Season One: Recap of 2019 and Season Two: Plans for 2020
It’s hard to believe that our first season of traveling in our camper van is over. Time has flown by so fast. We are looking forward to continuing the fun in 2020!
We started our travel blog a little over a year ago and launched our YouTube channel a little less than a year ago. VanDOit completed our Red Tail Lodge camper van just last June. Red Tail Lodge was our home for a little over three months during the summer, taking us about 15,000 miles through 31 different states. That was a faster pace than we like, but we were somewhat following the Blue Knights Drum & Bugle Corps so we could watch our daughter perform once a week.
Our travels were basically three loops from our home base in Colorado. The first loop was to the west and included Capitol Reef National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Valley of Fire State Park (Nevada), Sequoia National Park, Redwoods National and State Parks, Leavenworth Washington, and Hot Springs State Park in Thermopolis Wyoming. The eastern loop included Taos Pueblo New Mexico, Carlsbad Caverns, Mission Trail in San Antonio Texas, Fort Pickens in Pensacola Beach Florida, the Appalachian Trail in North Carolina, and Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas. Last, but definitely not least, was a small loop to the Grand Canyon for our Rim to Rim backpacking trip.
Did we get tired of living out of our small Red Tail Lodge for so long? No, not at all. Most of our time was spent outside of our van, enjoying the outdoors and the places we were visiting. The camper van provided us with an inexpensive, but comfortable place to cook, eat, work, and sleep. It’s small size along with having everything we needed gave us the flexible to stay at a variety of places from private campgrounds with all the amenities such as electrical hookups, water, flush toilets, showers, and coin laundry to boondocking in the National Forest with nothing but a place to park for the night. Carrying 12 gallons of fresh water, 12 gallons of gray water capacity, a water heater, sink, and a garden hose spray nozzle provided all of our water needs to cook and wash with. Our single burner butane stove (paid link), 3 qt. Instant Pot (paid link), and our electric tea kettle (paid link) met our cooking needs. The 26 liter Dometic refrigerator (paid link) along with our homemade storage was ample capacity to store about a week’s worth of groceries, supplies and leftovers. Our meals were similar to the ones we cook at home, from scratch, not highly processed nor junk food. The six-inch memory foam, queen-sized mattress along with the MaxxAir fan, a couple of DC fans (paid link), and, when we had electrical hookups, the roof-top air conditioner allowed us to sleep very comfortably. The four foot long table top that Left Buddy (LB) built allowed us to work comfortably on our laptops inside the van. However, we also worked on our laptops in other places such as McDonald’s and coffee shops. We had plenty of room to haul about two weeks worth of clothing, so we only needed to visit a coin laundry about every seven to ten days. There was also plenty of room for our backpacking and bike gear, with our two bicycles on a hitch mount off the back.
As you could probably tell from the places we visited, we love being outdoors, hiking, and staying close to nature in national and state parks. We shy away from the large cities and interstates, although we do occasionally visit cities and drive on interstates. Some of the most memorable experiences from last summer were from stumbling across things on the backroads, such as Leavenworth Washington, the Ozark Folk Center, and the Hot Springs State Park in Thermopolis Wyoming. Although we don’t like large crowds of people, we do like personal interactions with a handful of people at a time. Fond memories were created while backpacking the Appalachian Trail and the main corridor of the Grand Canyon from our conversations with other backpackers on the trail.
Our Season One hikes were so different from one another. On Cohab Canyon Trail in Capitol Reef we were surrounded by colorful canyon walls that reminded us of Swiss cheese. The steep switchbacks of the Navajo Loop Trail led us down to the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon, which towered above our heads. The landscape of Fire Wave Trail in Valley of Fire made us feel like we were in another world during our early morning hike as the desert air started to heat up. We felt like we were stepping back in time on the Damnation Creek Trail in Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, walking among giant trees, large ferns and clover the size of our fists, with fog drifting up from the coast. We came across every type of cave formation imaginable during our mile walk around the Big Room inside Carlsbad Caverns. Our three day backpacking trip along the Appalachian Trail was the first time Right Buddy (RB) had ever backpacked. Our connection with the natural world was strengthened as we depended on drinking the refreshing cool water from the natural springs along the trail. However, the highlight of the season was our five day Rim to Rim backpacking trip of the Grand Canyon. For us, staying below the rim is an intimate experience with the canyon that we just didn't feel when only viewing the canyon from the rim.
Different campgrounds from Season One stick out in our minds for different reasons. The scenery surrounding our campsite in Atlatl Campground in Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada was breathtaking, but hot. It was surreal to camp among huge redwood tree stumps in the Burlington Campground inside Humboldt Redwoods State Park. Waking up to the sunrise on Crystal Beach in Texas was a cool experience even though the beach is not the prettiest one we’ve seen. The Fort Pickens Campground location was along the Florida Trail, with historic Fort Pickens one mile in one direction and the beautiful white sandy Langdon Beach one mile in the other direction. In our last few nights at the Grand Canyon, we went from one of the largest campgrounds we stayed at all year, in Mather Campground inside the national park, to boondocking in the Tusayan Ranger District of the Kaibab National Forest just outside the national park. Mather Campground is a nice campground with flush toilets, coin showers and coin laundry; however, our camp chairs were stolen there. Despite having no amenities in the national forest, we enjoyed our one night stay there more than Mather Campground, spending the evening sitting around a campfire with a handful of other campers, swapping travel stories.
A year ago, when RB quit her software engineering job and we decided to start this travel blog, we said we would give it a year and see what happens. Are we ready to throw in the towel? Heck no! We’ve started to draw from our retirement funds. We call ourselves "unsuccessfully retired". Our hope is to start making some money from our Amazon Affiliate links and our YouTube channel before our retirement funds run out. Our plans for now are to continue our travels and blogging for the foreseeable future. Life is short and there are still so many places to see and things we want to do while we are still able to do so. Our experiences are enhanced when we document them through pictures, blogs and videos. It is also fun sharing our experiences with you, whether you are living vicariously through us or using our adventures as inspiration or ideas for your own adventures.
While we are home over the winter, we are making some modifications to our Red Tail Lodge, planning the next season’s route, and hiking locally once a week, as part of our 52 Hike Challenge. The biggest changes to our van are installing a heater and adding a Weboost antenna. We didn’t need a heater last summer, but our plans for 2020 involve over six months of travel instead of three, so we’ll be camping in cooler weather part of the time. The biggest challenge we had during Season One was having a good internet connection to allow LB to get his 20 hours of work in per week. We’re hoping the Weboost antenna along with a slower traveling pace will do the trick. Look for some blogs and videos about our Season Two van modifications in the near future.
Our travels in 2020 will be at a slower pace than 2019. In the spring, we will be taking a short trip (several weeks) to Ohio and back to watch our daughter perform at the Winter Guard International Championships. Even though she is too old to participate in drum corps anymore, there is no age limit on winter guard, at least at the World Class level. So we’ll go this year, since we haven’t been in a few years. Along the way, we’ll visit some state parks and Indiana Dunes National Park to help us work on our Original 52 Hike Challenge and National Park Series 52 Hike Challenge.
On June 1st, we’ll hit the road, returning home just before Thanksgiving. We’re concentrating on the states we didn’t visit during Season One. It looks like we’ll be covering about the same amount of miles and number of states as last season, but in six months instead of three. Our plan is basically one large loop to the northeast, hopefully reaching Maine at peak color in the fall, then following the color south through the Appalachian Mountains. There are a couple of criss-crosses in the loop so we can make an Ohio State football game and the Adirondack Balloon Festival as well as join RB's brother's camping group in Tennessee. The slower pace should allow us to visit more friends and family along the way. However, that means we will not see our adult children at all for six months, but, since they still live in our house and we see them most of the winter, we’re hoping that will not be an issue. Or are our kids the reason why we're leaving for six months? Just kidding!
We are excited about starting Season Two and we hope you enjoy following along in our blog and our YouTube channel: Backroad Buddies. Please subscribe!
Check out our related video: Season One Recap of 2019 and Season Two Plans for 2020
(RB)