Bill & Jan's Excellent Adventure: Wow, Another Year, Filled With Change

I never thought I would use the word, "change" this year as much as last year. I actually thought that this year would settle back to normal, and I have to say it did and it didn't. When we came out of Florida, Jan and I were fully vaccinated and decided to act like it. No more masks, no more social distancing, hugging everyone, getting together with friends and family, eating indoors, etc. We felt free. And almost everywhere we went appeared to have a similar outlook. It wasn't until much later in our trip when we reached the states of Oregon and Washington that you realized some places weren't as free. Sure we saw some masks everywhere, and I believe we are going to see masks perpetually in our future by a certain segment of the population. But in OR and WA there were inside mask mandates and amazingly OR instituted an outdoor mask mandate just before we left! We worked to get in and out of those states as quickly as possible, and we did. Even those states with their mandates weren't consistent either, you were made to put on a mask if shopping in a Costco, but when I went into a medical facility to have blood taken, no masks necessary. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there actually was consistency? That lack affects us much more than folks who are at home, whatever their area or local or state requires is what they get used to, but when you move from state to state all over the country, you never quite know what to expect. Okay, I'm done with this subject.

What prompted all the change, well, smoke, heat, wind, and our attitudes towards them. We have always experienced smoke and wind each trip out west, it's like another season, wildfires, a fact of life, but this year was brutal. So we decided to bail out of the west more than a month early, unique for us, the west lovers:-)

To the recap, we put on many more miles than normal, almost as much as when we went to Alaska each time, this year we drove 15,027 miles vs 10,838 last year and increase of 4,189. And accordingly the number of travel days increased from 52 last year to 77 this year, and 14 states last year up to 23 this year. Our shortest day was just a bit less than last year's 22.4 with 19.4 miles from Grand Lake, CO to Granby, CO, and our longest about the same with last year 403.5 and this year's 406.5 from Luray, VA to Waynesville, NC. Campground and fuel prices went up significantly, along with everything else this year, no comment. Our average campground price this year was $55.06/night compared with $43.43 last year. The low being zero when we boondocked, and the highest was $107.05/night in Granby, CO at River Run, a rip off as far as we were concerned, not much bang for all those dollars, compared to last year's $86.63.

Obviously with all the extra driving we bought more diesel, 2559 gallons as compared to 1844 last year. Average cost last year, $2.15, this year $3.09! Lowest early in the year at $2.50, later $3.70 was our high. Our TSD card saved us a ton over published pump prices, in fact it saved us $794.69 over 22 fuel stops that we used the program!

Campgrounds were as full and hard to get into as last year, we still continue to see many folks living in the campgrounds and many people new to the RV life style. Still a gross lack of campground etiquette, walking through sites, not honoring site boundaries, etc. And the proliferation of lights is just as bad if not worse than last year, it almost seems like a competition to see who can light their site and rig more obnoxiously and throughout the entire night than their neighbor. I wish I knew why. We stayed at one "dark sky" campground and have heard of more of them out there, we hope this is a trend, they don't allow any outside lighting after a particular time, and enforce the policy. Fantastic!

We probably spent 10-15 hours of time searching for, cancelling, changing, reserving campgrounds with all the associated route changes, and found many campgrounds already full that could not accommodate us when we wanted, which also precipitated even more change:-)

So now on to the recap, hope at least few of you enjoy this. As before it will be mostly pictures.

Our trip took us up to the Atlanta area, then north into NC and TN before heading west to AL, TX, NM, and AZ where we hooked up with Karen, Jan' s sister and B-I-L Tom. Then up to Utah and into CO, then WY and MT before heading west into WA and OR for some wood work, then back to MT where we changed things up big time. Cut our time short and decided to make our way to Buffalo, NY to visit our son Jason and his fiancé Joanne. That took us down through UT and CO to TX where we saw our daughter Kelly and husband Brian for the second time this year, then a beeline through OK, AR, IL, IN, OH into NY. From there we worked our way south into PA, VA, TN, NC, GA, and finally back to FL. The 2021 map shows our route. There were several issues and projects along the way some big and some really big.

So, I am going to this in 3 doses again, it will be mostly pictures, a lot of pictures as I said. This first episode will cover our time in Florida out to when we met Karen and Tom in Arizona.

We'll start off with a project of changing out our failing and weak auxiliary air pump for our leveling system, a very easy job.

Of course you can depend on the fact there will be many pictures of food along the way:-)

Homemade pizzas

We had to replace our electrical cord again, since the first ws too short:-( and replaced the water hose and reel.

One of our daily walks includes the tortoise preserve right here in our park.

I tied a bunch of flies for our upcoming fishing year, which unfortunately didn't work out as well as hoped.

And Jan mostly, I did help once in awhile, did many puzzles that our friend Ray loans us while here in Florida. These are Liberty puzzles, absolutely amazing.

The back shows some of the amazing detail and whimsies

Had to have our worn out awnings replaced with a quick trip to Brooksville, FL to Talin RV.

Out to one of many lunches, and Jan inspired to make green tomato relish.

We had a nice visit from son Jason and fiancé, Joanne!

Replaced our side cameras.

Then we had to make an unexpected trip to Atlanta for Jan to get her dental implant post reinserted and also to get a tooth repaired for me, bad year for teeth! Then on our trip just as we entered the middle of Atlanta our new to us, alternator replaced in November of 2020 with only a few thousand miles crapped out! We ended up replacing it on warranty after a 320 mile drive to Franklin, NC to get the next new one, more will follow to this story.

Alternator #3

So when we got back to Florida we replaced our chassis batteries and upgraded our charging system from a Big Boy to a Blue Sea ML-ACR. Old then new.

I have mentioned our indicator light near the driver seat that is supposed to light whenever the truck brakes come on while towing through our braking system. We had problems and in fact still do, one of our projects this winter, but we replaced the switch to see if that would help, it didn't.

While working on that system we decided to have our worn out and poor looking consoles replaced, hence our trip to Oregon, more to follow.

How they look now!

Tom, brother-in-law, happy hour buddy, and published author, our neighbor in Florida.

That completes our winter in Florida. On our way out we stopped into Josam's, a truck chassis shop and alignment center in Orlando to have a few things done, turned out we needed to have a lot more than what we planned on done. We had to replace our drag link which had failed, 2 new tires since our tag was out of alignment, had it aligned, installed Balance Masters on the steer and tag, and had numerous air leaks repaired, ouch!

Then we finally got out of there, all fixed to relax at a horse farm for the next day when we heard a huge air leak while starting to leave there for Atlanta which was our tag axle air valve failing, replaced.