Some thoughts about full time travel
Hi all y’all,
It’s 7:00am, I’m sitting here in my home-on-wheels in Port Angeles WA enjoying my morning coffee contemplating my first year as a full-timer traveling this beautiful country and also thinking of my upcoming journey back to Texas.
This year’s journey’s been interesting and eventful. I’ve called it my Grand Western North American Tour and Shakedown Journey. As I’ve often mentioned, I didn’t pay much for my RV, it was (and I suppose still is) a monument to neglect and deferred maintenance. I spent about three months making it roadworthy and livable before I began this journey. It’s far from done and of course, being a shakedown journey, other annoying issues have come to my attention along the way.
The most important thing I’ve learned is that while I like my home-on-wheels to live in, and I like being able to change my scenery periodically, I really dislike driving the thing. I realized this sometime back when I found that I’d started calling my 33’ Class A “The Behemoth”. The thing is, the machine runs and drives just fine. I installed new shocks, the steering and brakes are in good shape and work well. My problem is the SIZE. Thank God I didn’t become a truck driver, the stress would’ve killed me by now. Not only do you have to be constantly alert while driving and I mean 100% alert 100% of the time, you also have to be very alert and careful whenever you leave the highway for anything be it to stop for gas, pull into a rest area, or a restaurant parking lot, that you don’t tear something off the roof, or become trapped. In addition, there’s been several times when I wanted to stop and visit friends on my journey but having to deal with the Behemoth made it too much of a hassle for a short visit. Now I don’t even bring it up unless I know for sure that I have a place to park my machine (and toad).
The Behemoth’s a total pain to travel in! Now that I got that off my chest, I now know to research and plan my journeys well in advance, including fuel stops and rest areas. If I have a friend along the way I’ll research where to park the Behemoth before I even suggest a visit. If there are two routes, I now know to choose the flatter one, even if it means driving farther. And finally, I always keep in mind the carrot dangling on the end of the stick, the one thing that makes driving The Behemoth all worthwhile, that when I do finally get to my destination, wherever I am, I’m home! BTW, thank you Tioga-George for drawing my attention to that reality!
Steve
It’s 7:00am, I’m sitting here in my home-on-wheels in Port Angeles WA enjoying my morning coffee contemplating my first year as a full-timer traveling this beautiful country and also thinking of my upcoming journey back to Texas.
This year’s journey’s been interesting and eventful. I’ve called it my Grand Western North American Tour and Shakedown Journey. As I’ve often mentioned, I didn’t pay much for my RV, it was (and I suppose still is) a monument to neglect and deferred maintenance. I spent about three months making it roadworthy and livable before I began this journey. It’s far from done and of course, being a shakedown journey, other annoying issues have come to my attention along the way.
The most important thing I’ve learned is that while I like my home-on-wheels to live in, and I like being able to change my scenery periodically, I really dislike driving the thing. I realized this sometime back when I found that I’d started calling my 33’ Class A “The Behemoth”. The thing is, the machine runs and drives just fine. I installed new shocks, the steering and brakes are in good shape and work well. My problem is the SIZE. Thank God I didn’t become a truck driver, the stress would’ve killed me by now. Not only do you have to be constantly alert while driving and I mean 100% alert 100% of the time, you also have to be very alert and careful whenever you leave the highway for anything be it to stop for gas, pull into a rest area, or a restaurant parking lot, that you don’t tear something off the roof, or become trapped. In addition, there’s been several times when I wanted to stop and visit friends on my journey but having to deal with the Behemoth made it too much of a hassle for a short visit. Now I don’t even bring it up unless I know for sure that I have a place to park my machine (and toad).
The Behemoth’s a total pain to travel in! Now that I got that off my chest, I now know to research and plan my journeys well in advance, including fuel stops and rest areas. If I have a friend along the way I’ll research where to park the Behemoth before I even suggest a visit. If there are two routes, I now know to choose the flatter one, even if it means driving farther. And finally, I always keep in mind the carrot dangling on the end of the stick, the one thing that makes driving The Behemoth all worthwhile, that when I do finally get to my destination, wherever I am, I’m home! BTW, thank you Tioga-George for drawing my attention to that reality!
Steve
