Tuesday December 1 – Our Anniversary

 

Not our wedding anniversary but our 1 year anniversary being full time RV’ers on the road. 

It is hard for us to believe it has been a whole year since we left from the closing on our house in Pueblo West, Colorado in our Montana fifth wheel.  Time has just flown by.  After a year we  still sometimes have to pinch ourselves because we can’t believe we are doing this.

We never were in vacation mode when we started. In fact sometimes we felt a bit guilty because we thought we should  be doing more.  Thinking back I guess we really have done a lot, we just don’t do something everyday.  In reality this has just been an extension of how we always lived our lives,  just now we are mobile and get to live our lives where we want with lots of different backyards.

Some of the things we have done that we never would have had we remained in our former full time working lives are:

• Meeting new friends in San Antonio and seeing the sights.  
• Spending 3 months in the tropical Rio Grand Valley of Texas visiting with old friends and making new friends. 
• Visiting  friends at the most interesting Fort Clark Springs in Brackettville, TX 
• Seeing more great friends at Buckhorn Lake Resort in Kerrville, TX 
• Camping on the lake in our 1st Army Corp of Engineers park in Lake Baldwell, TX 
• Camping only a stones throw from the mighty Mississippi River in West Memphis, Arkansas. 
• Visiting Memphis and Nashville, TN 
• An extended 6 week visit to Baltimore MD to visit family.  
• Work camping at Lake George in the Adirondack region of New York. 
• Visiting Sandusky Ohio and the roller coaster capitol of the US at Cedar Point. 
• Visiting Howe, Indiana with wonderful friends
• Seeing the large Amish population and Elkhart, the RV capitol of the US 
• Caravanning with friends to Mark Twain Cave in Hannibal, MO. 
• Visiting our children and grandchildren in Colorado for 5 weeks. 
• Visiting family in Oklahoma. 
• Seeing friends we made while work camping in NY now in Columbus  TX 
• Back in the Rio Grand Valley, our winter home  

All of this and much much more.  So I guess  maybe we have done a lot.

Here are a few statistics from our 1st year on the road: 

• We have towed the Kram-a-lot Inn 5,966 miles covering 19 states though we did not stay overnight in all of them
• Our mileage has varied from a low of 8.8 and a high of 12.2 with an overall average of 10.2 mpg
• We have stayed in 25 campgrounds.  Our campground costs varied from $0 to $33.  per night.
• Our average campground fee for the year was $9.45 per night

Being stationary for 1.5 months in MD, 4.5 months in NY, 5 weeks in CO, and a few free nights scattered around Brackettville and  Columbus TX, and the Firelake Grand Casino in OK really brought down our average campground cost.

We are looking forward to our 2nd year of full timing.   Some things will be a repeat of what we have done this past year but we are both sure there will be some new places to see, some old friends to see, and some new friends to meet.

Many of our full timing friends say they wish they had started this life style sooner.  I am glad we did not wait any longer, you can never start a dream too soon.

When asked if we ever looked back , Jesse replied “only in the rear view mirror.”