4 years down

May 2, 2021, marked the completion of four years of full-timing in our trailer. This is us heading away, on May 2, 2017, from our home of 23 years prior:

We didn’t really have any goals for these 4 years other than seeing what is out there! We stopped to see family when we were near, we came back numerous times for birthdays, holidays, etc. We didn’t know where our travels would take us, which was the most fun. Our 4-year ‘anniversary’ was spent with my sister and her family in Bishop, but there were no celebrations. Here is view of Bishop from the hills:

I have been keeping statistics of our trailer since we purchased it in Jan 2013. I track every trip via Google Maps, keep track of mileage and nights spent in locations (the app MapMyRide is most helpful with this). I also track every fuelup of our current truck and previous truck. This allows me to belch out some numbers to bore you with.

YearTrailer MilesNights in TrailerTruck Miles
20171009824017311
20181096932720437
20191128436325327
2020545536614271
202112941224959
Total39100141882305

2017 and 2021 were partial years but we really piled on the miles that first year. 2017, we went to Texas to establish our domicile, continued on to a wedding in North Carolina, and completed the circle by coming back a northern route. We hit 21 states on that loop. Our average nightly stay per location was pretty low, something we would remedy. That year our grandson had his first birthday, which we were able to get to. Sadly, Roxie’s cousin died but we were able to assist his daughter in straightening out his affairs. This would have been hard to do if not retired. This was also the time where our black tank leaked and it took 43 days without our trailer to get it fixed

In 2018 we got our trailer back from repairs then headed to my mother’s. She was getting out of rehab after a hip replacement and we were going to help her at home. We met our friends George and Marcia (www.yinfeng.info) and travelled to Banff and Jasper NP in Canada. We then headed to CA to leave for a trip to Hawaii, getting ready for the 2nd birthday of our grandson. Fate intervened and we went back to my mother’s just before she passed away. We, along with my sister and her family, put her affairs in order. We still did over 10K in miles that year.

Back to Texas in 2019. Roxie had a medical procedure to do in Austin and I was looking to get a new truck. The 2017 truck did fine but we really missed having 4 full doors so we got on there. We were in the Austin area for almost 4 months doing all this, and more. While we were in Texas we wondered what we should do after leaving there. Roxie had joined a group on Facebook that discussed RVing to Alaska. They were having a get together near Anchorage for the 4th of July. We signed up, giving us a target date to get there and we were off! Alaska was great but we headed back to CA and helped Roxie’s sister with some personal issues.

COVID was the theme for 2020. We were traveling around CA until mid-March and WHAM! Shutdowns began. We hunkered down at our son’s place until mid-June and had to get out. We headed to the Oregon and Washington coasts to keep cool during the summer. Around mid-September we headed to Idaho and the weather ended up chasing us down to Nevada. All-in-all we were not that impacted by COVID other than some campground bathrooms were closed. Also two of the things we like to do, dine-out and watch movies, were much more difficult. We made it back to CA for the holidays.

The birth of our third grandchild, second granddaughter, started off 2021. We next headed to Arizona and Nevada, checking out possible locations to move. Arizona was not very locked down at this time, Nevada only slightly more.

Just under 40K actual trailer miles, more than double that in truck miles, 33 states, 4 provinces, 1418 nights in the trailer (just 43 nights shy of a perfect record)!

We will probably be slowing down our travels as we are looking for a home now but we won’t completely stop!