Category Archives: Retirement

Go east, old man!

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We set up a plan to meet the Chen’s(George and Marcia) in Kingman, AZ about a week after we were to leave Redding. We drove down to Sparks NV and stayed at the Sparks Marina RV Park. It was a nice place to stay but it was HOT! We stayed in a back-in space around the perimeter and ended up with a bad black ant infestation! After a few cans of ant spray and not having any part of the trailer touch the dirt, we recovered. We headed toward Vegas but stopped overnight in Tonopah, NV. Not much there but more than I thought!

We planned to stay in Vegas and found a different place to stay there. The Clark County Shooting Complex! It is in North Las Vegas, very north, up an incline with a great view of the entire basin. This is a pretty amazing setup. They have different shooting areas for pistols, rifles, shotguns, and archery. They have a campground (think tents) and a very stark RV park. It is gravel parking with full hookups for $30/night. We needed the 50amp because it was hot there also! It was good to stop as we had to sign some papers for refinancing our home. The mobile notary came to our trailer and we signed away. She said it was the first time she ever signed in an RV.

We did an overnight in Kingman to break up the drive to Flagstaff. The morning we left Kingman we stopped by the Discount Tire store. When I had them put in the TPMS senders in the trailer in Visalia, I had always had issues with one specific tire slowly losing air pressure. I had stopped previously about this in Redding and Medford with no great resolution. We had to wait at least 2 hours for them to look at but they DID fix it!

We headed to the Flagstaff KOA to meet our friends. We have been trying to stay in this campground for years! It always seems to be booked when we want to go there. The story with this KOA is that the owner (before he passed) was my mother’s boyfriend for many years. A few years after my father died in 2002 my mother moved to Arizona and started the relationship. The KOA has since been sold to the owners of the Chula Vista KOA and time moves on!

Then Chen’s arrived about 2 hours after us (they drove from the LA Basin that day) and we knew they would be tired. We went out to get a bite to eat. The weather was so nice and cool in Flagstaff! On the drive to Flagstaff, we hit some monsoon-like torrential downpours which dirtied up our nice clean trailer.

The next morning we all headed off, caravanning east! The weather started to heat up a bit and we started doing touristy stuff. We stopped off in Winslow AZ to stand on the corner:

We had stopped here before in 2009 on our way to the Balloon Fiesta with Bob & Phyllis:

A new addition is the Route 66 sign at the intersection:

We had lunch at La Posada hotel and continued down the road. Heading to Gallup NM for the next one-night stop.

We figured out a great way to travel together that was easy for both of us. We both don’t mind using our cruise controls when traveling. However, no two vehicles have cruise controls that will be perfectly synced. One will be either too slow or too fast compared to the other one. My truck has a feature called adaptive cruise control. It uses a radar system to keep a specific distance between you and the vehicle in front of you up to the speed you set. So George would travel in front at a specific speed set on his cruise control. I would follow with mine set also and it would keep us just the right distance apart.

Day 2 of our travels had us destined for Santa Fe NM. George had a friend he wanted to visit just outside of town so we stayed 3 nights there. We stayed at The Trailer Ranch RV Resort. It is a great little RV park in town but not downtown. I recommended a stay there if you can.

We had two incidents with the trailer while staying there. We had to disconnect the trailer to get in the spot, which we would do anyway. We had to put the orange lego blocks under the tires to level and we used the lego wheel chock to keep the tires on there. Ever since the trailer rolled off the blocks in Desert Hot Springs, I have been gun shy. We disconnected and moved the truck away and the trailer rolled off the blocks again! The chock was not attached correctly. This time we jacked up the trailer and put it on the ball and set it up right this time!

George and Marcia went to visit their friends a bit and we met all of them later in the afternoon. We went to Bandelier National Monument which is a site of some ancient dwellings. There are a lot of these locations throughout this area. We went on a hike and saw the sites.

The next day we got to do laundry but in the evening we went to downtown Santa Fe and walked around the old church there:

We were preparing to leave Santa Fe and I was dumping the holding tanks. Then the second incident happened. I have started a procedure where I block off the sewer hose with an attachable valve, I then backfill the tank (grey or black) with a hose. This works best when you DON’T block off BOTH tanks with their valves. This is what I did. I filled it with the hose but there is only limited space in between all three closed valves and something has to give. What gave was a rubber connector between two pieces of hard pipe. It appears that the pressure built up and relieved it right there. However, I did not know that when it actually happened. I thought the worst. I had just repaired/rebuilt the entire valve setup under the tanks. I thought I had broken a piece. George was nice enough to crawl under the trailer, take off the metal plate covering the valves and investigate. We found nothing wrong. I felt much better but still thought about it numerous times.

Off to our next stop near the eastern border of New Mexico. It was here that we were able to find alternate routes to travel instead of sticking on the Interstates. We continued east from Santa Fe to Las Vegas (NM), and then started on New Mexico route 104. The road takes us to Tucumcari over 110 miles of a lot of nothing. It was wonderful. We started up at a higher altitude and dropped down over the course of the route.

We had some lunch in Tucumcari at Del’s:

A few other sights in Tucumcari. The Blue Swallow Hotel:

The Route 66 Memorial:

We ended up the night at Ute Lake State Park for a whopping $18/night.

The next day was a big day. We had a lot of stops to make on our journey east. We were heading into our state. Texas! The first stop was in Adrian, the mid-point of Route 66:

Our next stop was Amarillo TX. We were going to have lunch at Longhorn Steakhouse as it was my birthday and I love to go to Longhorn. We needed to stop at Sam’s Club for fuel and Walmart for supplies. However, as we drove into Amarillo from the west we noticed a bunch of people on the frontage road. It was Cadillac Ranch!

Obviously we want back to see it. After lunch we stopped at Conway to see an alternative to the Cadillac Ranch. The Slug Bug Ranch:

The next roadside attraction was The Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ in Groom TX. A 40 story high cross with the stations of the crosses around it. A replica of the tomb and much more:

And at the other end of Groom was the Leaning Tower of Texas:

We ended up the night just over the Oklahoma border at the Double D RV Park, a Passport America park for $14/night:

So, this old man, his wife and friends are still going east!

4 years down

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May 2, 2021, marked the completion of four years of full-timing in our trailer. This is us heading away, on May 2, 2017, from our home of 23 years prior:

We didn’t really have any goals for these 4 years other than seeing what is out there! We stopped to see family when we were near, we came back numerous times for birthdays, holidays, etc. We didn’t know where our travels would take us, which was the most fun. Our 4-year ‘anniversary’ was spent with my sister and her family in Bishop, but there were no celebrations. Here is view of Bishop from the hills:

I have been keeping statistics of our trailer since we purchased it in Jan 2013. I track every trip via Google Maps, keep track of mileage and nights spent in locations (the app MapMyRide is most helpful with this). I also track every fuelup of our current truck and previous truck. This allows me to belch out some numbers to bore you with.

YearTrailer MilesNights in TrailerTruck Miles
20171009824017311
20181096932720437
20191128436325327
2020545536614271
202112941224959
Total39100141882305

2017 and 2021 were partial years but we really piled on the miles that first year. 2017, we went to Texas to establish our domicile, continued on to a wedding in North Carolina, and completed the circle by coming back a northern route. We hit 21 states on that loop. Our average nightly stay per location was pretty low, something we would remedy. That year our grandson had his first birthday, which we were able to get to. Sadly, Roxie’s cousin died but we were able to assist his daughter in straightening out his affairs. This would have been hard to do if not retired. This was also the time where our black tank leaked and it took 43 days without our trailer to get it fixed

In 2018 we got our trailer back from repairs then headed to my mother’s. She was getting out of rehab after a hip replacement and we were going to help her at home. We met our friends George and Marcia (www.yinfeng.info) and travelled to Banff and Jasper NP in Canada. We then headed to CA to leave for a trip to Hawaii, getting ready for the 2nd birthday of our grandson. Fate intervened and we went back to my mother’s just before she passed away. We, along with my sister and her family, put her affairs in order. We still did over 10K in miles that year.

Back to Texas in 2019. Roxie had a medical procedure to do in Austin and I was looking to get a new truck. The 2017 truck did fine but we really missed having 4 full doors so we got on there. We were in the Austin area for almost 4 months doing all this, and more. While we were in Texas we wondered what we should do after leaving there. Roxie had joined a group on Facebook that discussed RVing to Alaska. They were having a get together near Anchorage for the 4th of July. We signed up, giving us a target date to get there and we were off! Alaska was great but we headed back to CA and helped Roxie’s sister with some personal issues.

COVID was the theme for 2020. We were traveling around CA until mid-March and WHAM! Shutdowns began. We hunkered down at our son’s place until mid-June and had to get out. We headed to the Oregon and Washington coasts to keep cool during the summer. Around mid-September we headed to Idaho and the weather ended up chasing us down to Nevada. All-in-all we were not that impacted by COVID other than some campground bathrooms were closed. Also two of the things we like to do, dine-out and watch movies, were much more difficult. We made it back to CA for the holidays.

The birth of our third grandchild, second granddaughter, started off 2021. We next headed to Arizona and Nevada, checking out possible locations to move. Arizona was not very locked down at this time, Nevada only slightly more.

Just under 40K actual trailer miles, more than double that in truck miles, 33 states, 4 provinces, 1418 nights in the trailer (just 43 nights shy of a perfect record)!

We will probably be slowing down our travels as we are looking for a home now but we won’t completely stop!