Where to stay for the Winter

Only problem with Florida and other coastal areas is the noseeum. You can see and hear mosquito, you can avoid fire ants but noseeum will make you leave Florida coastal areas forever

Even in the winter. You couldn't pay me to do that again. Check into it before committing.

The big question here is what is your tolerance for colder weather. There are a lot of places along the gulf coast from Florida to south Texas that attract the northern RV snowbird crowd. I live in southwest Louisiana about 80 miles inland and it does get cold here, but rarely does it get all that cold, though last winter we did have a 40 year low of about 13F two nights in a row, or more typical winter lows are 3-4 nights in the mid 20's, very rarely staying below freezing more than 24 hours in a row, snow that sticks to the ground only happens about every 5 years, and rarely last for more than a few hours, and is typically only a fraction of an inch. Daytimes highs in January can typically range from 40's to the 70's, with highs typically somewhere in the 30's for 1 or 2 days every couple of weeks after a cold front blows through.

As you get closer to the gulf coast one sees more and more of a moderating effect, 50 miles south of here where my sister in law lives (25-30 miles from the coast on the southside of Lake Charles, LA), it rarely drops below freezing,

See the information on this local weather station site to give you an idea of what I am talking about https://www.weather.gov/lch/climate particularly https://www.weather.gov/images/lch/climate/normals/JanuaryLowTemps.png and https://www.weather.gov/images/lch/climate/normals/JanuaryHighTemps.png

as you can see from that last link, there are places that average 8-10 degrees warmer along the coast than where I live in January. If I were to pick an area of Louisiana for winter RV life it would be in the heart of Cajun country around Abbeville or New Iberia

If you want 80F+ nearly every day then the options are south Florida, south Texas around the RGV and southern Arizona, if you can live with average highs in the 60's and 70's then there are a lot of other options.

I read that Alamogordo is a best kept secret. Low crime, low humidity, low rain and lots of sun. Its in the high 50ies, low 60ies in winter. Or come to Western Washington or Oregon Coast. Cant beat the views and our winters are mild. We get the occasional snow storm, but it only lasts a day and then its gone. Rain might be an issue, but when the sun comes out, there is nothing more awesome than seeing Mount Rainier in your back yard. T Mobile works great.

Quartzsite for the Winter? I would rather die! What a miserable place and the dust and rain and cold can jump right in there any day at any time, but the dust is the worst!

Bill.Satellite wrote:
Quartzsite for the Winter? I would rather die! What a miserable place and the dust and rain and cold can jump right in there any day at any time, but the dust is the worst!

Oh no, I'm so sorry to hear that. All that dust was us on our dirt bikes. I didn't roost you too, did I? :)

Hello all,

Thank your for your suggestions and advice. You have given me some stuff to check out.

2gypsies
Yes, for this coming winter. Thanks for the suggestion but their monthly rate is a bit high for what we are looking for. Hoping to find something for under $500 plus electric. Just starting to look and see what the prices are.



Bill.Satellite
We don’t mind it being a little cool. That is what long sleeve shirts and sweaters are for but we are looking to avoid rain, snow and sub 45 degrees temperatures. We would like to Boondock but I am not quite setup for that yet.

Quartzsite would be something to experience for maybe a week but not much longer. Also, I doubt that the internet would be very good with all the people there which is a must have for me.



Azrving
I would like that but we are going to have to add the solar panels in stages. I have watched a lot of YouTube videos and want to upgrade my battery bank and add panels. I do have a generator but only want to run it if I have to charge up the batteries and do some heave AC appliances. I basically would need to be able to run the lights, laptop, couple of monitors and other misc all day. With a good battery bank and inverter, I think that is doable and only run the generator for maybe an hour or two.

Since I will be working full time, having strong reliable internet is a must. My work has not done a lot with people working remote, so I need to make this a good experience for them (and me).

For TV we just stream Netflix, Amazon or YouTube, another reason for the good cell signal. We have a WeBoost 4GX-RV but I have not yet permanently mounted it. I do not want to cut any holes in the roof. Still trying to figure out how to run the wires and have it so that the inside antenna is on my desk.

We want to Boondock as well but until I can do the upgrades that I mentioned earlier, I was planning on staying in RV Parks. It might turn out that we will have to try and do the upgrades sooner then I planned.



Isaac-1
We can handle the colder weather. I have lived in the Grants Pass, Oregon area all of my life and it regularly gets down into the 30’s and 20’s over the winter. We do not get a lot of snow, but we have had a couple of years where at my old place, we had quite a bit for week or two. 60’s to 70’s sounds good to me but I bet my wife would like the 80’s better.



Roy&Lynne
I have not explored the Washington coast at all, but would like to, and I do know that the Oregon coast is great, being a Webfoot and all (slang for a native Oregonian). Some rain would be fine but I would like to avoid a ton of rain as it would just add to the potential of moisture problems (we do have a dehumidifier) in the RV and water leaks.

Oh geez, I was writing this book while you posted. :)

I can't find it but I have pictures of a dust storm in socal while sitting between the Cargo Muchacho mountains and the imperial dunes. It was so bad that it had not just dust but dirt flying by in waves. When you consider that it's sitting between these two large masses which form a shoot and depending on were the wind comes from it's not surprising if it makes the wind speed up even more. The wind seems to be out of the west nw so you can pretty much be pointed into it and still have the panels to the South. The wind can be mild and last for a few hours or a few days or it can last for 2 days and rock and roll.

Other than that I usually step outside in my jps with a coffee and enjoy a blue sky warm sun and 70 degrees. Last winter was very mild with no real wind storms and almost no rain. The year before had two that weren't dirt carriers but very gusting. When these storms happen it can still be 70 degrees and sunny. The so I may not be real bright because of the Dust but there are still no clouds up there.

From my experience it's never been as bad in the Q but it does get windy. Just like any other place if you go to the Q or Yuma or the river or Phoenix and only stay a week or two or even a month you may not experience the best or worst. You are in the desert so it is dusty. It's not grass or fields where everything is rooted in and covering the dirt. Most of the time you can have the windows open if it's windy and Dusty we close the windows and run the air conditioner.

There really aren't any bugs there because it's too dry. There is a lot of life in the ground to escape the heat. I have heard Of rattlesnakes twice. A small one bit a lady's dog that was sitting under her lawn chair by a campfire one night and another guy in SoCal said that he'd seen one in the brush when he was walking. I have climbed the 2000 foot mountains out there and been in washes and I've never run into a rattlesnake. Some will say that you won't see rattlesnakes in the winter but that's not true of all of the species some of them don't hibernate they sort of semi hibernate.


Because it's desert you really don't have many tall trees so you're very few obstacles over head to worry about. Tall trees don't do well in Wind either so you see a lot more scrub type stuff out there. It seldom rains but when it does it must rain very hard because it creates huge washers and tears stuff up. The rainy season is not during the winter.

I've spent a good amount of winter time in Texas but not the Rio Grande Valley. After 6 years of looking at this stuff on the internet I notice that the Rio Grande Valley has years when people say the weather was fantastic and there's times when they say it's not so good. So it's just like the desert or Florida. I could go to the Rio Grande Valley for a week or two or month and say that it rained a lot. Or if I went all season long for a few years I'd get a better idea of what the weather is really like by seeing a bigger picture.

You can probably find nice RV parks around the Houston Livingstone College Station but to me it's not a tourist type feel. It can get a slight dust of snow and it can get ice storms covering your car but the ground never freezes. I've also been there in the winter when it was nice all the time and the most I ever put on was a light jacket and even then it was sunny. If they do get an ice storm everyone down there thinks the world's coming to an end and they all storm Walmart and buy out all the water and batteries. We just look out the windowand laugh.

I traveled back and forth to Florida but not spent a lot of time in the gulf states. When I've stayed for a few days in Louisiana and Mississippi I get noseeum bites. Noseeum are common to swampy areas and bayous. There something about the eggs being layed in the mangroves and the tide being part of the life cycle. From what people tell me the noseeum are like mosquitoes in the respect that they will bite some people and not others. The difference with the 2 is that the mosquito is penetrating your skin with a stinger the noseam Burrows under your skin and is alive in there. Depending on the part of the country they call him noseam gnats stingers Midge. They form welts and itching that can be so bad that you will wake up grinding your legs or scratching. They are also like mosquitoes as far as when they're worse. Mosquitoes are often out in the early evening if you avoid them then and then come out later they'll be okay. Noseeums like the shade and nighttime so once the sun gets real hot during the day there's usually not a problem. They can be very bad in the grass even when the sun is out because that's where they're taking shelter out of the Sun.

I have been to North Central Florida during the winter and not had any problem with them at all. There's probably plenty of Inland Florida that has no problem but I would also say that it could be different in the summer.

I spent 8 days at malaquite campground right on the golf out on Padre Island. A lot of things started to rust and the exterior hardware was corroding, the wheels on my year old truck we're starting to rust. It's usually Breezy and sunny but the air is very harsh because of the salt.

So there are some characteristics of each area that don't change but a person could spend the winter in one area and think that it's terrible because of the weather that year. So we have to suffer through all this and find our favorite places.