HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO US - One Year on the Road and Loving It!

August 27th, 2009 we picked up our brand new Flagstaff Super Lite in Walcott, Iowa and the adventure began.  So what have we been doing.

Where Have We Been


This is our 74th stop in 365 days.  That makes our average stop 4.93 days.  There have been many many two or three day stops, very few one day stops (except for 3 Walmarts) and several stops of a month or more.  I will not bore you with every stop but we have been from Iowa across the Canadian Prairies to the west coast of British Columbia, down the west coast of Washington, Oregon and California with long stops in Florence, Oregon; Coarsegold, California and Temecula, California.  We had intended to make it as far as Texas, but it snowed there so we spent most of the winter in Arizona.
We made friends at our Graduation in Quartszite.  Friends that we know we will have for life.

We spent a lot of time at the SKP park, Rover's Roost in Casa Grande, Arizona.  We boondocked in the desert at a rally in Why, Arizona.  We boondocked with great friends outside of Yuma.  That was the most fun.

Sadly, we can only stay in the US for 183 days a year so we had to slowly drift back to BC with stops at the SKP park in Coarsegold, California - Park Sierra.  Back along the Oregon Coast, up the Olympic Peninsula and crossed over to Canada on the 1st of April.  We spent a month in Langley with family and friends, visited more family and friends in the Okanagan and headed to the far north, Prince Rupert, for the 100th Homecoming.  We spent time at our friends RV park in Terrace.  We traveled back to the coast for a family emergency and then to the Okanagan again.  We left and finally traveled east with stops in Creston, Moose Jaw, Swift Current, Brandon and now we are in Winnipeg visiting more family.

Things We Have Done

Many full-time RV'ers spend a lot of time and money doing touristy things.  We do not.  We realize that we have years and years to do these things so we limit ourselves.  We have gone to The Desert Museum in Tucson, we have been to Tombstone, we visited The Kartscher Caverns and in British Columbia we went to Barkersville.

A Day in the Life

Traveling Days - we are up early, we have breakfast and we pack up.  I do the inside: gather up things from the counters and secure them; take down the pictures; empty the shower caddy; bungie the glass cupboard; bring down the antennae and pull in the slides.  Doug does the outside things:  gather up whatever mats, chairs etc. that are out; bring up the landing gears; pack up the truck; and hook up (not as easy as that sounds).  We are usually on the road by 9:00 ish.  We will stop of fast food lunch and, if we don't have a destination, start looking for one around 2:00 pm.  I try to have something easy arranged for dinner because by dinnertime, we are pretty tired.

Non-Traveling Days - Doug starts by walking the dog every morning, no matter where we are.  After breakfast we plan our day.  There always seems to be chores to be done - grocery shopping, laundry (not as easy on the road).  Doug is always building something from bins in the back of the truck to new shelves in the rig.  We try to find time for Scrabble or video games.  We read a lot and we almost always have a nap.  After dinner we watch tv if we have any, watch a movie if we have one or play games.  We take walks if it's nice.

Best and Worst

Over the course of a year we have had good experiences and a few bad ones.

We cannot even include Escapee Parks in our best parks list as they are incredible.  Beautifully laid out, all amenities, lots of things to do and great people.  Rover's Roost in Casa Grande, Arizona is our favourite for the people and the location.  Park Sierra near Coarsegold, California is our favourite for the park itself.

Other than SKP parks, other very memorable ones are:  Wild Duck in Terrace, BC owned by our friends;  Rubber Ducky outside Winnipeg where we are now; Harbor Vista in Florence, Oregon;  Prairie Oasis in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan; to name only a few.

As a SKP member in good standing, I have to mention food.  We all need it, true, but Escapees love it and talk about it all the time. 

The worst food, without a doubt, was in Quartzsite, Arizona.  They don't have to make the food good.  The town has a population of about 2,000 and it balloons to 200,000 in January and February every year.  The food is crappy.  Most memorable - the ribs we had our first night.

The best food, and there was lots, was at the restaurant next to the famous Mo's in Florence, Oregon, called ICM.  We had fish and chips, the best ever, on the deck.



To be Continued>>>>>>>>