I hope some of you actually look forward to these sum-up posts at the end of the year. Last year I had so much, I broke it into 3 parts, that were sequential, this year I am going to do the same thing. It will be mostly pictures, so hopefully you will be able to get through it:-)
So let me start by saying WOW, what a year! The virus truly affected everyone, but I can honestly say I think it has had less effect on RVers. We observed tons of brand new rigs, mostly tow behinds and 5th wheels, in fact I would say that in the mostly full and overflowing campgrounds we visited, truly 25% had temporary plates and were absolute newbies giving this life style a try, a way to get out of their house, travel a bit without going to a hotel or go on an airplane. It will be very interesting to see if next year when the novelty wears off and things, hopefully, slowly return to normal, if there won't be a plethora of used campers on the market. In fact along with this phenomenon of so many new people in the campgrounds, I want to get a few things off my chest. Skip forward if you want. First of all, Jan and I covet darkness in a campground or campsite, after all we try to get out in nature and enjoy it including the moon, stars, etc. A new standard is developing and not just from new people that everyone wants to light up their campsite and RV like a billboard or Walmart parking lot. Extremely bright LED's, rope lights, also bright intense LED's laid out all around the perimeter of their site and maybe hanging off their awnings, bright porch lights, etc, and I won't even get into all the outside TV's blaring into the night. Don't get me wrong, if it's early and folks are outside visiting, cooking, eating, and want light so what, but they stay on ALL NIGHT! They leave them on, go inside, pull down all their blinds like a cocoon, and leave them on bothering all the neighbors. Sometimes they just don't realize or even think about it, and we have actually several times knocked on a door asking if they'd turn off their lights since they were bright enough to allow us to do surgery in our bedroom. Usually they would apologize, not realizing they were bothering anyone. The other thing is most of these folks are brand new to this, they didn't camp with their family before, and learn campground etiquette. They haven't learned to respect other campsites, or have their kids learn to not run through other sites. They walk right through, we even had some folks cut between our chairs and OUR motorhome! When you say something they just look at you like you're crazy?!? On several of the forums I frequent the subject of outside lighting comes up often, most I believe, feel the way we do, light it up when you need it, leave your porch light on if you're out and about, but when you go in for the night, turn them off. Okay enough of my rant, back to our recap of the year.
The virus began to have a big impact on us even before we left Florida, in fact we extended a month to see what was developing. Initially we had planned to spend 6-8 weeks in New England, primarily Maine, but it turned out they were shut down, no open businesses nor even any campgrounds were allowed to be open. We waited a bit and when no relief was in sight we called every campground and moved out reservations to 2021, and cancelled all our plans for Maine. I guess we'll have to see how that will pan out for next year. We needed some paint work done to the coach, our entry door was a mess, and we had a lot clear coat coming off on the rear cap and awning rails, so we decided to go to Oregon to have it done. Then part way there we understood they were closed down as well along with their campgrounds, but we found out later that wasn't true. Every campground on our travels west were all open and operating, some might have contactless check in's, no open office, took their payment over the phone, set out a packet with a map to your site, and in many ways it was more pleasant than normal. It seemed that only New England had actually shut down. Now I won't say the virus didn't affect us, because it did. We altered our plans big time, we only ate out 3 times and only outside, our normal being 3-4 times a week, we didn't do any fly fishing float trips, we didn't shop or walk around any towns. Basically we did things by ourselves, and stayed holed up in our coach more than normal, we avoided any crowds, and it seemed like most other folks we saw and talked to were doing the same. Also we made more changes to our itinerary than ever before.
To the recap. Our total miles this year was actually down from normal, 10,838 compared to last year's 12,624. We traveled on 52 days and stayed in 14 different states, our shortest day was 22.4 miles, from our boon dock spot on the Big Hole to Wise River, MT. Our longest day was 403.5 miles which was our first day out of our Florida campground, Royal Coachman Resort to Presnells in Port St Joe, FL. Our campground cost declined a bit as we stayed in a few spots for a month, very unusual for us which lowered the overall price. We averaged $43.43/night, from a low of $zero when we boon docked or were at a service facility to a high of $86.63 at the overpriced Bozeman Hot Springs Campground. Fuel was cheap this year, the prices were low because of the virus and we discovered a new discount program called TSD Logistics that got one fill up down to $1.81/gal in Walsenburg, CO. We consumed 1844 gallons at an average price of $2.15, our highest was $2.68 in Lake Park, FL. And as we had hoped our mileage increased about 8% to 6.17 mpg we believe due to our replacement of the wax valve so our cooling fan didn't run nearly as often. And when you see that very low figure, keep in mind we weigh 47,000#, and tow a full size Ram pickup that weighs another 6500#.
So in the following pictures, you will be able to follow along on our travels from Florida all the way out to Oregon, then back to Idaho, Montana, Utah, Colorado, and back through Texas and Georgia. You can also open up the 2020 map and see where we went, and of course the several glitches and fixes along the way.
So we'll start in Florida before we left. We did manage to get out to eat several times before the Covid moved in. And then we worked on at home meals primarily, Jan even got some canning done. The winter is my primary fly tying time, theoretically we are too busy fishing to do it all summer. Our dining table doubles as our office, paperwork, computer, and fly tying work station, and in the winter I'll often set it up and leave it in place for two days.
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| Sticky buns! |
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| Sidelinger Tomato Relish, thanks guys! |
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| Jan's killer baked beans |
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| Veal scaloppini |
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| Delicious grilled butterflied leg of lamb |
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| My work station |
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| A bunch of midges |
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| A bunch of hoppers |
We replaced our electric power cord and it turned out way too short! We didn't realize it until we were totally committed to the project and had already cut the ends on the wire. It turned out that there was a lot of the cord inside the canister where it is stored, so when we measured and ordered what we thought was an appropriate length, it was way short. We thought we could live with it, but we experienced 5 places this year where our cord was too short and had to use an extension cord. We will be fixing it this year.
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| Cut it twice and it's still too short:-) |
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| Our broken captain's chair, finally had to replace all the workings |
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| Had a nice visit from John and Diane |
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| Had an opportunity to repair the washer/dryer |
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| Guided by Bert, yeah our 17 year cat is still around |
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| One of our beautiful sunsets from our site |
Our good friends, Debbie and Harold had to leave early as they live in Canada and it looked like the border was going to close imminently, so we lost part of our Happy Hour crew, so at least we got a "Cheers" from them from afar, and we were able to give one back. And it doesn't look like they will be able to come down at all this year:-(
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| Cheers from Deb and Harold from Canada! |
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| Cheers back from Me, Jan, and Tom |
So now we needed to figure out what to do for the year. We had had an appointment in Florida to have our paintwork done, but it was right when we were supposed to leave, so combined with the fact we extended for a month and the estimate was extremely high, we cancelled and decided to try to set it up in Oregon instead. We needed to go somewhere, it might as well be Oregon. |
| This gives you an idea why we needed our door painted |
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| And these two pictures show how we were losing the clear coat on our rear cap |
So we had one more thing to do before leaving Florida, especially since we wouldn't be going to Maine, we had to have a farewell dinner, LOBSTER! We got a couple big guys enough to gorge on dinner and have plenty for the next day's lunch:-)
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| A happy camper |
So off we went on our first foray since the virus and what did we find? Lovebugs, that's what.
But we had a nice site on the gulf in Port St Joe, FL and we celebrated finally leaving the state with awesome homemade crab cakes! |
| Delicious! |
We spent a few weeks in Atlanta and were unable to accomplish a few things and unfortunately accomplished a few other things not anticipated. Jan was supposed to get a dental implant, but with the virus was unable, and then I broke a tooth right in half right after going to the dentist to have a permanent crown mounted. I ended up having to go to an oral surgeon to have my tooth pulled and a bone graft and in the process broke a piece of another tooth off and had to yet again go back to the dentist to have that repaired! And now we both need to get a dental implant?!? But in between we ate some good takeout and Jan made a delicious scallop chowder.Then up to north GA to check out fishing spots and then west to our first destination of Searcy, AR just west of Memphis to RVFog Dr to have 3 windows that have lost their seal repaired. And then along the way as if 2020 hadn't already taken its toll on us, I came down with an awful case of gout. It was debilitating. |
| Window out getting seals renewed |
With some wonderful intervention and prescription from my family doc, I finally started getting relief for my foot. We made our way to Fort Collins, CO where we met our daughter, Kelly. |
Our daughter Kelly with Jan
The first we had been this close to another human being, but just for a second |
After a nice visit we went west through the canyon created by the Cache de Poudre river, pronounced, cash de pooder:-) It was a magnificent drive. |
| Lunch stop |
We were beating feet now trying to get to our appointment in Oregon. We were only interrupted when our driver side bedroom slide quit working in Burns, OR, but luckily it was only a shear pin and that is an easy find in a farming area. |
| Putting the mechanism back together |
Then into Eugene, we dropped off our coach at the paint shop and went to the VRBO we had reserved for the few days of paint. Jan's sister Karen and her husband Tom were a week behind us in getting her coach painted so we were able to rendezvous for drinks, and a couple of meals before we parted ways again. |
| Into the paint shop |
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| The inviting entry to our very nice VRBO |
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| When in the Pacific Northwest, dungeness crab cocktails is what's on the menu |
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| Funny being out of the coach, but we made the most of it |
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| A Triple D place in Lancaster, OR |
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| Small burgers and great brats:-) |
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| Karen and Tom joining us for seafood take out |
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| Back on our site with the paint all done! |
We bid our good byes and first went south to a nice place right on the Willamette River, Casey's Riverside, and then went east to Sisters, OR and stayed at one of the nicest rv parks we have ever been, Bend/Sisters Garden RV Resort.
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| Our site at Casey's |
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| The Sisters |
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Our beautiful site there in Sisters
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From Sisters we made our way to Picabo, ID, a tiny town south of Ketchum and Sun Valley to fish. We fished Silver Creek and although we could see huge fish we were unable to entice any, but we had good luck on the Big Wood near Ketchum. Beautiful scenery and a wonderful ride.Then north through Idaho eventually to Montana. We did some sightseeing along the Salmon River and had a bad experience at a campground and moved on to the Big Hole River in MT.
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| A cattle drive coming right down the road |
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| This odd looking guy came right up to us while we were having our picnic! |
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It looks idyllic, but this is the place we had a real set to
with the owners of the park and left early |
We continued up into Montana and boon docked along the Big Hole River where we had last year, after our poor experience in ID, we relished the quiet, privacy, and absolute beauty of the place, the fishing wasn't bad either.
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| That's Jan in the distance |
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| Happy Campers now |
We went from our boon dock spot to another campground in Wise River, MT and decided since it was within striking distance to Ennis, and we were having a jones for some great meat that we would take a ride, see what was happening in Ennis, one of our favorite places, and stop in at their amazing meat market, Deemo's. |
| Another cattle drive down the road |
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| Some pretty comfortable bucks before hunting season at a house in Ennis:-) |
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| And a beautiful view for coffee high above Ennis |
After that we went farther north to Cascade, MT along the Missouri where we planned to take a fly fishing float trip. Well I wasn't comfortable with that, so we rented a float boat to do it ourselves.  |
| A beautiful view along the way! |
So I think this would be a good place to end Part 1, the others will be along in a few days.
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