RV Life

Thanks to all for your comments and advice. This was the most constructive dialog I have been a part of lately. As a recently retiree, it is still hard to operate 'off schedule'. But perhaps I'm not too old to learn new tricks.
Pigdoc

Same here. We travel about 250-300 miles per day, unless we are in a big hurry to get somewhere. We try to stay 3 days and relax and check out the area. I feel we are still young 58 and 61 and it tires us out when we travel faster. We have done 650 days and really don't like it! We're retired, it's not a race....

When RV traveling we found it most comfortable to spend 8-10 hours campsite to campsite, moving 100-300 miles a day. All sightseeing is done enroute, except major destinations where we might stay in one place 3-4 days.

RV or not, spending the whole day driving is tiring. Spending the same amount of time having fun, or stopping to rest, is not so tiring.

We had broad enough interests that we could always find interesting stops enroute, particularly if we stay off the Interstate highways which intentionally bypassed all the interesting small towns (they were supposed to avoid big cities too, but Ike lost that battle). There are trips we would make several times a year, for thirty years, and we could still find new interesting places to stop along the way.

Try a change of pace. The journey is the adventure.

Take your time. Much of the enjoyment of full-timing is being able to stop if you see something interesting and if you pull into a park you like and feel like sitting for a few days, that's what you do. Understandble to travel long distances if you are on a schedule, but if retired - who say you have to get to that location by a certain day. So what if you get back home a week or two later than you originally planned on. Slow down and smell the roses.

Recent retirees often have difficulty transitioning from the vacation mode of traveling to the retirement mode. Slow down, drive a bit, spent a few days or week, then drive a bit again.

About 4 to 6 times a year we travel from GA to NJ. It's about a 800 mile trip, one way. We do it in a day. In the motor home it is about a 14 hour drive, in the car it is about a 12 hour drive.

We could probably take two weeks to go from GA to NJ and still not see everything there is to see in that stretch. Once the kids are out of the house, we'll probably do that, but for now, the destination is most important to us.

-Michael

I've been exploring Florida for 20 years and still haven't seen it all. I limit driving to 5-6 hours daily and don't do 1 night stops

I agree with the lower miles per-day posters.

My suggestion is to look for places along a route or nearby that tie into your interests, and pause a night or two, or even just a few hours. It really refreshes you during a long travel stretch cross-country. But it also makes the traveling memorable, not just a tedious means to reach a single place.

You could save ideas clipped out or jotted on paper in a folder for things to see en route for big trips you'd like to make - comments and info from this forum, websites, or from magazines about good campgrounds, scenic places, new attractions or historic ones. Factory tours, flea markets, specialty food/farms/winery regions, whatever you enjoy.

I've become much more interested in history since we bought the RV. There are free National Park Service folders with maps and points of interest for the Oregon Trail, Mormon Pioneer Trail, Pony Express, Erie Canalway, etc.

So far, we've followed the eastern and Midwestern part of the Lewis & Clark Trail. It was fun to camp by the water along the route and see a replica keelboat at Lewis & Clark State Park in Onawa, Iowa, for example. We hope to see the far western sites next year. We've enjoyed following Route 66, too.

Part of the benefit of being retired is taking your time. You may not have a lot of money, but you have plenty of time. As others have stated, 250-300 miles a day is the max. This works out to 5-6 hours of driving. Stop 2 days at a campground instead of overnight. Find something interesting in the area you've stopped in and have a look.

See if there's a local restaurant that Guy Fieri visited on Triple-D. Call it the Eat Your Way Across America tour. Keep a log of local cardiologists.

We rarely do one night stays while traveling to a destination. We like to go 4 hrs tops, but have, on occasion, traveled 5 or 6 hrs. We will stay 2 nights, which is one full day of no traveling, before moving on.