With 2022 in the books, I’ll take time to reflect on some of the highlights and details from our travels over the past year. We are currently at six and a half years of full time travels. That’s 2,377 nights spent wandering around this great big country of ours. We started the year out in Brooksville Florida where we had spent the last two winter seasons. We used our travels from 2021 as inspiration for 2022. In that prior year, we had spent 4 glorious months around the Asheville North Carolina area hiking and enjoying the Blue Ridge Mountains and Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We thought it might be fun to try to recreate this but shift 1300 miles west to the state of Colorado and the Rocky Mountains.
Colorado is a very popular destination in the summer months. It’s not the type of place where we could simply “wing it”. We researched what places would be nice to see, how much there is to do in an area, what the weather would likely be and where we could stay. It took a great deal of planning to figure out a sequence of stops that dealt with all the constraints but we managed to come up with a game plan we thought could work, giving us 4.5 months in Colorado. We had decided early on to take a non conventional route from Florida to Colorado via Nebraska. Not so much because there was something or someone we “had” to see in Nebraska, but because it was one of the few remaining states we hadn’t camped in yet. Sometimes our plans are made for the most trivial of reasons!
We had about a month and a half from our departure in Florida to our first reservation in Colorado, we made good use of that time and found some fun and interesting stops along the way. The time we spent in Colorado was wonderful and we could likely spend an equal amount of time there in the future and still not feel like we have seen it all. We hadn’t made many firm plans for the last 3 months of 2022 as we exited Colorado. I guess this was fortuitous since we decided to replace our 2014 Jeep Cherokee with a new Grand Cherokee and get it setup for flat towing in Salt Lake City before heading south.
We visited four National Parks over the course of the year: Gateway Arch NP, Rocky Mountain NP, Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP and Death Valley NP. The last one being completely unplanned until ten days before arriving when we realized there was a cancellation and we could get in for a few days. The other unusual fact about this year was related to the Colorado River. We camped within 1 mile of the river for 63 nights and within 6 miles for an additional 29 nights.
The map below shows the route we took for 2022. There is a link just below the map which can be clicked to bring up the actual Google Map which will give you the chance to zoom in and pan around. Each of the red pins represents a camping spot and clicking on any of them will pop up a window with links to blog posts for that specific stop. We did reasonably well in following the plans until we got sidetracked in Utah to buy the car. Northern Utah and Idaho were not close to being options for this year but things happen and we have learned to adjust when necessary.
As in past years, I have generated “heat maps” to show the 13 states we have visited over the year. States with darker reds denotes ones we have stayed at longer. Not too surprisingly, Colorado was the winner with 142 nights. Idaho and California snuck in unexpectedly and now we can claim Nebraska. The next heat map is a combination of all six and a half years of travels. We have done a pretty good job of filling it in with only four of the lower 48 states left and we have actually camped in 3 of those just not as fulltimers.
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| Our 2022 Camping Map |
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| Our 6.5 Year Camping Map |
I have also tabulated all sorts of data and have a table to show some of the more relevant facts. Now that we have been traveling for so long, I have decided to just include the current year and the five most recent years. This means our first half year in 2016 fall off the list. The first thing to notice is our number of camping stops is up. I use that and the average nights per stop as an indication of our travel pace. Our pace is much slower than the pre-COVID years but not as slow a the prior 2 years when we really slowed things down. This year felt like a good pace to us.
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| Just the Stats |
Similarly, the number of miles we have put on the motorhome is up over the last two years but much lower than the three years prior to that. The cost for diesel was up dramatically, but given how high the price at the pump has been this year, it’s not unexpected. The miles we have put on the Jeep (both of them combined) is about the same as pre-pandemic but gas prices are higher.
In terms of our style of camping, I have always broken them down into Elks Lodges, private campgrounds, or state parks which include county parks and national parks - maybe a better term would be public campgrounds. Usually boondocking would include the remaining stops which would be Walmarts, or rest stops or BLM lands. Technically we did not dry camp in any of those places but we did dry camp in a couple of Elks lodges and a state park and a national park. Since we dry camped for 11 nights, it seemed wrong to list it as zero since that would give the impression we always had hookups, so I show those nights and how much it cost. The overall camping cost per night is up to $33.25 which is a new high for us. We don’t go out of our way to find inexpensive campgrounds although we do try to avoid really expensive ones. Since we spent a lot of time at full hookup state parks in Colorado at $41 per night, I guess that tended to add up. We will see how next year plays out.
We hit one other milestone during 2022 worth noting here. We started geocaching in December of 2009 because of a friend mentioning it to me at work one day. We went out the following weekend on a rail trail near our home and found 3 caches. Apparently that was all it took to get hooked. The next summer, we bought our first travel trailer so we could spend weekends a couple hundred miles from home to cache in different areas. Over the next six years we upgraded from that trailer to a gas motorhome then to our current diesel pusher and ended up selling everything and hitting the road. I still joke with that friend that she is the reason we are homeless travelers! Well we achieved our 15,000 find and timed it to be on the 13 anniversary of us finding that first geocache. Here's to the next 15,000.
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| Celebrating Our Caching Milestone in Vegas |
I like to use our year end reviews to list our favorite stops of the year. For 2022, we looked over all 42 of the stops and came up with our top 8. I will list the campground we stayed at and the town it is located in, but in none of these cases was the campground the reason we liked the stop. Not that some of the campgrounds weren’t nice but none of them would be considered resorts in our minds. The reason these 8 were selected is simply because of the location they brought us to. Since our main passion is hiking, we tend to select places with great hikes and scenery. For each stop we found worthy of our list, there is a brief description of the stop, a link to the first blog post for that stop and a favorite picture or two from the stop. In chronological order, here is the list for 2022:
- Land of Waterfalls RV Park Pisgah Forest North Carolina - We only had a chance to stay there for seven nights but could have easily spent a month or more. Even though it isn’t far from Asheville where we had spent 4 months last year, this was a completely new area of the Blue Ridge with hiking and other outdoor recreation opportunities in all directions. The town of Brevard is nearby and had some interesting sights including white squirrels. DuPont State Recreation Area has miles of hiking (and mountain biking) trails and lots of waterfalls. It feels like we only scratched the surface and hopefully we can make it back.
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| White Squirrel at Brevard College |
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| Mom and Kid at Carl Sandburg Historic Site |
- Cheyenne Mountain State Park Colorado Springs Colorado - We had visited Colorado Springs back in October of 2020 and promised we would get back there after seeing how much there is to see and do in the area. The big attractions are Pikes Peak and Garden of the Gods, but by spending a full 14 nights here, we were able to see so much more. Red Rock Canyon Open Space is adjacent to Garden of the Gods with equally beautiful sandstone rock formations but only a fraction of the crowds. The US Air Force Academy can be visited by normal civilians and was an interesting place to check out. North Cheyenne Cañon Park and Ute Valley Park also have excellent hiking trails and views. Cheyenne Mountain SP campground is wonderful as well, sitting 500 feet above the surrounding area with large sites and great views. Just be warned getting a reservation here can be a real challenge. We needed to reserve our site exactly 6 months in advance at 2 AM east coast time to get one of the 3 sites becoming available for the date we wanted! The next morning at 9 AM there were no sites open for our date.
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| Old Quarry at Red Rock Canyon Open Space |
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| Garden of the Gods |
- Chatfield State Park Littleton Colorado - We stayed in three different state park campgrounds in the front range of the Rockies in the Denver and Fort Collins area in the May to June timeframe but Chatfield stood out not so much for the campground (Cherry Creek SP was a nicer campground) but again to its proximity to the things we like to do. Nearby Roxborough SP has some excellent hiking and is very similar to Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. Red Rocks Amphitheater and the Colorado Railroad Museum were fun stops as well. The only downside to our stop here was it only lasted 5 nights, not nearly enough time to see and do everything we would have liked to.
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| View at Roxborough State Park |
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| Red Rocks Amphitheater |
- Winding River Resort Grand Lake Colorado - Situated right on the Colorado River not too far from its headwaters and only a mile from the western entrance to Rocky Mountain NP, this place ticks off so many boxes of things we want during our travels. Beautiful scenery - check. Great hiking - check. Lots of wildlife - check. Decent grocery stores nearby - check. Having a national park in your backyard was wonderful. The Grand Lake side of RMNP is the less crowded side compared to Estes Park to the east. Plus there were all sort of other places to see and trails to hike that are not part of RMNP but just as pretty. If only the campground had a monthly or seasonal rate, we could see spending more than the 10 nights we managed this year.
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| Rocky Mountain Columbine |
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| Elk in Rockies |
- Mt Princeton RV Park Buena Vista Colorado - When we first reserved a site here for the month of August, we weren’t completely sure how well we would like the location. But it didn’t take long for us to realize BV is a great place. The summer is pleasant since we are just over 8000 feet in elevation. There are 8 mountains over 14,000 feet in the vicinity with numerous hiking opportunities. We know our limits and found the 12,000 footers to be more than challenging enough for us. When we do the blog post for our 7th year on the road in June which lists our top hikes, I suspect there will be a couple from this area. The campground is right next to the Arkansas River which has lots of rafting options if you’re so inclined. We are also able to visit many of the nearby passes over the Continental Divide including one to Monarch Pass where we had crossed over during our 1991 transcontinental bicycle trip. This area has more than just excellent hiking. We took a scenic ride on the Leadville Railroad and got to see a burro race! From the historical weather, it looks like we could spend 5 months here and not get snowed in - maybe that should be considered?
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| BV Burro Racer |
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| Re-creating Cross Country Bike Trip Photo |
- Goblin Valley State Park Green River Utah - One of the most unusual places we have stayed but well worth a visit. This state park is definitely in a remote and secluded part of Utah and likely “won’t be on your route”. It’s a small campground with no utilities at the sites but does have a dump and fresh water fill. Most visitors will spend a few hours wandering thru the goblins - thousands of small hoodoos that have formed in the valley. We opted to spend 5 nights here and really got to enjoy the park and one of the nearby hikes. We had hoped to check out Little Wild Horse Canyon about 5 miles to the west but recent rains had filled some of the slot canyons with chest high water. We weren’t looking for that much adventure.
