Regular blog readers will know our grand year-long RV adventure is being serialized in the UK’s Independent newspaper, and the latest instalment is now online.
It covers the northern part of our Arizona travels, and you can find it on this link:
As keen-eyed blog readers will know, we have just hit the 11 month mark in our grand “A Year On The Road” RV trek across the US. After Louisiana, we arrived in coastal Mississippi, our 23rd state in this epic voyage.
Since our last monthly update, we have covered another 181 miles – a totally sedate travel distance at this stage of our journey (especially when we covered more than 2,200 in the first month!).
In the last month we have moved from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Biloxi, Mississippi, and our traveling has been a lot more focused on the areas close by, rather than trying to cover vast distances quickly. Even including the last two months, we have only gone a total of 672 miles in our trusty Winnebago, Indefatigable (or Fati for short).
Mind you, we have still covered some territory in our trusty tow car, Nippy, putting an additional 2,534 miles on our little Ford Fiesta (and 3,991 in the past two months), which shows that we’ve completely changed the balance of our touring – going shorter distances in Fati but doing more exploration in Nippy.
Now, with just a month left of our travels (but still more than 550 miles from home), it definitely feels like the end of our grand adventure is firmly in sight, which is very hard to contemplate after such a prolonged – and intense – period of traveling.
In total, we have come 9,225 miles in Fati since leaving home, and another 24,604 in Nippy, for a grand total of 33,829 around this amazing country. Eat your heart out, Hardest Geezer!
The latest instalment of our exclusive series for The Independent newspaper in the UK is now online, highlighting our travels through Nevada and Southern California, including the Mojave National Preserve, Valley of Fire State Park, and Greater Palm Springs.
This section of our Year On The road adventure took us deep into desert territory – both the Mojave Desert of much of Nevada and the Sonoran Desert that runs from Mexico up into Arizona, including part of SoCal.
We spent much of the month in Nevada, either from our base in North Las Vegas (the fab Hitchin’ Post RV park) or further south in Laughlin, where Don Laughlin’s Riverside Resort & RV Park provided the perfect base to explore along Route 66 and down into California, where Joshua Tree National Park was another highlight.
There were scenic wonders aplenty, and a chance to see why both one of the Star Trek movies and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall were filmed here and, for as bright as it shines, we honestly felt the scenery around Las Vegas actually glittered brighter than the city itself.
Read all about it here: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/north-america/usa/great-american-road-trip-nevada-southern-california-b2503940.html
We also want to offer our sincere thanks to both Travel Nevada and Greater Palm Springs for their help in ensuring we saw the best of their areas, as there was a LOT to see!
Somehow we’ve reached the three-quarter mark of our grand RV adventure, and we’re looking at another month of travel that completes nine full months on the roads of America.
January was very much a “rest” month, in which we were largely in one place, down in the southwest of Texas, but we got back under way again at the beginning of February, turning north and east to skirt along the Gulf Coast of the Lone Star State, a part of Texas we’d heard a lot about but had never visited before.
Setting out from Donna, close to the Mexican border, we drove due east to beautiful South Padre Island, part of the barrier island system along the coast that is laced with wide, open beaches. Here, we were lucky enough to find accommodation at the KOA Journey close to the long stretch of SPI Beach.
From there, we back-tracked slightly and then headed north for more coastal experiences, first at a tiny but lovely spot on Baffin Bay called Riviera (and the wonderfully natural Seawind RV Resort, part of the Kaufer Hubert Memorial Park), then it was on to the busy port city of Corpus Christi, where we were lucky enough to stay at the Colonia Del Rey RV Park, ideally situated between the beaches and the city itself.
Finally, the last week has brought us to another idyllic spot on the epic Texas seashore, Pioneer Beach RV Resort, where we are only a few hundred yards from the unbroken 18-mile stretch of gorgeous beach hideaway.
It is a total of 294 miles, which is barely a day’s drive under normal circumstances, but we’re looking to stay out of the way of all the winter weather immediately to the north and explore an area we’ve never been to before, hence the slow pace and the chance to really savor the journey at this stage.
That compares with 928 miles in Month 8, and takes us to a grand total of 8,536 miles since we left home.
However, we have managed an additional 945 miles in the past month in our little Ford Fiesta, Nippy, exploring the state parks, small towns and wonderful open countryside of this part of the world. Our extra mileage in the car is now at 20,653, and the grand total of miles covered in both Fati and Nippy has reached a whopping 29,189 across the USA, or enough to fly back and forth from Orlando to London almost four times!
We still have at least another 1,500 miles before we get back to our Florida base, and another three states to visit, but we can safely say at this stage that our grand RV adventure has definitely lived up to our expectations, and more besides!
Catching up on the first five months of our Ultimate American Road Trip, being serialized in The Independent
Keen readers of our road-trip blog will know we are also serializing the whole trip, month by month, in The Independent newspaper in the UK, and you might like to see the story so far, Months 1 through 5.
It all started back on May 14 with our departure from Orlando and then a month heading north as far as Minnesota…
Part Two saw us travel from Minnesota west to the Big Sky state of Montana, where the magnificent scenery REALLY kicked in…
After arriving in Montana, Part Three of our year-long epic saw us focus on Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park for two of the undoubted highlights of the trip…
Part Four of our big RV adventure took us back through Montana and Wyoming to soak up more of those epic views and vast, open spaces…
Once we reached Idaho and Utah, we were always in sight of spectacular scenery, and it gave us plenty of material for Part Five…
In Part Six, we’ll be writing about the wilds of Nevada and Southern California, but also including Las Vegas and Palm Springs. Stay tuned….!
Here we are at the two-thirds mark of our grand ‘A Year On The Road’ RV adventure, and we have reached deep south Texas. We are currently in Donna, TX, and we have traveled a full 928 miles in the last month from our December base in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Our route from Las Cruces took us down through El Paso to Van Horn, and then on to Alpine (for the magnificent Big Bend National Park), before heading further south to Del Rio and then Castroville for Christmas (just outside San Antonio). The New Year then took us southwest to Donna via Kingsville.
Our total RV mileage since we left home is now 8,242 and Texas is our 20th state (not counting Florida). That 928 miles probably doesn’t sound like much, but it is more than the total for months 6 and 7 combined, as we had started a significant slow-down in favor of being longer in one place and exploring further by car.
Our little Ford Fiesta, Nippy, has put in an additional 1,558 miles in the past month, giving her a total to date of 19,708. Combined with Fati, we have driven a grand total of 27,825 miles, or basically enough to have gone right the way round the world, plus an extra 2,924 miles!
In all honesty, we are not looking to break any long-distance records at this stage. We knew we had to get some miles under our belt by January as the weather becomes a major factor at this time of year, and we need to stay as far south as possible. RVs are not built to travel far during the depths of winter and, even being this far south has had its challenges, with temps dropping below freezing several times this month. Including the wind-chill, we hit 15F/-9.5C at its coldest and, living in what amounts to a glorified tin can, that gets REALLY cold, really quickly!
Our route from here will hug the Texas coast all the way to Louisiana in March, and we should just be warming up again by then!
Simon, Susan & Ruthie
The latest instalment of our excusive series for The Independent featuring our “Year On The Road” RV adventure is now online, highlighting Month 5 as we reached Idaho and Utah, and the incredible scenery of places like Craters of the Moon National Monument and Bryce Canyon State Park.
You can see the whole story on this link:
May 14, 2023 seems like a long time ago. In fact, it is just 7,053 miles ago. That’s the 6-month distance we have covered in our “A Year On The Road” RV adventure since leaving home in Florida.
From that original departure point to November 14, we have traveled through 18 states and totaled a mind-boggling 22,319 miles when you add in the mileage we have covered in our little Ford Fiesta, Nippy, as well as that 7,053 in RV Indefatigable (or Fati for short).
The last month has added 545 miles to Fati’s total but also 1,927 to Nippy’s. That means Nippy has now piled up a whopping 15,266 miles to date, so she is proving a real workhorse.
Of course, we should have gone even further afield, as we scrapped plans to head out to Washington and Oregon after reaching Glacier National Park in Montana, but we think that is still a pretty respectable total.
Below are two maps showing just the last month of our travels, from Kingman in Arizona to Tucson, via sparkling Lake Havasu City, Hope, Goodyear and Mesa (with 3 weeks in the greater Phoenix area in all):
Having just hit the 5-month mark on our grand RV adventure, it is especially illuminating to see that we had by FAR our lowest month for mileage in Fati, with just 474 miles covered from Fillmore in Utah to Kingman here in Arizona.
The main reason for such a low total for the full month (as opposed to the 868 miles in Month 4 and the mind-boggling 2,504 we travelled in the first month!) was because we spent two full weeks in one location (Laughlin, Nevada) , and used our tow car, Nippy, for our more extensive travelling once we were settled.
We haven’t been sluggards, though. Our mileage in Nippy was a whopping 3,718 for this month, which included trips from Cedar City to the Grand Canyon (North Rim) and Palm Springs from Laughlin, as well as our just-completed 779-mile 3-day round-trip from Kingman to the Grand Canyon (South Rim), Monument Valley and Flagstaff.
Highlights of the last month include Las Vegas, the Mojave Desert, both North and South visitor centers of the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River, Monument Valley, and the city of Flagstaff, which really caught our attention, in addition to a fascinating section of Route 66.
When all added up, we have travelled 6,403 miles from home in Florida in Fati, and another 13,339 sight-seeing in Nippy from our various RV campgrounds.
That’s a total of 19,742 miles in and around the US since we left home. And we’re still hungry for more! We do still have another 7 months to explore this half (or two-thirds) of the country, though, and the next month will include more iconic stop-overs, notably Lake Havasu and London Bridge, the RV Mecca of Quartzite, Phoenix, Sedona and Tucson. Stay tuned…
Part 3 of our exclusive series for The Independent Travel is now online, highlighting the glories of both Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park, including the Bison of Yellowstone and the astounding Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier:
Veness Travel Media 