People are funny!
We get asked two questions when we talk about our travels by RV. The first is "how long does it take to get there?" For example, we are heading to Voyageurs National Park (Boundary Waters) in Northern Minnesota. Some yahoo asks us, "How many hours drive is that?" to which Mark replies, "About a month."
You see, there is plenty to see between here and there and sadly, so many Americans have this "drive straight through" mentality about travel - that the destination is the goal and anything in-between is just some inconvenience to put up with. We see this all the time on Old People Island. Folks "go North" to their homes in Wisconsin, New York, Michigan or whatever, and brag about how they are going to do it in two days - staying briefly overnight in some forgettable motel in the Carolinas. In their mind, the trip is already over, and the messy actually doing it is a chore to be endured, not cherished. These are people in their 70's or even 80's and they are going to sit in a car for 10-12 hours and get blood clots in their legs.
We try to explain to them that there are interesting things to see between their home "down South" and their home "up North" - such as the beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway, which can be a relaxing week-long adventure. Even stopping to see the world's largest ball of twine would be something, but they will have none of it! "We have to get back to see our doctor!" they say. "Well, why not leave a week earlier and take your time?" You might as well try to teach Esperanto to a Dog.
The second question we get a lot is, "How do you know where to go?" as if it was splitting the atom or rocket science. I noted before how Americans live in paranoid fear of a bad meal, so they stick to horrible chain restaurants. I was reading a review of a restaurant online the other day and the gourmet who reviewed the place said they preferred the excellent cuisine at Cracker Barrel. I'm not taking a piss on Cracker Barrel, but to hold it up as the epitome of fine dining is sort of ridiculous. I am guessing that they want predictability and standardization in their meals. Heck, when you go to a chain restaurant, you even know where the restroom is, as they are all laid out exactly the same. People fear the unknown.
That's why, when you talk to folks about RVing they immediately talk about going to Yellowstone or Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, or even Zion National Parks. And those are nice places and I've been to them - once. They are also overcrowded with people and surrounded by tourists traps. But people go, because they live in fear of a bad vacation as much as they live in fear of a bad meal. Suppose you go somewhere and it isn't like 100 Disney orgasms in a row? Then you'd feel cheated!
Maybe that is the problem with our over-stimulated country. People watch hours of television every day or play hours of video games. They eat sugary or salty fast-foods and wash it down with Pepsi-Cola. They expect everything in their lives to be over-the-top and too-good-to-be-true. Their cars need hundreds of horsepower and should be jacked up to the sky or slammed into the ground. Their houses need to be mini-mansions and their clothing designer (as well as their coffee). And naturally, they have to sport the latest cell phones, pad devices, and laptops.
So when they go on vacation, it has to be to a "brand name" destination. After all, the folks in the break room at work would not be impressed with your trip to some unknown park, right?
I think that is, in part, the mentality at work. And yet there are so many nice places to visit, all across this country, that you maybe never heard of, unless you lived there - and even then, maybe not. I grew up in Central New York and never heard of, much less visited, Letchworth State Park. Maybe its designation as "The Grand Canyon of the East" is a little overblown. But it is sort of an example of a place worth visiting that you never hear about. And America is full of such places - thousands of them, in fact, that are along the road less traveled.
I turned 62 this year and qualified for a "Geezer Pass" which is officially know as the America the Beautiful pass which provides free admission to some Federal Parks and half-price camping in most. The Army Corps of Engineers builds dams like beavers - all over America there are dams and reservoirs built by the Army Corps. Most of them have a campground and boat launch near the dam, and you can camp there - in a very nice campground, by the way - for as little as $22 a night. With my "Geezer Pass" that is halved to $11 a night. Pretty cheap living. We carry a tandem Old Town kayak on the roof of the truck, along with two very old TREK bicycles. We stay a few days at these places, bike around and go kayaking, bringing along a picnic lunch in both instances.
The attraction? Nothing. No cars, no noise, no development, no people. Just nature - for the most part. Some are more bucolic than others. You don't know until you go and find out. Oddly enough, at many of these out-of-the-way places, we meet people who camp there every year on the same site, for a week or two at a time. They live less than 50 miles away. And it kind of makes sense - you have a "lake cottage" for two weeks a year for only a few hundred dollars.
Some folks would say, Boring! Where's the log plume ride? Where's Space Mountain? Give me Disney World or Give Me Death! But the secret to happiness, I think, it being content and not necessarily being "happy" all the time. Today, everyone claims to be Asperger's or ADHD, but I think in reality, they have been raised on a diet of soda-pop (both mentally and physically) and are thus used to continuous stimulation. Quiet times just don't register, anymore.
Some retirees spend their lives in RV parks - traveling North in the Summer and South in the Winter. For as little as $11 a night, it is cheaper - to some extent - than living in a house or apartment, and on par with the "lot rent" on a permanent site in Florida. Of course, most State and National parks have a 14-day limit, but husband and wife can make separate reservations and thus stay for a month at a time. You move between a dozen parks a year, and you're set - without burning too much fuel. That being said, full-timing isn't necessarily cheaper than living in one place. And sadly, many full-timers park their rigs and spend all day inside watching Fox News. Might as well get fitted for a coffin.
Speaking of which, we are getting an astounding (for RVing) 14.5 MPG so far. We are travelling secondary highways (four lane, divided, for the most part) where you can poke along at 55-60 MPH. Most RVs are getting in the single digits (8-10 MPG if they are lucky) and spending $5.50 a gallon on diesel. By the way, gas in Georgia went down to as little as $3.79 - is Biden responsible for that as well? Powerful man, that Biden - he controls gas and oil prices, as well as inflation, worldwide!
But we're travelers. We like to move on - about 150 miles at a time - every few days and see something new. Sometimes it is spectacular, other times, not so much. Sometimes it pours rain, other times it is sunny and warm. Sometimes you have an isolated spot on a peninsula surrounded by water. Other times, you are in a landlocked lot surrounded by people with dozens of noisy children. It is like life - you have to take it as it comes and not complain when it isn't "perfect" all the time, because life is not an optimized event. The less-than-perfect experiences make you appreciate the better ones even more - and make you realize that nitpicking is a pointless endeavor.
When we tell people we're staying in Army Corps parks, some have said, "Gee, I didn't know you were in the Army!" No, I wasn't. The parks are open to everyone. Why the Army is in charge of dam building, I do not know. They do it though, for better or worse, all over America. Find a dam, you'll likely find an Army Corps park.
There are, of course, many other places to stay and see. We are staying in a number of State and Federal parks, as well as private parks and campgrounds. Sometimes, we have to find a place to stay between places to stay, to keep within our 150-200 mile traveling range (anything beyond that is annoying, although we have a couple of 300-mile days on this trip). We try to stay in State or Federal parks on the weekdays and spend time in private resorts on the weekends, as public parks can be quite busy what with the weekend warriors and all.
Before the pandemic, we often traveled with few reservations, other than places we knew we definitely wanted to see or were notoriously hard to get into. The pandemic changed all that, as more and more people "discovered" RVing and camping and decided to give it a try. Many of these "Covid Campers" have, as I predicted, decided that RVing is for the birds and RV dealers are overflowing with rigs - and there are many secondhand rigs for sale by the side of the road. Far more are rotting in backyards and storage lots, as the owners are "upside down" on them.
Many places set aside a number of spaces for "transient" overnight campers on a first-come, first-serve basis. Others do not. Some parks will "release" sites that are reserved if the reservation holder doesn't show by 5PM or thereabouts. Others do not. We saw, firsthand, in the Adirondacks, people who reserved sites for the weekend and then never showed up because it was raining or they were bored, or there was something on television or they changed their minds. These are people living in New York City, who are more than happy to walk away from a paid-in-full reservation of $22 a night because they spent more than that on their coffee this morning. It is kind of annoying, to be turned away from a park and told it is "full" when there are dozens of sites empty, all weekend.
So reservations are kind of a thing these days, and most parks use one or more reservation sites, such as Reserve America. The Federal Government has their own site, recreation.gov which works pretty well. Both have way too much HTML coding (slideshows that automatically load, for example, or too many graphics) but if you are patient, they are useful. For example, you can click on a site (in some parks) and see a picture of the site and get a feeling for whether it is on the water, near another site, or what. You can also see what sites are taken and which are available, whether you are near a playground (great if you have kids, horrible if you do not) or restroom. You can lock in a site reservation and then pay the full amount of a down payment. It works pretty well.
Mark sort of hashed-out a rough idea of the trip with most of the stops, which took him about a week, with maps spread out all over the dining room table. There are many good guide books to use, such as Camping with the Army Corps and you can also write to the State or City you are visiting and ask for tourist information. A week later, you'll get a package in the mail with books, magazines, and brochures of things to see and do.
Once we had a rough idea of where to go, we then went online and made reservations. Some places were full or when we saw the sites, we decided to go elsewhere. Over a period of a couple of days, we finalized the reservations.
But why Minnesota? Why not? We've been through the State a few times in our lives - usually on the way to somewhere else, such as Alaska, BC, or Oregon. We stayed a few days and kayaked a bit and though it was nice (in the summer, anyway!) and realized that the "Land of 10,000 lakes" needs more exploring. When we sold the lake house in New York, we decided it was a lot cheaper (and more fun) to explore different places "up North" than to own a vacation home and pay taxes on it and spend all summer maintaining it.
We started in Newfoundland and each summer went progressively westward until about three years ago, we ended up in Alaska. You really have to spend a month or so in such places to really get an idea of what it's like. We've met people who drove to Alaska in less than a week (!!), spent a week there, and then drove back. What on earth is the point of that? Even a month in such places barely scratches the surface. But I guess we're weird.
And lucky. Sadly, most people have to go back to "jobs" on Monday, which is unavoidable when you are younger, but not a mandate as you get older. I run into people pushing 70 (or beyond) telling me they will "never retire" and they say this because mostly they spend a ton of money on stuff and don't see any other way to live. I have friends on Old People Island who are 70 years old and still making mortgage payments and car payments. They can see no other way to live. I feel bad for them, but then again, this was a choice they made, not a mandate. And it was a choice they made because they watch a ton of television and the television tells them this is normal.
So, we are lucky - or smart - or both, in that we can retire somewhat early (although I am pretty close to the "standard" retirement age at this point) and can afford (we hope) to travel while we are still somewhat young and ambulatory.
Speaking of which, it is a nice day here in Wind Creek State Park in Alabama. So it is time to go Kayaking!
