Saturday, September 24, 2011

Final Post: Maine to Prescott

We have been home in Prescott for two weeks and I have finally found time to finish off the RV trip with the last blog. There has been a blurry of activity since we got home between unpacking the rig, laundry, our house sitters moving out, moving things around in the house, seeing friends, and going to activities in town. It has been a busy two weeks. Dean has already started on a remodeling project.

At the end of the last blog we were in Maine and heading for Kansas. We traveled fairly fast – covering 8 states in 3 days. Dean drove 6 to 8 hours per day. We stayed at his daughter’s house for 6 days visiting with Stephanie, her husband Lorin, and the two grandkids, Lane and Landon. On Monday of our visit we had lunch with the boys at their school. On Tuesday we drove to the Kansas City area and visited with Dean’s other daughter, Suzanne, and her family: husband Jason and grandkids Ethan and Parker. Parker (age 3) was much more talkative now than she was when we saw her at age 1 and a half.

After visiting with the kids we went to Dean’s brother’s farm in Allen, Kansas, and spent 5 days with brother, Tom, wife, Barb, and Dean’s mom who turned 90 this year. Then we were off to Oklahoma to see my brother Stan and his wife Becky and my stepmother Doloris. We stayed 4 days in Oklahoma and then started moving west to Arizona. The first night we boondocked at a very nice Elks Lodge in Tucumcari, NM and then the next day (Sept 10) we drove to Prescott.

It was a great trip. We were gone 270 days, passed thru 24 states (25 if you count 5 miles in West Virginia) and 5 Canadian Provinces. We put close to 13,000 miles on the motorhome and 7000 miles on the car. The highest price for gas was around $5.50. We averaged around $3.40 per night for camping fees and didn’t pay any camping fees in Canada. We stayed at National Parks, Elks, store parking lots, Harvest Hosts, Day’s End boondocking spots, and even driveways of locals. We stayed at 4 Passport America Private parks and one private park, which turned out to be our most expensive at $23 per night. We had summer in Florida at the Everglades in March and winter in Newfoundland in July. We saw an assortment of wildlife from alligators to whales. We traveled 11 weeks with Ron and Bernita Poutney, whom we thoroughly enjoyed, and besides seeing a few relatives, the rest of the time it was just Dean, Chica, and I. We saw a lot of this country and Canada. It will be a trip we will always remember.