Exploring Tomorrows Blog
Alabama is home to Tim and my favorite stops during our first year on the road. Tim’s favorite was Noccalula Falls in Gadsden, AL and mine was Gulf State Park in Gulf Shores, AL. Since we enjoyed Alabama so much last year, we decided to spend 4 weeks here this year. I picked two different spots so we could visit different parts of the state to see if we liked them as much.
Read MoreWell it is official! We have been full time RVers for one year. It seems like just yesterday I was still working and going to an office every day. Now we are living the life that we planned and enjoy traveling the country. Tim and I talked about what date we should use as our full time anniversary date. My last official work day was September 20, 2019, and technically I was working from the RV for the last two weeks. Since we stayed in Pittsburgh for some of those two weeks and were still moving some of our stuff from there to the camper, we decided to use my last work day as our official full time anniversary date. We stayed in that campground until October 8, 2019, then we started traveling, so Pennsylvania was the first state that I put on our map.
Read MorePlanning our RV travel route at times can be challenging especially since there are so many choices of wonderful places to visit. As I planned our route south to Florida for the winter, I set a few goals for the trip. My first goal was to reduce costs by staying at Thousand Trails parks so that we could take full advantage of our membership. This made goal two, to visit new states, more difficult to accomplish since the Thousand Trails campgrounds are clustered on the coasts. After leaving Indiana, I had to plan stops in states we had already visited, like Tennessee and Alabama to be able to stay in a Thousand Trails campground.
Read MoreFor the past two weeks, we have been staying at our second Thousand Trails campground, Cherokee Landing, located in West Tennessee. From the Thousand Trails website, I thought the campground was a bit closer to Memphis than it actually is but that has worked out fine for us. When I initially booked, I was planning a visit to Graceland and a few other Memphis landmarks. Since Covid 19 is still happening and case numbers were up a little in Tennessee, we weren’t sure about visiting a popular tourist site.
Read MoreAfter the busy campground in Indiana, we wanted some peace and quiet in smaller campgrounds which is exactly what we found as we drove south through Kentucky and Tennessee. Our first stop was for two nights at Cave Country RV Campground in Cave City, KY. I chose this campground because it was close to the interstate and Mammoth Cave National Park. This park was quite a contrast to the last one with only having 50 sites compared to 800. Less than half the sites were occupied which was wonderful It is a very well maintained and quiet park located in town.
Read MoreTim and I decided to join Thousand Trails in January, 2020 mainly for a discount on a seasonal site for January through March, 2021. The annual camping pass membership cost us $499 plus tax and with it we got a $500 discount on our 2021 seasonal reservation. If you aren’t familiar with Thousand Trails, it is a membership organization for campgrounds where you can camp for specific periods of time with your membership with no additional cost. There are levels of memberships with different purchase prices and rules. It is almost like buying into a time share.
Read MoreLast August, Tim and I were making decisions on what organizations to join to help us save on camping fees. One that we chose was Harvest Hosts. This membership program provides a list of wineries, breweries, farms, and museums across the country that allow members to park overnight for free on their property. All they ask is that you support the host’s business with a purchase during your stay. I didn’t think supporting wineries and breweries would be difficult for us.
Read MoreFor the past two months, Tim and I have been back home in Pittsburgh and now it is time to pack up the RV to get on the road again. It is hard to believe that this is our last week in the “Burgh”. Where did the time go? These past 2 months have really flown by. We were very busy while we were here, mainly filling our time getting in our annual doctor appointments, dentist, eye doctor, etc. and visiting our family and friends. With this new normal, we weren’t able to go out and enjoy our hometown as much as we would have liked, so we didn’t visit restaurants, bars, theaters, or museums. We had to find other ways to enjoy our favorite city.
Read MoreWe arrived at Mountaintop Campground near Pittsburgh, PA on June 1st and quickly settled into life back at home. Our goal is to spend two months here visiting family and friends as well as getting in our annual doctor and dentist appointments. With Allegheny County just reopening to the green phase after we got here, we are only visiting a couple people at a time. We are trying to have those visits outside to the extent that we can. If you are familiar with Southwestern Pennsylvania, you know that we have frequent rain and storms, especially in June so outside visits are challenging. Since we still aren’t going out too much, I found myself with time to reminisce our years of camping. Hope you enjoy this post that covers camping over the past 45 years.
Read MoreWe finally left Florida after 5 months on Memorial Day in a downpour. I couldn’t believe our luck. The rain that morning started lightly and turned into heavy blowing rain that just didn’t stop. For 5 months in Florida, we had very little rain and only one all day rain so we did not expect that when we were leaving. Good thing we had packed our outdoor chairs and mat the night before so that stuff didn’t get wet. We still had to be outside to dump the tanks and disconnect our water, electric and sewer; then bring in the slides and hook up. By the time we finished hooking up, we were soaked so we climbed over the bed to the closet to find dry clothes to change before traveling. What a mess! I had planned to get a picture of us pulling out but didn’t bother in the rain.
Read MoreWell, life on the road has been a little less exciting since the stay in place order was put in place. While we have been social distancing, my wife thought we could social distance more quickly in a Mustang GT, so we bought one.
Read MoreAs we started traveling again, I thought I should write a post about our last few weeks in Zephyrhills, FL. I was beginning to wonder if we would ever be able to leave Florida, first and foremost due to Coronavirus keeping us sheltered for the last few months. The second concern was RV repairs and waiting for parts to come in. Does that sound familiar?
Read MoreHere we are still hanging out in Zephyrhills; so different from what we thought we would be doing in our first year of full time RV life. We started this journey to travel and see the country. Since our plan was to go slowly, we anticipated staying in each place for a period of time. 5 months in one place is more than we expected but overall it is still good and we are enjoying living in our small home on wheels. Since it is getting warmer and the sun can be brutal midday, we moved sites to get a little shade.
Read MoreTwiddling my thumbs! Yeah, you are right, too hard to do when you are short on thumbs! I told Deb I would write a blog. When your life is in a holding pattern, finding topics is not so easy. We have been spending a considerable amount of time together. Trying to “social distance” ourselves from others, to protect both ourselves and them.
Read MoreLike everyone else, Tim and I have been following the news closely and monitoring the Corona virus situation and recommendations. We have decided for now to stay put where we are in Zephyrhills, FL. We were already booked to be here through April and even though many others are leaving early, we felt it was better to stay. Since the RV is our home, we can easily stock up on enough food for the next month and implement social distancing here. If we decided to leave, we would be on the road with many others and probably have more close exposures while traveling back north.
Read MoreOver the past few weeks, Tim and I had the opportunity to visit with quite a few friends and family here in Florida. Between a little travel and joining many of the activities here at the RV Resort, we have been pretty busy. Time has just flown by and we are just about finished with our second month in Florida. So hard to believe It is almost March. I am glad that we decided to stay through April; we will need it to see and do everything we wanted to do here.
Read MoreWe have now been in Zephyrhills for a month and it has started to feel like home and less like we are tourists. To be honest, we haven’t been touring much at all the last 3 weeks. First I was down with a head cold, then when I was getting better, Tim came down with it. For him, it has now lingered for over 2 weeks and his cough was not getting better. We finally decided to contact his doctor and he is now on antibiotics. I am hoping that does the trick and he will be feeling better very soon.
Read MoreIt is hard to believe that we have already been here for over 2 weeks; time is just flying by. I thought I should write about what we have been up to so far in January 2020 while it is fresh in my mind. During the first week, we didn’t explore too much other than to a few stores and restaurants in the area.
Read MoreAs I sit here in our RV home watching the sunrise in sunny Florida, I found myself thinking about staying in one place for 3 months. Why did we decide to do this instead of continually moving to see new places? You know how much I like exploring and seeing new areas so would think that stopping for 3 months would not be in our plans. Believe it or not, I am looking forward to having roots and being one location for awhile.
Read MoreWe left Alabama on December 14, 2019 and headed to Florida, our winter destination for our first year in the RV. For the holidays, we decided to stay near my Aunt and Uncle who live in Inverness. It is nice to have family to visit for the holidays since we are far from home. We selected a campground closer to the coast in Homosassa, FL so we could be near the Springs for easy manatee viewing when we weren’t visiting family. Since it was over a 6 hour drive from Gulf Shores to Homosassa, we decided to stay a few nights in Tallahassee to break up the trip. We have discovered that we do not like driving more than 3-4 hours at a time on travel days so this was a perfect distance for us.
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My name is Deb, I’m the one behind the keyboard. Follow us on social to stay up-to-date.
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