We did it our way!


SCcamper

Junior Member
When we did our full time RV traveling, we were fully retired. We didn’t have an agenda other than wanting to travel America. I had spent 41 years working for the USN, 31 active service and 10 as a journeyman aircraft mechanic at the Naval Aviation Depot, Jacksonville, FL. Linda and I were married at ages 16 & 19. We are husband and wife and best friends. After our two boys got to school age Linda went to work, she worked for the Navy Exchange (NEX) for many years and was a buyer for them before she went into real estate where she excelled as a property manager.

Now, there are many descriptions for full time RVing. For us, it was something we did by constantly moving from place to place for nearly 5 years. We traveled in the north in the summers and in the south in the winters. Our longest stops were in the south each year. Next longest was visiting family. On the road we seldom stopped for more than 10 days. Our longtime friends from our Navy years started full timing a year before us. They kept sending us notes and pictures or their travels and we got hooked. We sold our home at Jacksonville, FL and nearly everything in it. We purchased a 38’ 5th wheel and a Dodge dually with the Cummins diesel, and the adventures began. We traveled with our friends about 60% of the time. Having families in different parts of the country was the primary reason for the other 40%.

This is going to be a random posting of places we traveled to and things we saw along the way. The first year was a big learning experience. We learned about trailer and tow vehicle weights and how to manage them. We found that the original tires were not for full timing and upgraded to some with more load capacity reserves. We learned there were parks with only gray water dumping and to carry a “blue boy”. We never boondocked or parked in someone’s parking lot. However, we did purchase a Honda 2000 generator for emergency use. Our normal traveling days were somewhere between 200 – 300 miles a travel day. We seldom made reservations unless it was over a holiday or just someplace, we wanted to stop for a week or so.

Our first trip north out of Jacksonville took us to a KOA CG at Wade, NC. My parents and brothers all lived in nearby Fayetteville. We stayed for a week. We had a large grassy site with a FHU and CATV. We got a lot of visitors when one of my brothers parked his little fishing truck under the hitch of our trailer.

In the beginning we stayed at a lot of KOAs. You just can’t compare any one of them with another in another location. They are independently managed with a similar CG and amenities.



I didn’t take lots of pictures until I got me a little Sony, point and shoot, with a variable lens up to 10X. This first picture is of our rig, road ready. The other is my brothers truck parked under the fivers hitch.

1 Fasteagle .JPG1a KOA Wade, NC.JPG
 

SCcamper

Junior Member
Iola, KS

Once upon a time while crossing Kansas on US-54 with no particular place to spend the night we spotted a billboard on the outskirts of Iola advertising the RV park. It turned out to be a rather new and modern, smallish, RV park/storage facility. The owner/manager was a young fellow with a goal of 1st class service for all customers on the top of his list.

We spent two nights there. Had a wonderful dinner at a restaurant recommended by the RV park manager. The next day we visited the Veterans Memorial Wall and took a Trolly ride around town.

Stop by and spend a night if you’re passing through. You might extend a day to take in the atmosphere.

Here are pictures of our parking site.KS - Iola RV Park 1.JPGKS - Iola RV Park 2.JPG
 

SCcamper

Junior Member
Minot, ND
One year we followed US-2 from the Michigan UP all the way to Minot, ND before heading south down US-83.
Most of our stops were 1 or 2 days. At Grand Forks, ND we spent 5 days at the USAFB. They have those big air refueling tankers there.

Our next scheduled stop was a reservation at the Minot USAFB. However, they had mistakenly given our reserved FHU site to someone else. We wanted to stay in the area for at least 10 days. It was for the 4th of July holidays, and we wanted to take a side trip up into Canada. We called around and got really lucky. A three-rig caravan had canceled their stay at the Roughrider CG in Minot. The manager said the sites were FHU and we could stay up to two weeks. The sites were grassy and arraigned for side-by-side parking. The CG was well maintained and the facilities were always clean. They delivered a few bundles of firewood to our site which was a nice service. The weather was great, and we went up into Canada twice while there.
 

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SCcamper

Junior Member
Roosevelt State Park - Morton, MS

Driving into this SP from I-20, all the roads were paved as were the parking sites. It’s kind of out in the boonies but a nice place for a couple of days of quiet camping. We were traveling with our friends in the Montana. Our trailers are 35’ & 38’ fivers. With trucks attached the rigs fit nicely into the sites assigned to us. From our site I could walk down the hill behind our trailer to the lake. I got some nice pan fish but nothing larger.

Our sites were FHU but getting a dish signal wasn’t possible and we have over 200’ of cable. We did get good reception from our bat antennas. They got all the major channels.

 

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