RVing With a Purpose

Monday, September 4, 2023

With our last post we left you in North Carolina on Day 53.  Day 54 was thankfully an uneventful day of driving to Camp Sumatanga, in Gallant, AL.  This is the campground we use most when we are back “home.”  Sumatanga is a church camp, one where NOMADS work that is about 30 minutes from where we lived prior to going full time.  While in Alabama on Monday, day 55, we visited with friends, checked on our remaining property on Pine Mountain, took care of some business, had dinner with friends and Tuesday, day 56, Anne got to visit her hairdresser.  By mid-day Tuesday we were back on the road in route to Johnston, SC, our second home, at Randy and Debra’s.  That too, was another uneventful travel day, unusual for crossing Atlanta, and before bedtime we were back in Fred, making Day 56 the final day of our 2023 Summer Road trip.

We had 56 wonderful days of seeing beautiful sights we had never seen before and just feeling very blessed by the entire experience.  Following are some statistics and thoughts on the trip.

Total miles driven in our Coachman Beyond Class B, 8,393.3 miles averaging 15.3mpg

Fuel Cost $2,315.00

Total engine run time 216 hours

Nights spent in BB – 55. The most we have done in the Class B on a single trip. We decided we could travel in BB for pretty much any length of time.  It is small but quite livable.  We sleep great in BB.  However, we are not ready to give up Fred for our daily living and working of volunteer mission projects.  We enjoy being spoiled by the space we have in Fred.  Whichever RV we are in is home but Fred definitely wins out for comfort.

Days boondocking (using no hookups), 40 days with 27 of those being the most consecutive days we have ever boondocked.  We obviously had to stop at various places over those 27 days to empty tanks and take on water.  We located most of the dump stations using iOverlander.  We have found we can easily go 4-5 days between dump stations.

Days in campgrounds 15.  We had four nights in Wolfville, Nova Scotia while visiting Melody and 4 nights while visiting Acadia National Park so we could use the free shuttle into the park, 2 at Camp Sumatanga and the other 5 were just for visiting other friends and for our convenience.  Total cost, $791.00 – $53.00/night average – not too bad. It is a little more than we usually pay for campgrounds per night but again, we did some of those for our convenience and enjoyment.

We began this trip with several goals.  One – to visit with friends across the country and have fun seeing all the beautiful locations we visited.  Met that goal.  Two – to sleep at least one night in the RV in every state east of the Mississippi that we had not previously visited.  Goal achieved.  We added 11 states (Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island) and 3 provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island) to our map and now have spent at least one night in the RV in every state east of the Mississippi. We still have 9 states in the west to visit in the RV.  We have been in most or all of those but not in the RV.  We are making plans to head west. Three – check some items off our bucket list.  We checked a number of things off, such as visiting Acadia National Park, and the Canadian Maritimes.  Four – to find at least two geocaches in each state and province we visited.  We now have at least two geocache finds in 48 states, missing only Washington and Oregon. We will hopefully pick up those when we head west.  We also have geocache finds in 6 of the 9 provinces and in 1 of the three territories in Canada.

One of the best parts of the trip was the new friends we made.  We met some wonderful people everywhere we traveled.  Especially fun was meeting two couples we previously knew only from their YouTube videos – Carrie and Dave of One AdVANture At A Time and Lynn and Owen of VAN TREKKING lifestyle.  All four were such a joy to meet in person.  Hope our trails will cross again.

Thank you for following along with us on this trip and for your prayers for our safety.  Stay tuned for our future adventures.

Saturday, August 26, 2023

We left Range Time early this morning in route to the Assateague Lighthouse and the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.  We didn’t have time to really do much but we wanted to take some quick pictures and get the lay of the land so we could plan a trip back to this area.  We were there before any of the welcome centers or the lighthouse opened but we feel like we have a better idea of the area and will be better able to plan.  Great place and we look forward to returning.

We left there and began our trip south in earnest.  Today was our first crossing of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.  What an amazing engineering marvel. The original crossing was completed in 1964, 17.6 miles, with bridges and two tunnels crossing the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.  A major project to dualize the bridges was completed in 1999 and they are currently working to dualize one of the tunnels.  Today was a beautiful day with perfect views of the bridge, water, boaters, and huge sea going vessels as well as lots of sea gulls and at least 9 ospreys.  We may be a little strange, but it was just a fun crossing.

The rest of the day was just drive 2-3 hours, primarily on the interstates, change drivers and repeat.  Tonight, we are sleeping at a Cracker Barrel in Hickory, NC.  We traveled in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina today.  A much longer travel day than is our norm but we were still off the road before dark.  Today is the official end of our 2023 Summer Road Trip daily postings.  All that remains is another hard day of driving back to Alabama tomorrow, a few days there and then a drive back to South Carolina.  We will to a summation of the trip with all our statistics, but it will probably be a few days after we get back to SC before we pull all the information together for that final post. Today was an uneventful day, so it was another great day!

Friday, August 25, 2023

We had a good night of rest and were ready to hit the road again this morning.   We stopped at WaWa for gas and some breakfast sandwiches.  (Did you know that New Jersey is now the only state that does not allow drivers to pump their own gas?) We also bought some blueberry muffins for tomorrow because they are so good.  We had some dear NOMADS friends from NJ and Bobbie just loved WaWa so sometimes we just must stop there for the memories.  We also stopped at Sprouts, one of our favorite stores.  We haven’t seen one since we left SC 52 days ago so we picked up some more goodies for our trail mix.  Then it was time to put some miles behind us, which we did for a couple of hours.  Then we stopped at Big Oak County Park in Smyrna, Delaware for some walking and geocaching.  It was a very nice park and we got most of our exercise for the day.

Back on the road, we drove south to the small town of Millsboro, Delaware. It is a beautiful pastoral setting, corn and soybeans in the fields. Tonight we have another very nice Harvest Host who greeted us and made sure we were comfortable.  This host’s business is “Range Time”, a shooting facility.  Unfortunately, the food truck that sounded so good was not here today.  It will be here Saturday and Sunday.  Oh, well.  They also have knife and axe throwing lanes.  We have some friends that did a video of themselves trying throwing for the first time.  It was pretty funny, so since we had never experienced it, we gave it a try.  We were given a little lesson and after some practice we were getting a little better. Not good – still rank amateurs but it was a fun new experience.  Shoulders may be sore tomorrow.  It was another fun day and now have all states east of the Mississippi River on our map.  We know we will need to revisit New Jersey and Delaware because we haven’t given them the time they deserve, but at least we have visited.  Another very nice day and looking forward to another peaceful night.

Thursday, August 24, 2023

We left early this morning to be out of the way as our hosts prepared for their big (about 1,000 guests) event.  It was a great place to overnight and they have a great space for events.  Supper friendly and helpful.  We recommend The Farm at Carter Hill for anyone visiting in the area.

We made a quick grocery store stop and walked a couple blocks to find a cache and were then on the road to New Jersey.  Of course, Google in its great wisdom routed us directly through downtown New York City.  We did not follow that wisdom and instead took a route around NYC.  It was a little longer but was a pleasant drive.  Traffic was not nearly as bad as we feared.

After about 3 hours it was time for a stretch and walk and just then we came upon a nice-looking park in Piscataway, NJ.  There was a nice, paved walking trail where we got most of our steps for the day.  There was also the East Jersey Old Town Village in the park.  It is a collection of 16 historical structures that were relocated to the park and restored/rebuilt.  We didn’t have time to go through all the buildings but what we saw was well done.

We then went on to our host for tonight in Medford Township, NJ.  Super nice couple who just happen to be in the market for a Beyond.  They have already looked and talked to a dealer.  They plan to order a Beyond as soon as they sell their R-Pod trailer.  They were very excited to see us and BB.  We had a great time getting to know them and hope to see them on the road in their new Beyond soon.  It was an uneventful travel day, so it was a very good day!