2020 Year End Review

This was one blog post I wasn’t positive I wanted to spend the time writing. 2020 started out looking to be quite the memorable year. With plans in place to possibly make it our best in the last four and a half years of full time travels. After spending the winter in the desert southwest, we would head north through parts of California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington we haven’t explored yet. Then cross the border to spend the summer in the Canadian Rockies - Banff, Jasper, and the Calgary Stampede. Then west to British Columbia for a few big geocaching events in the Pacific Northwest. Then work our way south as the weather changed and spend the winter in the same area we started the year. Many reservations had been made for some of the locations we knew would be busy and we were really looking forward to what we had planned.

Then just like everyone else in the world, our plans needed to change. Chris recognized this fact sooner than I did. I was still the optimist or in denial, not wanting all our work to go for naught. As full time RVers, we have lots of information sources regarding camping, travel and this lifestyle. When we started to see how early closures and restrictions were impacting other travelers, we realized not only our travel plans for Canada had been dashed, but our type of travel was quickly changing. States were closing campgrounds or limiting the occupancy rate. Even though living in an RV seems to be the ideal form of social isolation, we felt vulnerable to the whims of state or local authorities as Covid conditions changed. At the time, we were in Yuma Arizona. A pleasant climate for during the winter, but not the place to stay much past April. We moved up in elevation for two months before even Camp Verde started to get too hot.

By summer, the campground closure situation had stabilized but now droves of people were realizing staying in an RV allowed for better isolation - your own bathroom, kitchen and bed - while still being able to get out in the relative isolation of nature. RV sales went thru the roof and campgrounds were filling up even more than normal. With things still not looking good for travel at least in the manner we prefer, we found an private ownership resort near Show Low Arizona and rented a lot for 4 months starting on Memorial Day. This kept us in a place with a relatively low turnover of campers but got us to a higher elevation and hopefully a more tolerable temperature range. Some people do stay year round in this resort but we didn’t want cold weather. So we weighed the option of going to southern Arizona for the winter versus our other options and decided to head east for a prolonged stay in Florida.

We took 5 weeks to head east following a non conventional route thru Kansas. We got in some more typical travel with some of the summer travelers off the road and eventually settled into our spot in Brooksville Florida for the start of a 5 month stay. So 2020 was a memorable year for us but just like you, for all the wrong reasons. That doesn’t mean there weren’t some highlights worth sharing.

Click HERE to open Google Map

This map shows the 30 stops we made over the course of 2020. Clicking the link below the map will open the map within Google Maps and permit zooming and panning to see the stops more easily. Plus by clicking on any of the pins at each stop, a pop up will show a link to the blog post from that stay.

Two other maps I create are “heat maps” that shade in the various states we have camped in. The shade of red from light pink to bright red indicates how long we stayed in each state. We only stayed in 10 states this past year. However we did add two states we hadn’t camped in during our first 3.5 years of full timing - Kansas and Mississippi. The second map shows the full four and a half years of full time travels. We are now up to 43 states. Arizona and Florida by far have the most number of stops simply because we seem to settle in these spots for the winter months. And Arizona got a big boost by staying there a total of 256 nights this year.

Our 2020 Camping Map

Our 4.5 Years Camping Map

As former engineers, we tend to be into keeping track of the various numbers associated with our travels. Here’s a condensed table of the stats for the last 4.5 years. When we started our full time journeys, we anticipated slower travel pace than we actually ended up doing the first few years. Well, 2020 certainly slowed our pace down dramatically but we can definitely say we would prefer to go back to the carefree days of the past.

Last year I noticed we had fallen into a fairly consistent pattern of driving the motorhome about 6500 miles per year. By having multiple extended stays this year, our number dropped by 2000 miles with a corresponding drop in diesel fuel cost. If you look into the fuel cost per mile, we were at 28¢/mile for diesel in 2020. The average cost for the prior 3.5 years was 34¢/mile. Nearly a 20% drop! The most likely reasons for this drop were lower fuel prices early in the pandemic as well as our signing up for the TSD fuel card which saved us an average 57¢/gallon since getting it in March. Even the number of miles driven in the Jeep dropped by about 40% over past years.

Camping costs saw a dramatic drop in 2020 as well. At just under $23 per night, it is about 19% lower than the previous years. The reason for the drop is easy to explain. With slower travel and longer stays, we get the much cheaper monthly rates that many private campgrounds offer. We had a month at $13.59 per night, two months at $18.41 per night and four months at $23.22 per night. The breakdown between boondocking, state parks, private parks and Elks Lodges was heavily skewed this year - spending 80% of our time in private campgrounds.

I doubt there would be many, if any, RVers touting how great their travels were this past year. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t been to some wonderful places and seen some really great sights along the way. In the past, we would have used our year end review to go over our top ten destinations for the year. Usually we had more than ten places worthy of our list and would need to narrow it down. This year we have the opposite problem only coming up with 8 locations. For each stop that made the cut, I’ve included a brief description, a link to the specific blog post for that stop and a favorite photo. With that said, here are our top stops of 2020:

• Cave Creek Arizona - Just North of Phoenix, Cave Creek Regional Park is a nice place to call home for awhile to explore the area. Like the other regional parks in the Phoenix area, there is some excellent hiking and much of it can be done right from our campsite. Just to the south of the campground was the Apache Wash Trailhead. There was some great mountain biking with miles of trails. If they had full hook up campsites, this would be a great spot to spend more than a few days.

Cave Creek

Cave Creek Hike

• Patagonia Lake State Park Arizona - South of Tucson and only 10 miles north of the Mexico border, this spot took us by surprise. It is a very desolate location but pretty with more mountainous terrain than we were expecting. The lake is rather large at least by Arizona standards and is a birder’s paradise. Not a ton of hiking trails but what is there was nice. Two nearby sites worth a visit are Tumacacori National Historical Park and Empire Ranch.

Patagonia Lake State Park

Arched Bridge over Patagonia Lake

• Bisbee Arizona - This old mining town is one of those picture perfect quaint towns. The town is nestled into the side of the surrounding hills making walking around town challenging at times. There are hikes in the hills that give a nice view of the town below.   Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area is a must do stop even if you aren’t big into birding. Thousands of sandhill cranes come thru the area and create quite the spectacle during the winter months. A visit to Fort Huachuca was not originally on our radar, but after passing the background check, we were able to visit the base and some of the fascinating museums.

A Week in Bisbee Arizona Part 1

Overlooking Bisbee on Hike

• Camp Verde Arizona - Our first stop after Covid lockdowns went into place. There are lots of things to see and do in the immediate area around Camp Verde and we found some good hiking nearby. A bunch of places were closed but in normal times, there should be ample things to keep the outdoor enthusiast happy. It also makes for a relatively good home base to check out Sedona, Cottonwood, Jerome and even Prescott Valley. Being there for 2 months, we tended to branch out farther than we typically would. Two weeks might be about the proper duration to get most of the sights in.

Camp Verde Part 1

Beautiful View Along Bell Trail Hike

• Show Low Arizona - This was our 4 month stop trying to keep out of harms way while staying a bit cooler at higher elevation than down in the valley near Phoenix. We found enough to do in the area to keep us from going stir crazy. In normal times, I would recommend staying further south in the Pinetop-Lakeside area to be closer to the outdoor recreation areas. This is an area known as the White Mountains and we found some excellent hiking with some of the trails near Greer over 9000 feet in elevation. As it was, our spot at Juniper Ridge Resort allowed us to get caught up on some upgrades to the rig and gave me access to a nice woodworking shop.

Show Low Part 1

View Along Trail Near Mt Baldy

• Great Sand Dunes National Park Colorado - It’s an out of the way location with little else nearby. These facts probably keep many people from visiting, but if you’re within a hundred miles or so, I would suggest you budget a few days to check out this unique place. Sand hiking on dunes is dramatically more difficult than walking a sand beach for two reasons. The park is at about 8000 feet elevation and all the sand is loose going up the dunes. We didn’t make it to the very top as the novelty wore our about a third of the way up.

On the Road Again

Great Sand Dunes NP

• Colorado Springs - We had only budgeted 5 nights but would have liked to stay several weeks. We managed to get in some excellent hikes in the nearby mountains. We also spent a day each at Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak. I’m sure there are other touristy things in the area that will be better accomplished after Covid is gone. I suspect much of Colorado will become a several month stay in the future.

Pikes Peak then Eastward Ho

Pikes Peak on a Fall Day

• Petit Jean State Park Arkansas - This Park is about 70 miles northwest of Little Rock so I suppose technically it could be done as a day trip from there. But there is so much to see and some great hiking all within the park. We spent 4 nights there and just barely saw and did it all. The park includes some great CCC buildings and other structures. If possible plan your visit to approach from the east side to minimize the steep grade and hairpin turns.

Arkansas’s First State Park and Beyond

CCC Shelter in Petit Jean SP

With 2020 in the rear view mirror, what are our plans for 2021? Since it it likely that Covid restrictions will continue well into the new year, we plan to stay put in Brooksville Florida thru the end of March. Then we’ll head north with a motorhome service stop in Gaffney South Carolina before continuing to Columbus Ohio for a wedding. We also bit the bullet and ordered all new furniture for the rig. Many manufacturers used an upholstery fabric that wasn’t up to the task. Our captain’s chairs have been peeling for almost 2 years but we managed to find some fitted slip covers that have done their job. But now that the other furniture has started to peel as well, we felt it was time to remedy the situation. We looked into re-upholstery options but weren’t finding a business we felt comfortable with. So we ordered new furniture and should be available in spring. Hopefully? Since the production and shipping window was highly variable, we decided to have it delivered to the business we bought from in Elkhart Indiana so we know that is part of our 2021 too. Beyond that, who knows?

Off to the Emerald Coast of Florida

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

It was a quick 2 night stay in Hattiesburg Mississippi and while I suspect there were lots of other things to see and do in the area, we needed to move on. Our next stop was a 10 night stay at Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park in the town of Niceville Florida. It’s about 8 miles from the Emerald Coast of Florida near Destin. It isn’t on the Gulf Coast but it’s close and is on water from the Gulf. Even though we booked the site over two months ago, we weren’t able to get one site for the full duration of our stay. So we will be in one site for 6 nights and another for 4. There are a couple other state parks right on the coast, but availability there was even tougher so Gannon it was. Our general experience with Florida State Parks it wonderful but crowded so planning ahead for anything more than a night or two is required. The drive from Hattiesburg is about 220 miles and a fairly easy trip.

The park isn’t very large with only about 40 sites around a half mile loop but the sites are rather spacious and fairly wooded. Our first site is nice with a view of Rocky Bayou less than 200 feet from our front window. It’s a fairly large body of water with the opposite shore a half mile away.

Rocky Bayou

Our First Site at Gannon

When we making our travel plans, we were drawn to this area because there seemed to be a large number of hiking and biking trails and plenty of geocaches as well. Plus we were close enough to the beach if we wanted a lazy day of sitting on the sand with the Gulf of Mexico at our feet. Once we got here and started to make plans as to what we would do first, we quickly discovered that we were smack dab in the middle of Eglin Air Force Base. Not so much that there are barracks and airstrips right next door, but the base comprises 460,000 acres of land. It’s a hard number to wrap your head around - think about 55 miles wide and 12 miles tall.

Most of this land is forest area and that is where many of the hiking and biking areas we were hoping to visit are located. To legally access the recreation areas of the base, one must purchase a permit. While not prohibitively expensive at $20 per person for an annual pass, we probably would have purchased passes but for one big problem. The base is divided up into dozens of different regions or sectors and before heading out to a region, one must check a website that would list what areas were open for recreation and which ones were closed for that day. We tried to check the site multiple times to see how it worked but each time the message said to check back later. Given we would often hear bombing runs nearby to the campground we realized going out there without the right information could be dangerous. Of course that meant the bulk of our intended plans would need to change.

The state park does have several hiking trails and a large day use area. We take advantage of what is within walking distance of the rig. One of the first things we discover is how acclimated we had become to the dry weather in Arizona. After spending 9 plus months in the dry desert southwest, having Florida style humidity is challenging to adapt to. There are three trails within the park: 1.0, 0.75 and 0.5 mile loops. They are all nice walks and not very strenuous given the flatness in this part of Florida. The shortest trail does pass by the Bayou and we can see all sorts of birds feeding and people out enjoying the water. We also rediscovered some of the huge spiders that call Florida home. The golden silk orb weaver is menacing looking. With a body the size of my thumb and large webs, we need to keep an eye open for these especially when venturing off trail in search of a geocache. Along one trail is a 500 pound concrete bomb used during training exercises from Eglin Air Base during World War II.

Kayakers on Bayou

Eeeek!!!

Practice Bomb

The day use area includes several picnic shelters and benches along the shoreline. There is also a boat ramp and based on the parking area being nearly full with trucks and empty boat trailers, I suspect this is a popular spot to come launch your boat or jet ski.

Beautiful Water View

Gannon Boat Ramp

We did a day trip east of Niceville to try out a bike ride. The Longleaf Pine Greenway Trail is just over 7 miles one way and the plan was to take that out to County Road 395 just outside Seagrove Beach and find a bite to eat then either come back the same trail, or head towards the beach and follow the paved bike path that seemed to follow next to Highway 30A that runs along all the small beach towns. The trail started out quite nice. There were a few others out for a walk but it wasn’t too crowded. It is generally a singletrack that winds thru the pines with lots of palmettos in the understory. There are some sandy sections but for the most part the trail was firm enough to bike through. There was one section under water but from the looks of things this is a frequent occurrence and a side trail has developed to get around it.

Longleaf Pine Trail Markers

Singletrack Thru Pines

Submerged Trail

After 5 miles, we crossed County Road 283 intending to continue on the trail for another 2 miles. Unfortunately there was caution tape and a sign at the trailhead stating it was closed east of here. We momentarily considered crossing the tape and seeing whether it was closed due to flooding or some storm damage but we decided to head south to 30A and follow the bike path along the road. We passed by a large parking area and headed back to look for a geocache hidden nearby. We discovered a very long boardwalk that winded thru the canopy of trees with lots of standing water below. It was a very secluded spot and made for a good place for a snack before continuing back to the road. This bike path along 30A turned out to be a very popular route and made for a challenging ride to avoid pedestrians and other bicyclists. We didn’t find a food joint that piqued our interest so we headed to a grocery store up from the beach for subs. It wasn’t the most scenic spot but met our goal and kept us out of the large crowds.

Dead End Boardwalk

For the return trip, we saw there was a way to avoid some of the large crowds in Seagrove Beach by taking residential roads thru a community called WaterColor. Slowly pedaling thru the side roads, it wasn’t exactly clear what this place was. There were plenty of small homes lining the streets spaced close enough to be able to pass the salt and pepper to your neighbors during dinner. There also seemed to be some sort of inn and communal areas. Not exactly our style of living but quaint nonetheless. Once back on the bike path, we continue west with a short detour to Grayton Beach. The last tenth of a mile was so sandy we needed to simply push the bikes to get to the shoreline. From the looks of things, this area of beach is accessible to motor vehicles and lots of people were out enjoying the water. We eventually made it back to the parking lot and our Jeep. Not exactly our planned route but it was a nice 19 mile bike ride.

Grayton Beach

19 Mile Bike Track

The next day we head back in the same general direction but about 15 miles further east to the Panama City Beach Conservation Park. What attracted us to this place were over 40 geocaches hidden along the dozens of miles of trails in the 2900 acre park. We figured we could handle another biking day and cover most of the park in one day via bike rather than hiking on multiple days. From the looks of things, it is a reasonably new park. A former pine plantation has been turned into the final stage of the town’s wastewater treatment process. The trails are actually wide hard-packed roads so there aren’t issues with running into deep sand sections.

Trail at Conservation Park

Upon finding one of the first geocaches along our route, I noticed a recent finder was a fellow geocacher from our old home in western New York. We are continually amazed to find logs from people we know in far off and sometimes remote locations. Turns out he was here caching just before the pandemic hit. It was a pretty park and easy riding on flat terrain. The caching went pretty well with one exception near a bit of a stream where I heard an unidentifiable splash and decided I might want to take the alligator warning sign seriously. Along the ride I spotted a family of ducks in a marshy area that I wasn’t able to identify until getting back home. Now I know what a black-bellied whistling duck looks like.

Location of Unidentified Splash

Whistling Duck Family

At one trail intersection, there was a road flooded sign. As there were a couple of geocaches along this trail, I opted to see if I could reach them before I hit water and had Chris continue on the other trail agreeing on where we would meet up again. After a quarter mile I came to the flooded section of road still having another quarter mile to reach the cache. Not being able to see dry land on the far end and having no way of knowing how deep the water was, I decided to backtrack and catch up with Chris along her route. It turned out this route wasn’t completely dry either with a low area about 100 feet long having a couple inches of water. We both made it across safely although Chris let out an apprehensive scream along the way.

End of the Road

Chris Approaches Water Crossing

After over 11 miles of biking, we stopped back at the car to grab our lunch and take a spot in the large pavilion to eat. Chris had brought her Kindle and was willing to sit and read if I wanted to head back out. So I headed back out and hit most of the trails we had missed in the morning. I came across some of the long boardwalk sections of the interior trails and a very pretty pond. I also managed to head up the closed road from the opposite end to find the caches I couldn’t reach in the morning. Turned out the flooded section of road was about 750 feet long - probably a wise choice in not trying to bike thru it. After 8.5 more miles in the afternoon, we ended up finding 25 of the caches in the park. This was a very good park for a bike ride even if you aren’t into geocaching.

Boardwalk

Reflecting Pond

Morning 11 Mile Track

8.5 Mile Afternoon Track

We saw a geocache was hidden at the start of a boardwalk in Niceville. We decided to go check it out one morning. After signing in at the cache, we start to walk the boardwalk. We hadn’t investigated anything about this place and was expecting just a short walk out along the boardwalk. But it kept going and going. It follows along the path of Turkey Creek. From the looks of things, the water level is quite high and flowing rather quickly. It was a pretty walk with some fall colors in the trees.

Turkey Creek

We stopped and enjoyed the views quite frequently. One of the partially submerged plants has very water repellent leaves and was mesmerizing to watch as the current pushed water onto the end of the mostly floating leaf creating a wavelike pattern. Apparently this is a popular place for tubing or just taking a dip in the water. The one dock area was nearly a foot under water which explains the sign we saw earlier about tubing not being recommended although we did see a couple kids in bathing suits with large tubes heading out on our way back. The other end of the boardwalk is a full mile from where we started so it turned into more of a walk than we anticipated.

Turtle Basking in Sun

Water Repellent Leaf

Flooded Dock

As luck would have it, even though we had been having nice weather during our stay, on the morning that we would need to move from one site in the park to the other site, it was pouring. We had confirmed with the ranger we could move as soon as the current camper moves from our next site. They left fairly early so we had a couple hour window to make the move, but the radar showed the prognosis for dry weather was bleak. We finally just bit the bullet and put on the rain gear and moved the quarter mile around the loop. It did allow me to dump the holding tanks so we would have plenty of capacity for the next 4 nights. I don’t recall ever getting so wet during a pack up or set up of the rig in all our years of traveling.

A couple days days later the rain had passed by and the weather was quite pleasant again. We knew there was hurricane out in the Gulf of Mexico and was possibly heading our way before we were scheduled to leave. I had promised Chris a day at the beach, so we headed to Henderson Beach State Park while we had the chance. It’s just across the Mid-Bay Bridge in Destin Florida. Our camping pass for Gannon will allow us access into this park for free. Henderson is fairly large with over a mile of sandy beach. Of course there are miles of beach to walk along this part of the Emerald Coast if you’re so inclined.

View at Henderson Beach

We went mid-morning and it wasn’t very crowded. We spread out our blanket and towels and headed into the water. It’s been nearly 2 years since we’ve been to a beach.  I suspect some of the reason for that is we (I?) tend to not do well just sitting or laying on the beach. I much prefer hiking or biking so our beach time tends to be limited. Near our spot, some creative person had created a man’s face peeking out of the sand. It wasn’t super detailed but much better than my capabilities.

Sand Sculpture

Searching for Lunch

At lunch we headed back towards the parking area and used the shaded picnic pavilion to enjoy our lunch and people watch as they came and went to the beach. There is a 3/4 mile nature trail within the park that we walked around to find a geocache as well as to just see the sights. It was okay but so close to the main road that there is a lot of road noise. It was a fun day but time to leave to investigate the progress of Hurricane Zeta to determine our plans.

Our original reservation had us leaving Gannon on Wednesday morning October 28. This left us with 4 nights to travel the ~400 miles to Brooksville Florida where we intend to spend the winter. Over the past couple weeks, we would check the Florida State Parks along the general route to see if we could make a reservation that would fill the gap but we weren’t having much luck. It didn’t help that part of that time would be a weekend and Halloween as well. We expanded our search to include southern Georgia and found a Corps of Engineers park on Lake Seminole only half a mile in from the Florida/Georgia line. We had booked 3 nights there and then planned on staying at an Elks Lodge in Perry Florida before driving into Brooksville on November 1.

The predicted path of Hurricane Zeta was starting to narrow and while we were just on the eastern edge of the cone, we were thinking sticking around for our last night here on the coast might not be the wisest decision. Our home is mobile. We have evacuated before due to wildfires being too close for comfort, a Category 2 hurricane should be respected as well. Plus even if it skirted by us, we would likely have a miserably rainy and windy driving day. So we checked the Eastbank COE campground site we were heading to and discovered it was available for an additional night so we added that night and planned to leave a day early to miss the possible storm impact.

We're the Blue Dot on Far Right at Edge of Warnings/Watches

The next morning as we were packing up to leave, a local sheriff came by and handed us an evacuation order. I guess that made our pre-planning a good thing. We were talking with one of the campground hosts and they were also being forced to evacuate. He hadn’t made any plans but would just head east and hope to find someplace to ride it out until he could come back. I suppose the evacuation was warranted since we are at an elevation of 6 feet above sea level and the storm surge was expected to be 2 to 3 feet. The good thing was the rest of the Niceville area seemed to be staying put so there wasn’t a huge traffic jam heading out of the area. We did run into a few showers from some outer bands of the storm but nothing too bad.

It's Official - We're Out of Here

Since we had two reservations in the system at Eastbank Campground, it took a bit longer to check in and clarify we have the site for 4 nights. We had the morning hours of Wednesday to walk around the campground area and check things out. This is a very nice place. We usually find COE campgrounds to be good places to stay. It is just north of the Florida border by half a mile and the opposite side of Lake Seminole to the west is also Florida. The bad part of this location is we are also just into the eastern time zone so our phones and tablets will often switch cell towers confusing us as to what time it is. We have actually stayed in the vicinity before - 4 years ago. Three Rivers State Park is less than five miles away in Florida. Since we likely won’t have much opportunity to sightsee during this stay, hopefully we explored everything during that first stop. There is a path from this campground to the Jim Woodruff Dam but it turns out that visitors are no longer permitted due to Covid so the gate along the path is locked.

View of Lake Seminole

Woodruff Dam Across Lake

Wednesday night and early Thursday morning were when Zeta was passing by the area. Our weather radio was constantly sounding alarms throughout the night usually with tornado watches. The good news is they only ever extended to the Florida country just to our west but it would take some effort to check other sources to convince ourselves of that fact. By lunchtime, the skies cleared up and it was another nice day in southern Georgia. We walked around the campground some more and checked out the lake and boat dock.

Sunny Afternoon at EastBank

On Halloween day, we pack up and drive the 100 miles or so to Perry Florida Elks Lodge. This is a fairly nice camping setup. There are 14 sites with water and electric and a dump station next to the lodge. We got in fairly early before the lodge was open but they have a drop box with envelopes to pay your fees to spend the night. We headed out to drive around the area a bit to find some geocaches in Florida counties we haven’t been to before. When we returned, there was a flurry of activity in the large field in front of the lodge. We eventually determined it was a Halloween candy drive thru for the local kids. I guess that’s a better way to socially distance.

The next morning we had a 190 mile drive to Brooksville. We took a slight longer and less direct route by heading over towards Gainesville and I-75. Why bother heading a bit further than required? We wanted to fill up the rig with diesel before pulling into our campground for the winter. This way we will be sure to have plenty fuel in case we need to run the heater - yes we have a diesel burner for our hydronic heating system. It can run on electricity as well and that works fine above freezing but if we hit real cold conditions, we will need the burner going.

One other thing I should mention. We had signed up for and gotten our TSD fueling card back in the spring. You can read more about the details here (TSD Card Explained). We haven’t traveled a lot since March but made made good use of it as we repositioned from Arizona to Florida. We have filled up 10 times since getting the card. The least amount we saved per gallon (after fees) was 29 cents, the most was 91 cents. In total we saved just under $280 in 485 gallons of fuel for an average of 57 cents per gallon. Admittedly the posted prices at some of our stops were 5 to 10 cents more than we might have found elsewhere. Plus we used to use our credit card that has 2% cash back so that would have been an additional 5 cents per gallon. But the bottom line is this program works out well for us and hopefully we will get back to some more serious traveling in the future.