Trifter

We retired in 2002, paid off our mortgage, bought a motor home and hit the road.  I am 71 and my wife is 73 years of age and we are still going strong.  We wanted to see the 48 contiguous states and we accomplished that goal before the price of gas climbed to $4.00 per gallon. 

We love our motor home and have had quite a few great trips.  If you are considering buying a camping trailer or motor home I recommend renting a unit similar to the unit you want to buy and try it out before you buy.  Do all the fun things like setting up your campsite, hooking up the water, electric and sewer systems.  Then when you’re ready to leave the campsite disconnect the utilities and dump the sewer system.  If all of these steps plus living in a confined space do not turn you off then maybe you are ready to invest in a camper or motor home. 

If you are like most of us you will overload your unit with food, water, pots, pans and so forth.  In order to reduce weight and eliminate closet clutter we suggest you and your significant other take several short trips.  These trips will be used to determine what you really need to carry and what you can do without.  For instance there are grocery stores throughout the U.S. so you don’t need food for the whole trip.  Pots and pans can also be reduced to a bare minimum to save room.  We do carry an electric pot, about 3 quarts, and electric slow cooker and a large electric pan, 10″X20″ for cooking meals in larger batches.  The electric items facilitate outdoor cooking to keep the heat and food odors from permeating your RV.  The slow cooker can be setup and used on a picnic table while you are out exploring the area.  We have also used the slow cooker on the road to prepare dinner while traveling; put it in the sink and surround it with towels and use rubber bands to secure the top.    

Our first trip was a challenge deciding where to go and how long we want to be gone.  We decided we wanted to travel about 700-1000 miles and spend about one month traveling.  Our first encounter with a gas pump was enlightening, we have a 75 gallon gasoline tank and it was nearly empty;  I pumped gasoline until I was convinced it was running on the ground; I looked under the RV to check but it was not running out it was all going into the tank all 60 gallons.  Since this was our first trip we wanted to see as much of the area in which we were traveling in the shortest possible time; so we moved to a new city everyday for the first two weeks.  Someone asked me what I did everyday and I told him “all I do is pump gas and drive”; I was not having fun.  That’s when we decided to find a good place and spend three or four days before moving on.  We also decided when we wanted to move to a new place we would limit our driving to about 5 hours per day leaving by 10 A.M. and stopping by 3:00 or 3:30 P.M we were not in a race.  The reduced moves and reduced travel time made for a much more enjoyable trip. 

On our next trip we ventured far.  We travelled to the Great Salt Lake in Nevada; we decided our route by drawing a line on the map from our home to Salt Lake City.  Then we set out and followed that line as closely as possible driving about five hours per day and stopping for one or two nights at a time.  It was spring in Florida but winter still hung on in other parts of the country and we had to carry clothing for two seasons.  Our stops were defined by serendipity – we referred to a Trailer Life reference book that contains most camping facilities in the U.S. – and began searching the directory about 1 P.M. on travel days to find a suitable campground for the night or nights to be determined upon arrival.    We spoke with other campers and local residents to find new and different places to visit this approach provided a plethora of interesting encounters. 

One morning in Columbia Missouri we were staying in a fairground campsite and were awaken by loud whooshing sounds.  I went out to see what was happening and there, within a couple hundred feet of our RV were a flight of hot air balloons preparing to take to the sky.  The sight was phenomenal and we took pictures and watched the whole group take flight.  We watched until the balloons were only small specks in the sky.

In Montana we were awakened by a rooster’s crow.  When we looked out of the window we saw goats, an Ostrich, a mule and other chickens and whole menagerie of animals in the campground.  Another time we were awakened by horses; we were in their pasture and they came to check us out.     We have also spent the night in numerous Wal-Mart Super Centers among quite a few other RV’s.

We followed the trail taken by General George Custer on his way to the Little Big Horn.  We started in Bismarck North Dakota at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park; where the restored barracks used by the General’s horse soldiers before the campaign is located.  The names, ages and descriptions of the troops were posted on the beds.  We then traveled to the Custer Nation Park in Montana where we visited the graves of the troops who came from Fort Abraham Lincoln.  The National Park Service presented a program that explained the root cause of the battle, the assumptions made in Washington D.C. that precipitated the encounter between General Custer and the Indians and the final hours of Custer’s troops.  It was a worthwhile visit and we enjoyed learning the history provided by these knowledgeable people.

We were saddened by the Indian Reservations in Montana and other nearby States; the land was poor and arid with mostly sandy soil that blew with the wind on days with heavy winds.  It was an experience that embarrassed us as citizens of the United States and we feel the politicians that created this situation and the current politicians should be working on making some arrangements to mitigate the situation.

On another trip we were travelled to Texas to visit family and then we stopped at the Alamo in San Antonio.  The Alamo visit was inspiring but we forgot where we parked the RV; all of the area in which we parked looked the same and we had gotten disoriented while walking on the River Walk.  We enlisted the aid of a local police officer who assisted us in finding our ride. 

Later we were travelling to Lake Tahoe when the motor home broke down in Reno Nevada; talk about serendipity, we placed the motor home in a repair shop and completed the trip to Lake Tahoe by car.  On the way to Lake Tahoe we passed through Carson City Nevada and spied a casino that was affiliated with a motel so we decided to return to Carson City after visiting the lake area.  The motel in which we stayed provided discount tickets for breakfast and dinner so we stayed in Carson City the whole time our RV was being repaired.  We visited the casino daily for meals and to try our luck gambling.   We did not win but we did not lose much either but we did have a great time. 

Another leg of our trip, early May, took us to Crater Lake in Oregon where the snow was still 30 inches deep and the temperature dropped below freezing at night.  The fog was so thick that we never did see Crater Lake but we did visit the welcome center and gift shop.  We had to walk through a valley cut through a snow bank to get to the entrance to the welcome center, it was quite chilly.  We could not camp at Crater Lake because the rangers had not dug the snow out of the camping spots so we had to move on to a private campground nearby. 

We travelled west in Oregon to Coos Bay and the Pacific Ocean.  Then we followed the Pacific coast all the way to the Columbia River which is the border between Oregon and Washington State.  Again, we had a good time traveling and sightseeing.  After the Columbia River we moved east to Seattle and had planned on visiting the Pike Market in Seattle but traffic was so bad that we decided to go up to Bellingham Washington on Puget Sound; a rustic city close to the Canadian border.  From Bellingham we made a day trip to Vancouver British Columbia and spent the day rubber necking.  After several days in Bellingham we traveled south to Burlington Washington caught a Washington State Ferry to Victoria British Columbia.  Our four hour,  seven dollar per person, trip took us through Friday Island , Orca Island and on to Victoria British Columbia where we caught a local bus from the ferry port to downtown.  We spent a day and night in Victoria the returned to Burlington via the Washington State Ferry to continue our trip.  

Next, on to Yellowstone National Park and Old Faithful and the buffalo encounter; the buffalo rule the park and they stop in the middle of the street and dare you to come near them with your vehicle.  There are elk and other wild animals throughout the park.  We than went south to Jackson Hole Wyoming, a place we have heard about for at least 50 years. The beauty of this part of the country is breath taking and we got a stiff neck from looking left and right trying to take in all of vistas; rivers, the Grand Tetons and all of the mountain ranges.  It was definitely worth the trip

This story does not even touch on all of our adventures so maybe I will write a continuation piece on our trips one the U.S. east coast and the Canadian Provinces later. 

The U.S.A. is a beautiful country offering something for every taste from deserts to mountains to sea shores and Great Salt Lakes.  We have travelled from border to border and ocean to ocean we found things that gladdened us such as the Genealogy Library established and maintained by the Mormon Church where we traced part of family our history.   We have seen Totem Poles in Victoria B.C., Indian Reservations throughout the Southwest, four corners where four state boundaries meet, the Grand Canyon and on and on.  We have hundreds of pictures documenting places we have seen and we are planning our next trip as I write this article.  Try RV’ing you will love it.

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