not all of which are on the map.
We put way more miles than that on the truck, sometimes with the camper on, sometimes without, as we ran errands and visited people at each location.
(Map does not reflect actual routing.)

The really cool thing is that 4 of those 13 states completed our RVing map of the Lower 48!

Although we made stops in TX, LA, AL, and TN for quick overnights on the way, our first real destination was VA, so that’s where I’ll start.

Slide Show 1: VA-MD-DE

  • VA: Our friends’ kids are all getting married these days. Open bars help me feel less old.
  • VA: Tim upgraded our off-grid living options with lithium batteries and solar panels.
  • VA: Appalachian Trail day hikes for me; several overnights for Tim.
  • VA: The Big Oops. Gasoline in the diesel tank. Damage confined to our bank account.
  • MD: We’ve got friends who make brick oven pizzas at a winery all summer.
  • MD: Friendship, wine, and pizza make a perfect trio.
  • DE: Our 45th state, in the park where we first took our boys camping in 1998.

Slide Show 2: NJ-PA-CT

  • NJ: Skipped the drive; took the ferry
  • NJ: State 46 offered lakeside tranquility
  • PA: Moochdocked with friends we made at an A Year To Volunteer project in 2021
  • PA: Stayed a little longer than planned, because the fridge required a major repair.
  • PA: But while we waited for the part to arrive, we did the Philly thing.
  • PA: Cheesesteaks too.
  • CT: Our 47th state, and more A Year to Volunteer friends with driveway space!
  • CT: And a dog who rather liked the taste of my coconut curl creme. Oh, Marshall.

Slide Show 3: NY-RI-MA

  • NYC: We took the train from CT into the city for a day. Tim had never been there!
  • NYC: We crammed a lot into our 10 hours, but we definitely need a few return visits.
  • RI: Site 746 in State 48. Done! We hit Rhode Island in Road Island, and could not have planned it better than that.
  • RI: Our Harvest Host farm offered much quieter neighbors than that state park did. Enough said.
  • MA: We spent 4th of July weekend housesitting for friends. Came with a dog!

Where to next?

I’m publishing this in New Hampshire, then we’ll spend a few days in Maine, and then we’re crossing the border to visit our Canadian neighbors, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, for a few weeks. That means we’ll celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary outside the US this year, and I’m pretty sure that hasn’t happened since 1993, when we marked our 1st anniversary in France thanks to a US Navy port call.

And there we were, married one year, posing in the hallway of our inn in Cannes.
I was 24; Tim was 27.
If you haven’t read our “how we met” story, or want a refresher, it’s here. You probably won’t need a hankie, but be warned that you might catch yourself grinning like a total sap.

The internet says that this is our Pearl Anniversary, and we’ll be staying in a waterside village in a province famed for its fresh North Atlantic seafood, so I’m thinking that wherever we eat out on July 18? I shall order the oysters.

Close enough.

We started full-timing in August of 2015, but I didn’t think to do an annual review until the end of 2016, and it was just a listing on Facebook of places we’d visited. After that, I started using a quarterly format.

5 years in: RV there yet?

Still no.

We were originally thinking it would be a one-year thing. Maybe two? We certainly didn’t imagine it would be a two-RV thing. But we were quite happily wrong, and we’ve now got enough events planned for Year 5 that there’s no way we’re giving this up yet! we’re now almost 3/4 through a year in which almost every planned event has been cancelled, so we’ve had to punt. A lot. And we’re too skittish at the moment to put much of anything on the calendar for Year 6.

We are grateful that we’ve managed to see as many friends and family members as we have — in very small groups, and mostly outdoors — in 2020. But the coronavirus pandemic has caused an indefinite delay on our biggest plan for this year, which was to begin an annual vacation tradition with both sons and their girlfriends. Sigh. Maybe next year.

We did get bonus time with one set of ’em, and yes, it now seems ridiculous that I was worried when Austin/Travis County was at 90 confirmed cases. They have since surpassed 22,000.

So to celebrate our nomad-versary, I shall regale you with our Amusing Tally of Miscellaneous Statistics, updated for 2020. 

In four five years, we’ve used, purchased, worn through, or replaced for any number of reasons ranging from the mundane, to the catastrophic, to just not getting the right thing the first time around (or second, or third…):

Our three configurations, in chronological order
BFT1 + RV1 (2014-2017)
BFT2 + RV1 (2017-2018)
BFT2 + RV2 (2018-present)

We’ve also held memberships/accounts with:

  • 3 RV insurance companies
  • 3 cellular service providers
  • 2 RV owners’ clubs
  • 4 RV travel/social organizations
  • 2 mail forwarding services
About a year ago, we switched from a UPS Store mailbox we’d already owned in San Antonio,
to the Escapees RV Club’s Mail Forwarding Service.
And when we were in Livingston, TX, earlier this year, we were able to pick up our mail at the headquarters building, in person.

And in addition, we’ve experienced: 

1st new workamping job:
Co-managing one of Pumpkin Station’s farm locations in the San Diego area
2nd new workamping job:
Volunteering at the Escapees CARE Center in Livingston, TX
Our preferred types of workamping jobs offer visible results.
Here’s how & why we use these opportunities to supplement Tim’s retirement pension.

I’ll spare you a full reprint of our prior annual reviews, which included answers to the 13 Questions We Hear All The Time, but I’ll update the three two that need it.

How many states have you visited in the RV, I mean like, for more than just a rest stop?

By my count, 37 39: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

My criteria for counting a state as visited are a bit fluid, which I know will drive some people a little nuts. Did we stay overnight? Long enough to do the weekly laundry? Go on a hike or visit a national park? All of those are valid to me. Just driving through on the way to elsewhere, with a potty break at a gas station? Not so much — otherwise, we’d have counted Mississippi about 8 times by now, instead of zero.

And the RV has to have stayed inside the state border too, not just us. Otherwise, we’d have been able to add Hawaii and Rhode Island last year.

Map created at amcharts.com

What’s next? (entire section updated)

After another week here in Montana, where we are happy with lower population density and temperatures than we were enduring in Texas, we’re going to spend some time in Wyoming and Colorado as we make our way back to Texas in September.

It wasn’t our original plan to go back this fall (am I the only one detecting a theme here?) but we’ve been able to schedule some non-critical yet important medical and dental appointments that were impossible to nail down when we were there in June/July.

So it’ll be San Antonio from mid-September until Halloween or so, and the course of the pandemic will determine where — or if — we go after that.

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and/or Twitter for between-blogging updates.

So that’s it for the end of Year 5.
The time for smiling at you from behind our masks will eventually end…
… and then we can smile at you like this, looking back, having made it through.
(Photo: D. Goldstein)

Other updates: We started full-timing in August of 2015, but I didn’t think to do an annual review until the end of 2016, and it was just a listing on Facebook of places we’d visited. After that, I started using a quarterly format for the where-we’ve-beens and what-we’ve-dones.