2018 Year End Review

Click HERE to open Google Map

Another year in the books and what a great year it has been. The year’s end brings us to 2.5 years on the road as fulltimers. The map above is our route for the past year. Click on the link just below the map to open the Google map that can be zoomed and examined more closely. Clicking on a stop in the Google map will display a pop up window with a link to any blog post from the given stop. 

Beautiful Florida Sunrise

We began the year in Desert Hot Springs California but spent the bulk of the winter in Arizona. We did manage to sneak a week in southern Nevada as well. This added another state to our growing list of states we have camped in. The goal for the spring, summer and fall was to head east. It had been nearly 18 months since we were east of the Mississippi River. As we headed east and then north, we planned our route to visit with family and friends along the way. 

Nieces in Texas

While putting together our thoughts for this post, I wanted to have more than just the map with the stops like I have used in the past. Our other passion, geocaching, has some tools available to make maps showing how many caches we have found in each state. I figured I could adapt these tools to do a similar thing for our camping stops. It took a little time to input all our stops, but after doing so I was able to create the “heat map” like shown below. It will now be a quick way to create maps like this. In 2018 we have camped in 21 states compared to only 7 states last year. Being on the east coast definitely makes the state count increase. 

Where We Spent 2018

Our split between the various types of campgrounds we stayed at this past year was definitely skewed towards private campgrounds - 171 nights. State and county parks accounted for a third of our stays or 120 nights. Elks Lodges and boondocking came in at 39 and 35 nights respectively. That’s a drop of 80 nights compared to last year at Elks Lodges. Why the decline? Basically Elks Lodges with camping facilities are less prevalent on the East Coast versus the West. We stayed there when they were available and fit our travel plans. We did better this year at staying at our stops for longer instead of moving all the time. After eliminating those one night stops which amount to long distance repositioning, our average stay was two days longer than last year - coming in at 8.3 nights per stop. Who knows how next year will end up, but we will be stationary for the first 3 months of the year. We may go stir crazy!

Even though our travel map looked like we drove the motorhome a lot more this year, we really only saw an increase of about 200 miles, coming in at just under 6700 miles. We actually ended up driving the Jeep about 2000 miles less than last year, amounting to 12,200 miles this year. 

We did end up spending over $600 more on campgrounds this year. The main culprit with this increase isn’t so much that private campgrounds cost more on the east coast. In fact, our cost per night at private campgrounds was about fifty cents lower this year versus last year. Surprisingly, state parks cost nearly $4/night more this year. Not sure if that is a regional phenomena or simply inflation? The bottom line was our mix of campgrounds produced higher costs. 

A Few Stats from 2.5 Years Fulltiming

Camping Stops in Our First 2 1/2 Years of Fulltiming

In keeping with what we did last year in naming our top ten stops, we will do the same thing this year. Again, our criteria is not influenced by the campground we stayed at. It is more of a statement of the things there were to see and do in the area. Undoubtedly there would have been “better” campgrounds than the one we stayed at in a given area. So if campground amenities are a high priority, this listing isn’t for you. Maybe our travel destinations will spark an interest for some of you to get out and see some things you were unaware of. In chronological order here are our top 10 stops of 2018:

• Desert Hot Springs, CA: This made it to our list last year as well, but since our stay there straddled December and January, it makes it again. We started the year out with a trip to the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena. Visited Joshua Tree National Park and took in our first polo match.
  Rose Parade Blog Post

Rose Parade in Pasadena

• Lake Havasu City, AZ: You likely don’t have the Western Winter Blast Pyrotechnics Show on your bucket list, but trust us, it deserves to be added. Read our post from our stay to help convince you to make it there in February. A day trip to the Desert Bar was an interesting way to spend the daylight hours one day.
  Havasu Fireworks Blog Post

Fabulous Fireworks

• Tucson, AZ: This is another repeat winner. Our month-long stay included a day trip to Kitt Peak Observatory. If you plan your stay better, you could get in on some even more elaborate tours than we managed. A tour of a copper mine was quite fascinating. There was a lot of good hiking but the ones we did in Sabino Canyon were stellar.
  Kitt Peak Observatory Blog Post 

Kitt Peak

• Alamogordo, NM: This stop turned out to be quite surprisingly good. White Sands Missile Range has a great museum with tons to see. Hikes at White Sands National Monument are kind of like walking in powdery snow without the cold. And our timing at the beginning of April coincided with the Trinity site being open to the public.
  Alamogordo Blog Post

Missile at Museum

• Burlington, VT: Our stay here got unexpectedly extended from 7 nights to 24 nights. If you must get “stuck” in a town, Burlington was a wonderful one to be in. Great bicycle paths, in a very friendly town. Nearby trips to see lots of covered bridges and of course a stop at Ben and Jerry’s! We lucked out and were there for a fun festival - Festival of Fools.
  Festival of Fools Blog Post

Dancers at Fool Fest

• Acadia National Park, ME: We spent 42 nights at Mount Desert Island and Schoodic Woods and that wasn’t nearly enough time to do everything we wanted. The hiking is astounding and the views from all the granite mountains are spectacular. Day trips to see Fort Knox, lighthouses and the numerous wildlife preserves in the area gave us some variety from mountain hiking. We’ll be back!
  First of Several Acadia Blog Posts

Cobblestone Carriage Road Bridge in Acadia NP

• Lubec, ME: Haven’t heard of this place, have you? We hadn’t either. It’s an out of the way fishing village with lots of charm. It happens to be the easternmost place in the USA. Make sure to bring your passport to cross over to Campobello Island in New Brunswick Canada.
  Lubec Blog Post

Head Harbour Light

• Savannah, GA: This is a great southern city. The last time we were here was a few weeks after Hurricane Matthew, but the place has rebounded from the devastation. Saint Bonaventure Cemetery was remarkable and we really enjoyed checking out the numerous squares in the historic downtown district.
  Savannah Blog Post

Forsyth Square Fountain

• Jekyll Island, GA: This was another one of those surprising stops. It’s a small island, how much can there be to do? Well we found plenty in the 8 nights we were there. It’s a great place to bicycle and just very peaceful. We will make it back again sometime.
  Jekyll Island Blog Post

Jekyll Island Club Resort

• Last but not least on our list is not really a singular place, but this year brought us to areas where we were able to see many relatives and friends. A former colleague on the west coast, Chris’ family in the Dallas area and my family in Ohio, plus lots of friends from Rochester, helped make each of those stays special. This lifestyle takes us away from these people for many months at a time, but also permits us to come back for visits. 

With Friends in Rochester at Lake Ontario

Our geocaching adventures have continued. We have found 1584 caches in the past year. We had been on track to beat last year’s record of 1603 but our final stop of the year in Cedar Key Florida has proven to be our downfall. The number of caches near here are quite low, so we have needed to go into cache rationing mode in order to continue our cache a day streak which is up to 908 days at the end of the year. I doubt that we will continue the streak much longer since having that “requirement” each day has become more of a chore than something to look forward to. Maybe I will put a stop to it when we get to 1001 days?

What is in store for 2019? Good question. We seem to be out of sync with the Newmar rally schedule. They will be in the Upstate New York area this fall, but I don’t think we will make it back there this soon. The next big Geocaching event will be in Texas around Memorial Day but I suspect that won’t be a required stop for us either. If we include all our camping trips since we picked up our used Newmar Dutch Star motorhome in mid-February 2015, our camping map is pretty complete with one glaring exception - the Great Plains and Rockies. We have not made any travel plans yet but I suspect that will be in our future. 

Our Camping Since Getting Our Newmar