Celebrating Our Second Nomadiversary

Map from Our Second Year of FullTiming
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Every pin represents a stop. Click on it to get the link to the blog post for that stop

June 29 marked two years of living full time in our motorhome - our second nomadiversary! We are finding the nomadic lifestyle works well for us. We are constantly searching out new and interesting places to visit as we meander our way around this vast country of ours. We often pick general areas to explore (the Pacific Northwest or Maine for instance) and then gradually work on slightly more detail as to what routes to take and what to see along the way. 

Where We Stayed and How Long

Mount Rainier Early July 2017

Still Smiling at End of 2 Weeks with Habitat for Humanity in Mount Vernon Washington

At Geocaching Headquarters in Seattle for Our 10,000 Find!

Sometimes we have specific places we need to be for a given date and those requirements will give us some structure with which to fill in the intervening weeks and miles. The past year had a few of these anchor points: early July for a Habitat for Humanity build in Mount Vernon Washington, the solar eclipse on August 21 in Terrebonne Oregon, and GeoWoodstock over Memorial Day in Cincinnati Ohio. From this framework, we planned a month going around the perimeter of the Olympic Peninsula before heading south to Oregon for the eclipse. We had reserved a spot near Crater Lake to ensure we had a place over Labor Day. But after that was over, it seemed too early to head to the coast and head south. So back north we went and spent some more time in Washington state. 

Overlooking Olympic Mountains and Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center

Each Day Has a Sunset, but Some Are Better than Others
Smoke from Nearby Sisters Oregon Fire

Photo Montage from Solar Eclipse

We try not to look at this lifestyle as a race to see everything. We are planning on continuing this for many years, so we didn’t need to see Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks as we came down through California this past fall. These are definitely “must see” locations, but we decided to stay along the coast as we headed south and see what it had to offer. In some future year, we will fit in the other areas in eastern California into our itinerary. 

Crater Lake with Smoke Billowing from Wildfire

Open Wide and Stick Out Your Tongue

Our planning will include input from all sorts of places. Often it is based on researching various vacation guides in the library. Other times we use itineraries from RV caravan trips. We aren’t big on traveling with a large group on a set schedule, but the spots these groups stop at in a given area are often worth consideration. Much input comes from talking with other travelers we meet along the way. Where have they been? What did they like? What didn’t they like? Even a simple comment like a friend provided as we mentioned we wanted to do the Pacific Northwest can make a world of difference. He suggested heading south along US 101 putting the many pullouts on the right side of the rig making for much easier entrance and exit.

The Rugged Oregon Coast at Cape Blanco

Chris Tries to Be a Tree Hugger

Would this way of life work for everyone? No, probably not, but I suspect it would work for a larger number of you than you may think. Getting rid of 95% of our possessions was challenging both physically and emotionally. But once we started the process, it became almost therapeutic. Do I ever look back and reminisce about our house and “stuff” and miss it all? Sure, but not in a regretful way. That part of our life was great at that time in our life. This way of life, while dramatically different from our past, is much more relaxing and fulfilling. 

Elk Pose with Sign

Trees Near Pierce Point Ranch - Point Reyes National Seashore

Fog Bank Below Lighthouse

Unfortunately this lifestyle does cause us to miss our family and friends. Certain events that we would normally be able to go to become more problematic when we are thousands of miles away. But they are all just an email, phone call or text away. We have been able to make new friends along the way. It sometimes baffles us as to how we can run into some of these people again in the most random of places. I guess it just goes to show us that this is a small world we live in. Our travels have permitted us to visit with friends and family that we hadn’t seen in decades. Plus our travels back east have been arranged to allow us to see much of our family and many of our friends. 

San Francisco Bay

Hotel del Coronado

What were some of the stats from this past years travels? We had 62 stops along the way, but 8 of those were just one night stops when we had long distances to cover in a short period of time. This puts us close to the 7 nights per stop average that we had in our first year. These stops brought us to 13 states compared to 22 states during our first year. States out west are simply larger than those in the east. We did get to visit 9 National Parks: Mt Rainier, Olympic, Crater Lake, Redwood, Joshua Tree, Saguaro, Carlsbad Caverns, Guadalupe Mountains, and Mammoth Cave. There were visits to even more National Monuments, Seashores, Historic Sites and Forests. Chiricahua and White Sands National Monuments are two of the more special ones on our list.

Joshua Tree National Park

Mt San Jacinto Hike

Rose Bowl Parade

In terms of weather, we stayed remarkably dry during our stay out west. Even in an area known for rain, Seattle, we were there for part of their record breaking dry streak of fifty some days. This did have the downside of running into wildfires along the way. Some of them simply made for hazy conditions that didn’t impact us much. Others brought the smell of smoke and even ash falling nearby. When this happened, we needed to curtail out outdoor activities. One of the fires got too close for comfort (for us) while we were in Oceanside California and forced us to evacuate to a safer area. As we headed east this past spring, we got back to humidity that we had nearly forgotten about. I suspect we had acclimated to the dry desert conditions so coming back to hot and humid was a tough change.

Polo Match Up Close and Personal

Newmar Gathering in the Desert - Quartzsite Arizona

We did quite well with our campground costs. A couple month long stops and staying at numerous Elks Lodges brought our average daily rate to just over $23. Last year our daily rate was about four dollars higher. We didn’t approach our camping choices with reducing costs but it just happened. We will likely do much worse next year while we are on the east coast where camping seems to be more costly. 

Another Special Sunset - Quartzsite Arizona

Donkeys Overrun Downtown Oatman Arizona

Fireworks Display in Lake Havasu City Arizona

We spent just over $2500 in diesel for the motorhome and put on just under 7000 miles. That’s about 2000 miles less than last year but only $200 less giving us to 36 cents per mile average, 6 cents more than our first year. An outcome of higher fuel prices especially while in California. We added just over 13,000 miles on the Jeep spending just under $1600. Nearly identical gas cost compared to last year yet about 4000 fewer miles. Given the consistency of our fuel costs year to year, one may think we have a budget and have adjusted our travels accordingly. In all honesty, we don’t have a budget setup for fuel, the numbers just happened this way.

Bench Along Hotshot Memorial Hike

Challenging Hike at Picacho Peak

In terms of travel pace, we have done better at slowing it down a bit. On the days we traveled, we averaged 112 miles. On a miles per day basis over the full year, we dropped from 25 miles per day last year to 19 miles per day this year. Having our two, month long stops this past year definitely helped with this statistic.

Lorikeet Feeding

Kitt Peak National Observatory

Seven Falls in Sabino Canyon

We are still finding living in such a small space comfortable. Our 38 foot motorhome seems to be working well in terms of fitting into smaller state park campground sites that a 42 footer just wouldn’t squeeze in. We have needed to exclude certain campgrounds that may have been nice to stay at but even our rig wouldn’t fit. We did get a chance to look at the Newmar New Aire motorhome. It is a new model from Newmar that comes in close to 34 feet in length. It is a nice rig but interior cabinet space was quite tight. Downsizing would require a fair number of our possessions to either be left behind or replaced with smaller versions. It wasn’t something we were willing to deal with, at least right now. 

Balanced Rock Chiricahua National Monument

White Sands Missile Museum

In terms of traveling by serendipity, we did reasonably well. We reserved campgrounds when we needed to be somewhere at a specific time as well as during the major summer holidays of Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day. In some of the more touristy areas, we also planned ahead and had a spot booked. But there were many places that we just showed up at or called ahead as we were getting close. Sad to say that we ended this second year doing less “winging it”. In fact, from May of this year to April of next year we have probably 75% of the time reserved. I guess that is just a function of being back east. It is hard to wing it in Florida during the winter high season which is where we plan to be this coming winter.

Trinity Site - Atomic Bomb Testing Spot

Hiking White Sands National Monument

Geocaching continues to be a big part of our life. We have continued our cache a day streak (much to Chris’ chagrin) and are nearly at two years. We found just under 1800 caches in our second year of full timing. Our stop near Seattle was timed so we could reach our 10,000 find milestone at geocaching headquarters. We even got some friends and family to join in on our fun as we toured around. We have found some remarkable geocaches and done plenty of lame ones in the process. Our stop in Cincinnati got us to a “Giga” event. Somewhere on the order of 7000 avid geocachers joined us for the celebration at Coney Island. 

The Aliens Have Landed - Roswell New Mexico

Reflecting Pool in Carlsbad Caverns National Park

The last few weeks spent visiting family and friends was really special. A visit with our former neighbors brought us back to the old homestead. Other than walking up the driveway to visit our beloved dog Shelby’s grave, we didn’t continue up the driveway beyond the last bend to see the house. Sometimes it’s just better to leave some things to your memories. And with that said, we have many adventures planned for year three as we head east and north to Maine and then to Florida. We hope the experiences we have will form many lasting memories.

Corvette Museum Bowling Green Kentucky

Wrapping Up with Another Sunset

Visiting More Family and Friends

 Map of this blog's locations click this link to open the map

With our long stay in Cincinnati ending, we have 11 more nights before we have reservations in the Rochester NY area where we used to live. Our first stop would be  just over 50 miles away at Caesar Creek State Park. It might seem odd to travel such a short distance but we did have several good reasons for doing so. I have a nephew living in the greater Dayton area and we hoped to be able to see him and his family. We wanted to visit the National Museum of the United States Air Force that is just northeast of Dayton. We have found caches in much of Ohio but there are 6 more counties we need to find a cache in and two of them are near Dayton. The original goal would have been to stay at John Bryan State Park, but this park is quite small and only 3 of the sites are listed as being large enough to accommodate our rig and these were not available. Caesar Creek became our plan B and given they have hundreds of sites, we didn’t have any issue getting a spot there. 

With such a short drive, we again run into the issue with check out time versus check in time. There was a four hour difference in times but the drive would only take a bit over an hour. We originally figured we would just move to the other side of the parking lot at FMCA and kill some time, have lunch and then head out only coming in a little before check in time. The person working at FMCA told us nobody was booked for the spot we are in, so just stay put and leave when we want. That makes the move that much easier. Coming in on a Friday, makes us like most of the other campers staying here. But there wasn’t a huge influx of campers coming in early like us so it was a smooth check in and setup. With just one exception, I go to plug in the power cord and as I lift the hinged cover up, a wasp drops off its nest, lands on my hand and stings me right in the sensitive spot between thumb and index finger. I don’t think I’m allergic to stings but it does hurt quite a bit for several days. 

We arranged to have our relatives over to see the place and have lunch. There are several geocaches located in the park and we headed to the ones that are within walking distance of our camping spot. Their boys were excited to try to find some more caches. Being just 2 and 4 years old, the walking pace is a bit slower than normal but it was a lot of fun. Chris got them a few small trinkets that they could use as trade items when we found the caches. The boys had a difficult time making the decision of what to trade. Since the things they just got to trade with were new to them, they were reluctant to part with them so quickly. After a short stop at the playground followed by lunch, they headed back home for naps.

Out for a Walk, Geocaching and Bird Watching

With a few hours to spare, I drove north of the campground to find caches in the two counties I needed. I had strategically selected the caches to make for a quick in and out. As I approached the town of Yellow Springs, a road closed detour sign posed my first problem. Turns out the town was holding their summer street fair today and I was headed to the very middle of it - or so I thought. Once I was stuck in the slow moving traffic, it became clear I needed a backup plan. The number of people here was astounding. Hundreds of cars lined the sides of the street surrounding the event and many thousands of people were enjoying the nice day they had. Too bad I didn’t have time to stop and check it out. I ended up finding other caches that were far enough away from the fair and with all the locals at the street fair, I didn’t have any muggles to contend with. That evening, we headed over to my nephew’s home for a nice dinner and a chance to chat some more.

We spent much of the next day exploring some of Caesar Creek. It is a very big lake with the camping area on the northeastern end of the park. Getting to some of the other areas takes a little bit of time. We stopped at the visitor center to do a geocache but we were having a heck of a time. From the description, we suspected it was inside the building but were unable to find the described location. We finally asked at the desk and discovered that the room the cache is in was closed because they were without air conditioning and it was too warm to keep that area open. The ranger let us into the darkened room and we spot the ammo can hidden as described. We ask about other things to see in the park. The pioneer village isn’t too far away so we go to check it out. The buildings weren’t open but we could still walk around the grounds and see the nicely maintained village.

Cloudy Skies over Pioneer Village

Conjoined Log Cabins

The next day was our drive into Dayton to the National Museum of the US Air Force. It is a free museum with lots to see. There are presently four large hangars that house the nearly 400 aircraft and rockets. The newest hangar opened in 2016 and is about 5 acres in area! The other three hangars are about the same size or only slightly smaller. We arrived shortly after it opened decided to wait around a little bit for one of the free, docent guided tours of building #1. This included the early years of flight as well as the planes from World Wars I and II. The volunteer giving the tour was very entertaining and had a wealth of knowledge. We learned far more that we would have had we simply walked around and toured on our own. 

Hanging Overhead

Memphis Belle

B29 that Dropped Fatman on Nagasaki

Given our enjoyment of this tour, we decided to head down to building #4 for another tour. We had enough time to stop at one of the cafeterias available and got a quick bite to eat. Surprisingly good food that wasn’t exorbitantly overpriced - a bit of a surprise to us. The next tour took us through the research and development programs of flight, the space program, and many of the presidential planes. This tour guide was good as well. I suspect that the people that volunteer here, besides being ex-military, are very enthusiastic about this place and enjoy sharing their knowledge with the groups. I was particularly fascinated with the spy satellites that used Kodak film to capture images over enemy territory. Some of the early satellites would only stay up for a week or so taking pictures on hundreds of feet of film. With the film being jettisoned from the satellite in a specially designed capsule to be retrieved by waiting aircraft as it parachuted back to earth. The film then being sent to the government facility at Eastman Kodak in Rochester to be processed. Oh the good old days of film!

Spy Satellite with Gold Film Module

Many of the experimental aircraft that were conceived and developed made us ask: What were they thinking? One jet plane was basically a jet engine with a small compartment for a pilot and the required wings and tail so it could be flown. It was carried by a large plane near enemy territory and released from its position below the plane. It carried enough fuel to fly for 15 minutes before needing to come back and attempt to reattach its hook to the plane while in flight. Pretty sure those test pilots had nerves of steel. 

Hook 'Em

Looks Like This Belongs in Roswell NM

The older presidential planes were pretty interesting to see. Four of them can be entered and walked thru. The areas inside have been encased in plexiglass to prevent us common folk from trying out any of the seats or beds. It’s amazing how the high tech from the fifties looks so archaic today. The actual space shuttle simulator is open to the public as well. For every space shuttle mission, this simulator was configured the way the actual shuttle would be setup so the astronauts could train before their mission. 

Presidential Plane

We still had half the museum to explore but admittedly we were starting to go into aircraft overload. The missiles on display are impressive to see up close. Building #3 houses the planes from the Cold War era. This whole area was very dimly lit making it difficult to photograph well. Even many of the signs describing the planes were hard to read in the dark. Not sure if the lights were dimmed to give the area a dark feel, but a small flashlight may have helped. Building #2 houses the planes from the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Of course by the time we got there, we were fairly tired so we seemed to go from display to display a bit more quickly. To do this museum justice, it might be better to split it over a two day period. 

Missiles Standing Tall

As Geocachers, We Spotted the Ammo Cans!

There is a lot of aviation history in the Dayton area. Being the hometown of the Wright brothers, many of the sights center around their life. We headed into Dayton to see one last place before it closed for the day. The Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park is part of the National Park system. Another free museum, it houses some additional information specifically about the Wright brothers and Paul Dunbar. Since this is a much more intimate setting than the hangars of the big museum, it seemed to be a bit more personal. 

Just across from the main building is the old bicycle shop the Wright brothers worked out of as one of their other (paying) jobs. I was amazed to see that in 1895, they could sell a bicycle for $100! Working through the inflation rates over that timeframe, this would equate to a $2600 bicycle in today’s terms! The tandem bike on display had the interesting design of being steered by the stoker (the person in the rear). A cable system allowed the rear handlebars to turn the front wheel. I think the modern convention is a much safer one. I can only image the consequences of the steering cable breaking! It was quite a full and tiring day but well worth it. 

Rear Steer Tandem

Our short stop came to an end with success on all the goals we had. Next stop would be up in the Massillon area. The goal being driveway surfing at my sister’s home. Of course by scheduling our service appointment in Cleveland, some of the plans she had to get family together got messed up. It was still nice to get a chance to see more family. The time seemed to go by fast. Fortunately the weather was reasonable and cool enough to sleep in the rig without air conditioning. The 15 amp connection was adequate to keep the refrigerator going and batteries charged. Most of our time was spend away from the rig anyways. 

We headed up to the outskirts of Cleveland to a Freightliner service facility to have our yearly maintenance completed. We didn’t get a very good nights sleep with all the traffic noise from the nearby expressway and the ever present train whistle all night long. But with this out of the way we could continue our journey towards Rochester. Our next stop was to be a quick overnight. The original plan was to stop at the Elks Lodge in Ashtabula Ohio but we changed our plans to go to a campground that is closer to my other sister living in the Youngstown area. 

Pymatuning Lake sits on the border of Ohio and Pennsylvania. There is camping in either state but the one in Pennsylvania has a 3 PM checkout time making a visit from my sister being more likely than the 11 AM checkout in Ohio. The park itself is nice and if we had time, it would have been fun to explore it a bit more. Coming in on a Friday afternoon meant it was rather busy. With most of the people coming here with a tent, pop up trailer or small travel trailer, we definitely seem out of place. The site was a bit tight to get into but was manageable once I turned around to make for a better approach. The 50 amp plug turned out to missing one of the legs but rather than reporting it and moving to another site, I just used the 30 amp plug and had no problem. The maintenance guy showed up Saturday morning and confirmed the 50 amp breaker had failed and replaced before we headed out. We had a great, albeit short, visit with my sister. We got a chance to catch her up with our travels and we heard about her recent work. Our checkout time snuck up much more quickly than we wanted but my sister stayed around as I got the slides in and got ready to pull out.

Our next stop is near Warren Pennsylvania. Some geocaching friends live nearby and we had booked three nights at Buckaloons Recreation Area just west of Warren. After unhitching the Jeep, I follow Chris as she leads the way to our site. Most of the campsites look nice but many of them are too small for a rig our size. Fortunately our site is larger and not impossible to back into. I suspect the campers across from our site were skeptical as I started to back in but it wasn’t a problem and soon enough we were setup. 

On our first day, we headed to a nearby hiking area at Hatch Run. There are over 100 geocaches hidden around the area as part of a large “geoart” series. We knew we wouldn’t even come close to finding them all but it was a nice place for a hike so we would do as many of them as we can. Although we have never hiked this area before, it felt very familiar to us. It has terrain, trees and plants that we recognize. It felt comfortable. We accomplished one loop before lunch and another one after lunch. Not sure if or when we will make it back to finish up the series.

View at Hatch Run

Our geocaching friend, Doug, wanted to attempt a multi-cache that doesn’t get attempted very often. He told us to expect 5 to 6 miles of hiking with much of it being bushwhacking. Chris decided the excursion didn’t sound like a whole lot of fun. But she was willing to drop me off early at his place so I could ride along with him and his neighbor Arnie. The last part of the drive was along a rough dirt road, but we eventually got to the parking area to start our adventure. The hike to stage one wasn’t too bad and we found the first container. Stage two required a bit more effort but we used the topo maps on our GPSr to try to determine the most appropriate route avoiding the gully that was in the way.  Once we got there the search started. We were on a bit of a ridge with steep descents on both the left and right. A large rock outcropping seemed to be the likely hiding spot. But it wasn’t meant to be. The 3 of us spent well over an hour searching but we came up with nothing. 

Arnie Up Top,  Doug Explores Below

After trudging back up the ridge to flatter ground, we decided there were a couple other caches nearby we could at least try. We knew there was an old trail down to the water level that might be helpful but it took us awhile to locate and then turned out to be so steep that it was easier to just walk through the reasonably open woods where we could zigzag back and forth in an attempt to make the slope more manageable. We eventually spotted the ammo can and found it in good shape. Now we need to hike back up the steep hill. It was a slow and tiring climb but with a couple breaks along the way, we eventually made it. We retraced our path back to the truck and decided we still had a bit more energy left to go for one more cache. 

Shores of Allegheny River

There was a forest road heading in the right direction but was marked for authorized vehicles only. We may have tried the drive, but there was an open gate, but what if it got closed and locked while we were in there? We parked again and started the mile plus hike to the cache. Not long after entering the area, we ran into several trucks parked on the road. There was an active lumber harvest going on. Fortunately the work sounded to be in the opposite direction from where we needed to head so it was safe to continue. Of course, by then some dark clouds were rolling in and we could hear distant thunder. As we veered off the dirt road to the narrow trail heading towards the cache, the sky opened up and it started to rain cats and dogs. 

It didn’t take more than a few minutes before we were soaked. For awhile, my feet were the only dry part of my body but soon my socks started to act as a sponge, soaking up the water running down my hiking pants and in a few more minutes the boots were soggy. At half a mile from the cache, we decided to bushwhack through the woods rather than stay on the trail that seemed to be heading away from the cache. Much of the underbrush was ferns - wet ferns. By that point their being wet didn’t seem to matter much. Eventually the rain let up and we found the cache just on the other side of another trail. We decided to follow this trail and see where it went. Of course as most geocachers discover, the way out is easier than the way in. We found this trail intersected the trail we had been on and would have been the preferred approach to the cache. It seemed like a long walk to the truck and although we didn’t accomplish what we had set out to do, we did find some caches and had fun along the way.

After getting back to camp and cleaning up, we headed back to our friends place and had a nice dinner with them and the neighbors from just down the street. It was another one of those visits that seemed too short but we have to move on the next day to finish up our journey back to Rochester.