I’ve gotten over my pissed off mood from yesterday. We came to my dad’s house and will be here for a few days. Friday we have some appointments, Saturday we take the cats to the vet, and then we are likely headed south.
We will be taking the backroads to get to our campground in Indiana, then wandering the south every couple of weeks until we end up in Florida for Thanksgiving. We have a few months of long drives, one month of barely driving anywhere, and two week stays at different campgrounds along the way. We shouldn’t have more than a week of driving at a time, and at this time of year, campgrounds shouldn’t be too busy. Once we get to Florida though, that’s a different story.
With our current plan, we can’t make a reservation more than 60 days in advance, but we are set through early November. That will put us about 700 miles from our destination which will make a rough couple of weeks driving 50 miles a day and boondocking each night, but the previous month should allow us to save enough money to not make it too difficult.
If we can save enough, we should have the solar setup bought by March. We will likely wander around the southeast, moving every two weeks and traveling for a week to the next location. We will stay wherever we can for the times between campgrounds, but like stay south and out of the winter weather.
We’ve had good success with Thousand Trails so far, but honestly, we’ve only stayed at one campground. That single two week stay paid for itself as our yearly cost was about what that two weeks would have cost us if we had just stayed there alone. Add to it the fact that we will be staying at three more in the next two months, and it is more than worth the price. There aren’t a whole lot of campgrounds, usually two or three per state, but that still opens up enough that we can wander a state, stay two weeks, travel one week, and move on.
Not sure where we’ll end up next year, but we are looking at coming back to Wisconsin in the early summer. There’s a place I want to stop at in central Michigan that is only $175/month for April, so we may stay a few weeks there at that time after the snow melts. Beyond that, its open ended. We are looking to head west, travel through the Dakotas and into Montana and Idaho, then maybe hit the south for the following winter.
If possible, we’d like to have solar installed before we leave the south this winter. We have to save some money to buy everything, but its not terribly expensive and we can do most of the work ourselves. I’ve been doing a ton of research and found all the parts I need, so if we order a bit from Amazon every month, we’ll have everything to do it before we leave.
Beyond that, we still have some minor work to get done, but nothing major. Getting a report back on the engine this weekend and should be good to go. Having driven the engine for awhile, it sounds a lot better and runs better, I have a feeling that since it sat for nearly seven years, it needed a good tune up to get everything lubricated and functioning. We are still getting it looked over, but I’m hoping there isn’t anything that needs to get fixed. The only things I’d really like to fix is the ignition. It works, but its loose so when I turn the key, I have to hold the ignition in place under the dash so the key turns alone in the ignition. I should be able to fix that myself though, I assume something is loose that just needs to be tightened since it worked fine the first few times I started it.
That’s about it, thanks for reading.
Coming up: I’m going to write a post about how we get internet access on the road and connect everything.
