Journey's End

Lobster at the end of the trail. Made the whole journey worth it when we found these beauties for $5.99 a pound in New Hampshire.

We’re back!

Nine thousand, two hundred and five miles after we left Honeymoon Island State Park on the west coast of Florida, we have closed the circle and have returned to central Florida.

The first question I wanted to answer (for myself) related to the cost of our installation of the solar panels on the roof of our rig. Was it worth the expense? Short answer: An unqualified Yes. We spent $2,610 on the solar equipment - a 960-watt array of four solar panels.  So we had to live off the solar panels by not parking overnight in paid campgrounds. That’s fairly hard to accomplish in the eastern part of the U.S. (unless you stay in Walmart parking lots).  But it was a breeze in the West. Out there, there are millions of acres of Bureau of Land Management tracts and much of it is available to the public for free camping. Of course, you have to know which land is BLM land and which is privately owned.

But that's where our handy-dandy 840-page electronic book, Days End, came in. This remarkable document, laboriously researched and prepared by dedicated volunteers from Escapees.com, tells you every latitude and longitude for every free camping spot in all of North America. It was our most valuable possession on this trip and the $10 cost paid for itself over and over.

We were on the road five months and four days. And we paid for campgrounds on 59 nights. Cost: $1,229.19 at an average of $20.83 per night.

That leaves a whopping 93 nights where we parked free. To be fair, some of those nights were in the front and side yards at the homes of our daughters Lynn and Stephanie in Kent, Connecticut, and Colchester, Vermont. Nonetheless, our solar array provided us with the self-sufficiency and blessings of power while living under the sun. And it worked even on the cloudy days. As a result, it’s clear to me that the cost of the system has been paid for by the boon-docking camping we have done along the way. From this day forth, every night we boondock adds to the savings. Hard to beat that for cost efficiency and payback.

Everyone wants to know about mileage, it seems. Considering the wide variety of terrain, and the weight of our rig (32,000 pounds) I'm pretty happy with our mileage. We achieved 9.06 miles per gallon. In the flat lands, we averaged 9.8 miles per gallon. When I consider the momentous mountains we crawled over, sometimes managing to achieve only 28 miles per hour as we climbed and climbed, I'm actually quite surprised that we got 9.06 mpg.

Repairs along the route are a sad and painful story, however. They far exceeded any budgeted amount we had set aside. Our repair bill exceeded $8,940. Half of that came from an unscrupulous shyster repair shop in Rock Springs, Wyoming, where we were relieved of $4,300 for repairs that were poorly performed and which resulted in a near-catastrophe 92 miles after we left his repair shop. Because his mechanics had improperly installed a new fuel pump, the installation failed spectacularly when we drove across Wyoming. This resulted in an O-ring disintegrating and 19 quarts of engine oil sprayed out of our engine, coating the rear of our motorhome, as well as the Honda Fit we tow behind the rig. We were very fortunate that the engine did not seize up from lack of oil. Because of the good work of an emergency repairman who replaced three damaged O rings, we were on the road the next morning, licking our wounds.

And the final outrage came when the original repair shop owner refused to compensate us for the repairs we required. He actually had the unmitigated nerve to tell me his original $4,300 repair bill was grossly inaccurate and he would only pay my new $490 bill if I would kindly send him a check for an additional $3,000 because his staff had under billed me.

Add to this horror story, the blowout of a front tire, $868 to replace it, on the highway. Then our bank of batteries died while we were camping in the wilderness and that came close to $1,000 for replacements. And, finally, we had scheduled maintenance performed that came in at $1,820. So this was a very expensive part of our journey.

But, in the final analysis, this trip was not about the dollars and cents. It was a voyage of exploration and discovery. The proud Navajo and Hopi people, the soaring majesty of our mountainous west, the mammoths discovered in the swamps at Waco, Texas, the dinosaur bones embedded in the mountains that used to be at sea level two or three million years ago in Colorado. We’ll treasure the memories and photographs of standing 272 feet below sea level in Death Valley, or driving ever-upward through a mountain pass, 9,144 feet high, with sleet and snow all around us. Scary…but oh so rewarding when the crisis is over and you slip down the mountain into the verdant valley below.

Jo rests at the Cone mansion in the mountains of North Carolina while a storm rolls in from the north.

We’ve enjoyed having our friends participate in much of this ride and hope you gained some worthwhile insights into the people and places along the way.