Friday, July 4, 2014

Moving day and 12 Week Statistics

Location: Madison KOA, Madison, Pennsylvania
(click pics to enlarge)

I arrived here yesterday around 1:00 pm. It was a very short tow of only about 40 miles. This is the only campground I could find with vacancies for the 4th when I made reservations about a week
ago. Today was a relaxing day while I defrosted the refrigerator/freezer. It's the first time I've had to do it since I got Liberty. The ice has been building up gradually and I should have done it several weeks ago but I kept procrastinating    putting it off    delaying it    waiting for the perfect time. It was easy and only took about 2 hours to do the job.
Freedom and Liberty before the campground fills up






Looking out my door

 Today marks 12 weeks on the road. As I've said before, time seems to have changed since I started RV'ing fulltime. Every day is something new. The only things that are constant and familiar are Freedom and Liberty. Sometimes when I look back over some of the places I've been I have to concentrate of where I was camped, what state I was in and what I was doing. I put a list of the campgrounds down today and couldn't remember some of the towns that were near the campground. Either it was so insignificant that it never registered with me or my memory is fading faster. I'm hoping that it is just me being overloaded with new things to see, do and remembering. My mind may be prioritizing things and filing what it considers insignificant way in the back. Before I retired and hit the road, the majority of my days, weeks and months were dealing with things of which I was very familiar. The roads, towns, work, stores and people were generally the same every day. There were probably days back then when I could just go on auto pilot or predict just about every event that would occur in a particular day. That has all changed now. I feel as though I need to stop for a week or so in some nice place so time can catch up to me. It is as though a lot of the memories of the last 12 weeks are still behind me waiting for me to slow down so they can catch up. It sounds a little crazy, but I guess I had to be a little crazy to do what I'm doing.

Note to Olivia and Tucker: when you read this a couple decades from now, I'm only kidding about the crazy part, it doesn't run in the family.

I put the statistics together for the 12 weeks of traveling. I haven't consciously tried to budget any of my activities. I have started tracking expenses as of July 1st but still not budgeting. I will need this information as the months and years go by so I can see places where I can either cut back or splurge.  The table includes the stats from week 8 so I can compare.
Weeks 8 12
Days 56 84
Total Miles 4990 7166
Miles Towing 2600 4050
Miles Exploring 2390 3116
Gallons of Gas 477 700
Average MPG 10.5 10.2
Num of States seen 9 14
Num of Campgrounds 19 27
Avg miles between CG 140 150
Avg days stayed in CG 3 3
The percentage between towing miles and exploring miles has gotten larger and I'm not happy about that. Part of the explanation could be the New York City touring didn't require any driving by Freedom. Also, Bar Harbor had very little need for driving to be able to see everything I wanted to see. The percentage difference also accounts for the decrease in MPG from 10.5 to 10.2 since that is a combination MPG of towing and exploring. I am satisfied with the average number of miles between campgrounds. I had at least one very long haul during the last 4 weeks and I hope I don't have to do that again. The average number of days in a campground is still 3 which is a little low. I still hope to get that number up to 5 as I get more used to this vagabond lifestyle.
Route thru 12 weeks on the road
  I went to Walmart today and picked up some steaks to cook either today or tomorrow. Basically, I'm just laying low for the holidays. The park is almost full now and they had a DJ and Karaoke last night and I assume again tonight. You can hear it all over the park until 11:00 pm. Mostly it was nice, but every now and then there was a screecher trying to sing. There is also a lady that likes to laugh a couple of sites away. She apparently laughs at everything and she doesn't have a nice laugh. It is kind of irritating. I haven't heard her this afternoon so maybe she took some medicine to stop it or something. If I see her as I'm walking around I'll try to remember to ask her what illness she has that makes her laugh so much.

I'll end with a picture of Olivia that Brittanie sent me the other day. She is still so wide-eyed and alert. She has been that way since she was born.

Olivia Grace
 We skyped the other day and I may have to change my nickname for her. I have been calling her "Livie", but she reacted more to "O.G." when I called her that. I'll have to think about it some more.

 Ya'll take care of each other. Cya down the road.

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