As 2024 comes to a close, we get to celebrate being on the road as full timers for eight and a half years. We stuck to the eastern side of the country this year and in fact stayed within a couple hundred miles of the Atlantic Ocean the full year. I suppose the most significant aspect of this year’s travels was our decision to purchase an RV lot in Titusville Florida at The Great Outdoors (TGO). And to a large extent, this purchase was our reason for staying in the east instead of heading back out west. We started the year finishing up a monthlong stay at TGO having rented a different site trying to determine if we liked this place. We found a site we really liked that fit our needs and closed on the property in mid January while we were exploring other parts of Florida during the rest of the winter.
There were a few factors that told us we should have some sort of place we call home but instead of repeating the details of that thought process here, I will simply refer to the blog post from late December 2023 (Xmas at The Great Outdoors) which goes into the decision. One update to that blog post relates to the ongoing cost of ownership - HOA fees and property taxes. In that post, I had used historical data from the rental office regarding the possible income from renting out our site when we are not in Titusville. I had estimated that if we were here for the 6 months during the “high season” but had our lot in the rental pool the other 6 months, our site would cost us $23 per day. I don’t have what our income is yet from our lot being rented during the month of October before we came back. But based on the income for the first three quarters of the year, I suspect we will come in below my initial estimate. For the time being, the daily cost I have used in my spreadsheet for keeping track of camping expenses has been $25 per day so my stats I talk about later in this post should be fairly accurate or just a little high.
The first 3 months of the year found us bopping around Florida. It was a mixture of private campgrounds, state parks, Elks Lodges and a Habitat for Humanity build in Vero Beach. We had planned and booked all but two weeks well before we knew we were going to buy a site at TGO so we only came back to our site for those two weeks at the end of February. By early April, we had completed all our original plans so we could return to TGO for 3 weeks before starting our journey north to New England for the bulk of the summer and early fall.
The map below shows the route we traveled this past year. While there was some overlap on the route we took north in the spring and south in the fall, we tended not to duplicate the actual camping stops in order to allow us to see slightly different places. Just below the map is a link that will open the actual Google Map which permits you to zoom in and pan around to better see our stops. Each red pin represents a place we spent at least one night at and by clicking on a pin, a new window will pop up with the name of the place we stayed as well as the links to the blog posts associated with that particular stop.
We spent about 5 weeks working our way from Florida to Vermont and then had two different monthlong stops near the Green Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. There were also a couple weeks spent in the Adirondacks and a few more weeks in Burlington and northern Vermont. We wrapped up our New England journey by spending nearly all of September exploring some of the interior of Maine. We wrapped up the journey with another 5 weeks to make it from Maine back to Titusville Florida.
It was definitely an action packed year. The hiking in the mountains of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine was outstanding and we even found some excellent bike trails along the way. We also fit in a couple of train rides and a few boat rides over the course of the year. We managed to stay at 19 different Elks Lodges during 2023 - the majority of them ones we had never visited before. And with these additions, we have now surpassed the one hundred mark of how many different lodges we have camped at in the last 8.5 years bring our total number of nights spent at lodges to 407!
I have a few different “heat maps” that show where we have camped. Each state we have stayed at is shaded in red. The darker the red, the more nights we stayed in that state. The first map is just for 2024. You can see that we stayed in 14 different states this year. Florida came in the top spot at 179 nights. Vermont was in second place with 79 nights. We managed to add one new state to the list - Rhode Island. The second map shows our stops for the full 8.5 years, now up to 45 states instead of 44 from last year. The only states not colored in are Alaska, Hawaii, Oklahoma, New Jersey and Delaware. Technically, we have camped in all of these states other than Hawaii but those camping trips occurred prior to going full time. I am also including a version of second heat map but this one is divided into the counties within each state to get a better view of where we stayed in the state.
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| Our 2024 Camping Map |
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| Our 8.5 Year Camping Map |
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| 8.5 Years at County Level |
Like in past reviews, I have a table showing some of the statistics for our full time lifestyle. It includes facts like how many stops we had as well as the number of miles driven in the motorhome and car and the costs associated with our travels. Since we have so many years under our belt at this point, I only show the numbers for the past 6 years. Previous year end reviews will have the data from earlier years.
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| Just the Stats for the Past 6 Years |
There aren’t too many surprises in the table. We camped in a few more places this year compared to last year which brought our average number of nights per stop to under 12 versus over 15 last year. This one is simple to explain. In 2023, we stayed at a campground in western New York for over 5 months. So even staying for a couple of monthlong stops in New England and a few stops a week or longer, we ended up moving around more often. Even so, it didn’t seem like we were moving at too fast of a pace. Our number of miles driven both in the motorhome and the Jeep were very similar to last years.
In terms of the types of places we have camped, I break it down into one of 4 categories - boondocking, state parks, private campgrounds and Elks Lodges. This year we stayed two thirds of the nights in private campgrounds similar to last year. But we did stay a few more nights at state parks versus Elks Lodges this past year. That is likely just a function of there being fewer Elks Lodges on the eastern side of the country and we spent a fair amount of time out west in 2023 where the lodges have more camping options. For the keen eye observer, the breakdown of style of camping shows 376 nights total versus the expected 366. This is simply to show that we did boondock 10 nights over the course of the year but those nights also happened to be at Elks Lodges. I only show it because we had a new solar and lithium battery system installed in early 2023 and I wanted to prove that we did use it - albeit sparingly. The net result over the course of the year for camping costs came in at just over $30 per night. This is pretty consistent with prior years.
As we sit on our lot at TGO in Titusville Florida this winter, we are finding that having a nice place to stay with a shed to store our bikes and other stuff out of the weather is quite nice. I can do some of the maintenance chores on the motorhome that are more difficult to do in a gravel lot in a state park. Since returning to TGO this November, I have washed and waxed the rig, replaced the return springs on our leveling jacks and even had one of our air conditioners replaced - although I hired that job out to people more skilled at that task. We also did start to get established with a doctor and dentist in the area. This was part of the reason for buying the RV lot - needing to have “shallow roots” so we can take care of ourselves as we get older.
Like we have done in previous year end reviews, we have looked over the 42 stops for the year and tried to identify several of our favorites. Even though I will provide the campground we stayed at in an area, do not look at this as a campground review. We seldom pick a campground based on its amenities. We are more looking for a great location and the campground tends to just be the place the motorhome gets parked for the duration of our visit. In fact, one of the top stops this year was the gravel lot on the side of an Elks Lodge with no RV services. Many campers may consider that too primitive, but we found a lot to do in the area and would love to go back for more in the future. For each of the stops, there is a short description of the stop, a link to the first blog post for that location which will provide more details about the stop, and a couple of my favorite pictures from the stop. In chronological order, here is the list for 2024:
- Indian River Habitat for Humanity ReStore Vero Beach Florida - This place isn’t your typical campground. In fact, if you find yourself in Vero Beach, you won’t be able to stay here unless you have signed up for one of the Habitat for Humanity RV Care-A-Vanner builds at this local affiliate well in advance. We were here for a 2 week assignment in early March. Vero Beach is a pretty area with lots of small towns along the coast to visit and quite a few wildlife areas to walk around or go for a bike ride. The Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge is the oldest NWR in the country and we drove around the Goodwin Waterfowl Management Area but should have visited with our bicycles. I’m sure we could have found plenty more to see and do in the area.
But the true reason this place made our list was being part of a large group of like minded RVers here to help lend a hand from building new homes, refurbishing existing homes or working in the ReStore. This was only the third one of these builds we have been part of, but this affiliate runs their program like a well oiled machine. They can accommodate just about any skill level so you don’t need to have been a general contractor to find a job at the build site. And while swinging a hammer and helping out a good cause is therapeutic in a way, it was the camaraderie of the eight couples that made this a winning stop for us.
Vero Beach Blog Post
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| Our RV Care-a-Vanner Crew at Vero Beach |
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| Wall Raising Ceremony |
- Collier Seminole State Park Naples Florida - We spent 10 nights at this state park in the southwest corner of the state. There are both state and federal preserves in the area that were wonderful to explore. We spent two days on long bike rides at both Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park and Big Cypress National Preserve basically riding with alligators! There were also lots of less strenuous (or dangerous) things to see and do in the area. Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary has a 2 plus mile boardwalk though a very scenic area. And for an even more laid back day, Marco Island was a fun visit.
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| One of Dozens of Gators to Bike Past |
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| Royal Terns on Marco Island |
- Green Mountain Family Campground Middlebury Vermont - We spent the whole month of June at this place in the beautiful Green Mountains of Vermont. The hiking was excellent but challenging at times. This stop gave us one of our favorite hikes from our eighth year review - Mount Abraham. But there was more to see and do in the area than just hike. We spent a day each at both Shelburne Museum and Shelburne Farms and really enjoyed them. We also learned all about the granite industry in this part of the state. I wrote 8 blog posts about our stay so it is tough to summarize another than to tell you to check out this part of Vermont.
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| Chris Enjoys View at Buck Mountain |
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| At the Granite Quarry |
- Moose River Campground St Johnsbury Vermont - While we technically were camping at this place in Vermont for the month of August, we were here because of its proximity to the White Mountains of New Hampshire just a a few miles away from camp. The hiking here was excellent as well although it seems like the White Mountains are a bit more popular with hikers so we ran into more crowds on the trails. The two places we went back to multiple times were Franconia Notch and Crawford Notch. I suspect we could move to this area and spend the rest of our lives hiking and never need to repeat a hike if we didn’t want to. We also found several excellent rail trails that we spent multiple days exploring 20 to 30 miles at a time by bicycle. Lamoille Valley Trail may have been our favorite but the Ammonoosuc River and the Presidential Range Trails were quite nice as well. And then there were the two train rides. One to the top of Mount Washington via the cog railway and the scenic train ride out of Conway New Hampshire.
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| Our Ride to the Top of Mount Washington |
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| Covered Bridge Over Ammonoosuc River in Bath NH |
- Katahdin Shadows Campground Medway Maine - We only managed to fit in a week here around the second week of September. The main draw for us to this out of the way spot in central Maine was Baxter State Park. It’s a pristine wilderness area that has very limited services to help keep it that way. There are excellent hiking opportunities and for the really hardcore hikers, this is the location where the Appalachian Trail starts/ends. But we found other things in the region including a lumbermen’s museum and possibly one of the nicest biking areas at the Penobscot River Trails. Had we known how much we were going to like this place, we likely would have tried to book a spot for a month or longer.
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| Mount Katahdin from Penobscot River Trails |
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| Keep Maine Beautiful |
- Wareham - New Bedford Elks Lodge Wareham Massachusetts - This lodge does not have any RV services like electric, water or dump station. But they do have a fairly large and level gravel lot next to the main paved parking lot and we had decent sun exposure for our solar system to help charge our batteries while boondocking here. This place is in southeastern Massachusetts and it worked out well for visiting Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod. It would also have worked to take in Nantucket had we only been able to stay another day or two, but now we know that staying just 4 nights wasn’t long enough. We spent a very long day taking the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard, walking 10 miles around the island and trying to fit in as many sites as we could manage in a single day and then returning to the mainland. We also got in a nearly 25 miles bike ride along the Shining Sea Bikeway. The drive onto Cape Cod was nice but there was to much to see along the drive that we weren’t able to get all the way to the tip of the cape.
Blog post to be written
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| Ned's Point Lighthouse |
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| Sunset on Ferry From Martha's Vineyard |
Below is a map showing all 386 places we have camped in the past eight and a half years. For additional information on any of them, click on the link below the map which will open the actual Google Map I use. Pan and zoom on the map and by clicking on any pin, a window will pop up with the name of the location and a link to the blog post(s) for that place. Those interested in hiking, mountain biking, geocaching or nature photography, may find some of the posts useful if you plan to visit an area we have explored. Our blog posts are more about the interesting locations we discovered during our stops and less about campground reviews so don't expect to find much information about what campground is the best in a specific area.
So what does 2025 hold for us? Originally we had reserved some state park campgrounds down in the Florida Keys and the Everglades for most of January and the first half of February, but we are reassessing those plans as I try to get past a couple of health concerns our newfound doctor has identified. We figure it makes more sense to stay in the Titusville area to deal with tests and appointments until I get the all clear. We also haven’t put any thought into where we might spend the warmer months but will eventually figure it out.
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