9 Months on the Road

In the three months since our half year progress report, we have definitely been able to slow down our travel pace. All but a couple days at the start of 2017 have been spent in the sunny state of Arizona. Once we had decided we were going to attend a few rallies over the winter months in southern Arizona, we only needed to fill in the gaps in between them. We also managed to arrange to meet a friend from Rochester that was coming to Tucson to visit some of her family.

The following map is only for these past three months with each stop denoted by a red pin. The actual order of the stops isn't easy to represent since we have been bopping around all over southern Arizona. Our map for the first 6 months can be found here

We managed to handle 35 nights of boondocking in those three months. Only about half of those nights were free - either in the desert or at a casino. The other boondocking was at two rallies and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. None of those spots were free. To try to keep our expenses straight, I have been keeping track of generator usage and trying to back out fuel costs while boondocking. I was prompted to do this because if I hadn't, our fuel economy dropped to something like 5.2 MPG after our Quartzsite trip. Our typical is closer to 8 MPG. Since both rallies had extra boondocking nights available, they had a price associated with them. So I used those costs and fuel usage to get a camping cost for those nights. This also keeps our motorhome fuel economy numbers a bit more realistic. 

So what are the stats from the last three months?

• We traveled an additional 1340 miles in the motorhome in these last three months compared to the 5900 in the first 6 months.
• We have only added one more state to those camped in, now up to 18 for the 9 months.
• We have stayed at 14 additional sites, up to 51 for the 9 months.
• On days we travel, we only averaged 95 miles these 3 months. This is much lower than the 161 mile average we had for the first 6 months.
• We averaged $0.35 per mile in the motorhome compared to $0.28 for the first 6 months.
• Our nightly camping costs were $25 which is only a bit lower than the $27 for the first 6 months. The lesson learned here is that boondocking at rallies isn't inexpensive.
• The Jeep was driven another 3000 miles which is just a bit higher average than the 8600 in the first 6 months.
• Our geocaching has slowed down as well. We only did 334 caches. Compared to 1091 for the prior 6 months. Some of the reason for that has been cache rationing in remote areas with very few caches. The other reason is that we are trying to time our 10,000 find when we are in the Seattle area this summer so we can do something special for that milestone.

We have definitely been enjoying southern Arizona. There have been some great hikes and remarkable scenery. By not trying to fit in all the touristy things while we are here, we have managed to slow our pace down and leave things to see and do when we get back here for next winter.