live. work. dream.

People are shocked when they learn that two geeks like us don’t have a GPS. But we just don’t like the thought of having one more electronic gadget to occupy space in our minds, and dealing with the idiosyncrasies and upgrades that usually accompany them. A cell phone is bad enough.

So, how do we find our way through this great big continent without a GPS? Paper maps! Imagine that! They don’t need batteries or uploading, they usually make it obvious enough to tell which roads are decent enough for our rig to travel on, and they don’t need upgrading unless you spill your coffee on them.

For general navigation through North America, I use a notebook-sized Rand McNally map that has just enough detail to show us secondary roads that can get us off the Interstates. But when we want to get off the beaten path and travel the blue highways, I’ll use state-specific maps, which we rarely pay for. We get the most current versions for free at welcome centers on the Interstate, Chamber of Commerce offices, and tourism bureaus.

For our extended stays in Colorado, one of the best paper navigation systems we have is our trusty Gazeteer atlas. There’s a  Gazeteer for every state in the nation, at around $20 each. They’re especially useful for cheapskate wanderers like us, as they show topography, designate between public and private lands, recreation spots, campgrounds (private and public), and include other handy tips for getting around.

Over the last three years on the road, there’s only been a few occasions where a GPS really would’ve helped us. But all in all, even when things don’t go according to plan and we end up going miles out of our way on some Forest Service road, there’s a sense of danger and adventure in those travels that are the stuff memories are made of. If you’re never really lost with a GPS, what fun is that?

We’ll take our paper maps any day. How about you?

What’s going on here? Neal is saving Jim from having a panic attack.

I must thank this former mechanic for his quick thinking. After trying desperately to find a level spot on their property to put our trailer, we realized the spot I had chosen was a bit too steep. It would have been OK if I parked facing uphill, but we like to face northwest for best solar positioning. But that’s another post.

So what happened? All the bumps and maneuvering must have dislodged a retainer bolt from the shaft between our two front leveling jacks. We didn’t realize this until I was raising the trailer to hitch back up, and noticed only one leg was lifting. The other was planted firmly in the ground. OK, no need to panic, we found the bolt and replaced it in the shaft that keeps both legs moving in unison.

So what’s this about quick thinking? Neal immediately asked if I had a tape measure. Since one leg had already raised, we needed to return it to the same length as the other before securing the shaft. I probably would have discovered this only after retracting the legs all the way. Well, at least one of them.

By measuring the planted leg, and extending the other until it matched, we were able to replace the bolt just once. Thanks again Neal. Once a mechanic always a mechanic, I guess.

I’m embarrassed to say that like most Americans, Jim and I have done relatively little foreign travel. We’ve been to Spain, Canada and Mexico, and that’s it. But while we do aspire to be globe hoppers, until we feel like we’ve uncovered enough of the best places in this gigantic country of ours, we’ll stick to the highways and byways of America.

Even after two years of living on the road, Jamie Jensen’s book Road Trip USA: Cross Country Adventures on America’s Two Lane Highways has been helping us uncover countless hidden gems along the way. With our limited bookshelf space in the rig, this is one book that we’ll never let go of.

See What’s Really Out There

The newest edition of Road Trip USA has just been released, along with two pocket guides – Road Trip USA Pacific Coast Highway Guide and Road Trip USA Route 66 Guide. If you’re like us, and drive the blue highways instead interstates, while seeking local Mom and Pop cafes and sticking it to Starbucks, you need these books.

Jamie Jensen’s books suggest 11 distinct road trips bisecting the U.S. From north to south, or east to west, the classic routes include The Pacific Coast Highway, Route 66, the Great River Road, and the Appalachian Trail. Detailed maps and clear directions to plenty of points of interest provide for unlimited day trips and side excursions. You’ll also find accurate contact information for lodging, car rental companies, state tourism boards, and road condition numbers.

The best part of Jamie’s books are their emphasis on finding the quirkier, offbeat attractions and towns across America. While there’s enough useful information about major cities and attractions to give you a head start on your research, Road Trip Nation will help you plan more unusual itineraries.

Plan Your Next Offbeat Adventure

The Atomic Tourist, for instance, might select a route from the Trinity Test Site in New Mexico, to the Titan Missile Museum in San Xavier, AZ, to Arco, Idaho, home of the remains of the Experimental Breeder Reactor Number One.

Music lovers will enjoy discovering blues festivals in the south, and cowboy gatherings in the West.

Teetotalling travelers can find their way from the wineries of Westfield, NY to Napa, CA, to the world’s biggest six pack in Lacrosse, WI. They’ll also learn to steer clear of Shamrock Texas on St. Patrick’s Day, even though they could kiss an actual piece of the Blarney Stone in that town’s Elmore Park. Why stay away? Because Shamrock is a dry town.

Road Trip USA identifies attractions one might easily otherwise miss, like the birthplace (and burial site) of On the Road author Jack Kerouac, just 20 miles off highway 2 in Lowell, MA. And how else would you know where the geographical center of North America is? (the answer: Rugby, ND). You’ll discover things like just how many places in the U.S. claim to be the home of Paul Bunyan. Statues of the Lumberjack giant can be found from Maine to Minnesota to our old stomping grounds of Northern California.

It’s also a useful tool that teaches you how to properly pronounce town names before you arrive and look like a tourist. Learn how Sequim, WA is really annunciated (“Skwim”), or Cairo, IL (Ki-Ro).

The only problem with Road Trip USA is that there is so much information, if you forget to consult it before planning your itinerary, you could miss important landmarks like we have. For instance, we passed by the World Largest Frying Pan in Long Beach, WA, and in that same trip, drove right through Curt Cobain’s hometown of Abereen, WA (may he rest in peace!) without even knowing it until later when flipping through the book.

Try Jamie’s Handy Pocket Guides for Short Trips

Road Trip USA’s Pacific Coast Highway Guide and the Road Trip USA Route 66 Guide are a neat addition to Jamie’s encyclopedia of quirky attractions. They’re jam packed with useful information, and you won’t have to lug around the biblical-sized Road Trip USA book if you’re just traveling within those geographic areas.

As West Coast natives, we’ve frequented a lot of his selections in the Pacific Coast Highway Guide, and have to say that his descriptions are accurate, truthful and unbiased.

We wish we had these books when we lived on the West Coast, as Jamie reveals stuff about places we’ve been to but were oblivious to some local finds, like the Olympic Game Farm in Washington. We thought it was a repulsive canned hunt farm, but it turns out to be a home to retired Hollywood animal actors!

The Route 66 Guide is also handy for anyone traveling near that famous route. You don’t have to follow it exactly, as Jamie offers lots of tips and ideas for attractions that are within a reasonable distance of the original highway. We especially enjoyed how he lists local indie radio stations for drivers to listen to, which can give you a taste of local flavor far better than any syndicated radio station can.

So turn off that satellite radio, drive off the interstates and onto the blue highways, and go find the real spirit of America, because believe it or not, it is alive and well. You just have to look harder these days to find it. But first, pick up your copy of Road Trip USA today.

Stay tuned for a guest post from Jamie, about ways you can save money on the road while traveling . . .

In late 2006, Jim and I were secretly scheming about dropping out of society. Around that time, we went to see our friends Joel and Lynn get hitched, and it was at their reception that we met Joel’s dad, Bob. Suddenly it felt like the universe had conspired to put us together, because over wine and appetizers we learned that Bob was a former fulltime RVer. It was so exciting to meet a real live fulltimer for the first time. He made us laugh with his funny stories of life on the road for nearly 10 years.

We hinted around that we were thinking of traveling for a while, and Bob wholeheartedly encouraged us to “do it now while you’re young!” He was also the person first to tell us about Escapees, the RVing club for everyone, but especially geared toward meeting the needs of fulltimers. “They’re the best people you’ll ever meet!” he said.

After two years on the road, we finally took Bob’s advice and joined. Why did we wait so long? Well, when we started, we just didn’t know if this road tripping lifestyle was going to be a long-term thing. Once we knew we would be fulltimers for the forseeable future, we decided that it was time to relieve Jim’s sister of her generous help in handling our mail and banking issues. And we also wanted to get the hell out of California before we had to pay our vehicle registration and insurance policy extortion bills due in May. So we bit the bullet, and joined up.

Why Join Escapees?
I’m guessing that our Bad Boy neighbor here at Landa RV Park isn’t part of the Escapees establishment. But many other fulltimers we know join Escapees not just for the camaraderie, or their affordable RV parks and get-togethers, but also because the group is incredibly organized and offers us a place to call “home.” Literally. If you join the club, you can sign up for Escapees mail forwarding service and utilize their Livingston, Texas headquarters address for all of your household and business administrative needs. You can also use the address to declare Texas as your “home state” or “domicile,” once you’ve followed the proper procedures.

See, when you don’t rent or own a stick house anywhere, or have a place where you get mail, you literally don’t exist in the eyes of credit agencies, insurance companies, and so on. You can’t even register to vote!

Think about it: every single person in this country must have a “domicile” they call home. For those of us with homes on wheels, this can be a problem. Our RVs don’t count as homes in the eyes of The Man. Escapees solves this problem for us, by helping us to become Texans.

We went to the Escapees headquarters a few weeks ago. The people there were truly some of the nicest RVers we’ve ever met, and were so helpful in getting everything set up for us. We got a new mailing address, and registered our vehicles in Texas. We recently just got our driver’s licenses too, so now, we are official Texans.

For now, it feels pretty good to sport Texas license plates, since Californicator plates don’t exactly buy you a lot of respect in the rest of the country. We’ve met many people who like to pin the downfall of the U.S. economy on California’s greedy real estate market (Florida gets lumped in there too, however).

So today, we know we’re not really Texans, but we also don’t feel like Californians anymore either. Great. Now when people ask “where are you from?” they’re going to get an even longer story than before!

Recently, two friends hit the road. Being new to the RV lifestyle, they asked us if we can name one practical thing that we packed, which just can’t live without. After giving it some thought, we figured it out:

Our cast iron skillets.

Back in our stick house, we had a whole collection of Griswold and Lodge Cast Iron Cookwear. But seeing as they’re kind of heavy, we decided to bring just two of our favorites. We packed our 10″ chef’s pan, and an omlette pan, in addition to one fancy Calphalon pan that we rarely use.

Cast iron is so versatile, and not very expensive. You can use these pans for stovetop cooking, baking, broiling and even over a campfire. And because you don’t need a lot of water to clean them up, they’re great for boondocking. Our Calphalon pan isn’t nearly that versatile.

Best. Cookwear. Ever.

Ever since we got our rig, we’ve been fortunate to have a wealth of information at our displosal. I’m not talking about the obligatory gaggle of retired full-timers who gather any time you attempt to back up your rig. I’m referring to our rig’s solar power system.

My brother in law Rich O’Connell is a brilliant electrical engineer. He has grown a successful solar business with my sister, built his own off-grid home, designed multi-gigawatt systems, and patented a solar panel washing system. He also designed the RV power system we rely on for boondocking.

Recently, I got to meet another expert; Solar Mike. He operates The Sun Works from his solar powered rigs on the slabs. Mike knows the DC side of the business and how to get the absolute most out of what you got.

That’s why I was happy to be at Slab City when we considered upgrading our system. I had access to experts from extreme ends of the solar industry. Either one of them could have easily told me I had a bad battery. Which I would have known, and could have avoided, had I been servicing my batteries as they required.

It just didn’t seem like we were getting the run time out of our batteries that we expected. Loving to boondock as much as we do, we explained our issue to Mike and asked him for an estimate for upgrading the system. He immediately discovered one of our batteries was weak, and pointed out how dry it was. Bone dry.

Yes, for you long time readers out there, we did learn this lesson before.

I might have kicked my feet and mumbled a bit, but – don’t tell Rene – I still think it was worth the $95 we spent on two new batteries to have not been pulling them out and checking them every month for the past year. Truth is, we just forgot.

Yup, our upgrade cost us less than a hundred bucks. And it was so cheap because Mike took our good battery as a trade-in. The ones he carried were a bit better, and I wanted a matching pair. Not bad since we were considering spending over a grand on couple new panels.

Had we spent the $4000+ on the original system design Rich gave us, we might have never even had this discussion. But having worked this over with Mike, I now know where in our 24′ trailer we can fit six maintenance free 6 volt batteries – much better suited for our use than the two 12 volts we have.

And having done it a couple times now, I know it’s not such a big deal to pull our batteries and check on them. We even carry some distilled water now so we have it when needed.

I also know now that an MPPT charge controller is where we’ll invest our dollars the next time we complain about our system. That’s one thing Rich and Mike both agreed on – that any Maximum Point Power Tracking charge controller will boost performance performance of our PV array. Then we can start talking about boosting the battery bank and adding panels again.

When we will make that investment is the $3000 question. But that all depends on where we’re going to be purchasing property come Spring, and whether we will need to upgrade what we have or build a larger off-grid system in a shed or trailer. And we’re not even sure where we’ll be next month.

I know I’ve said before that it is important for full-time RVers to look into rig issues immediately. But one can only look into certain things so many times, before you just have to give up and live with it.

We’ve written plenty about our brakes so I won’t delve any further into the ugly details. But that “nuisance noise” we were told we had by one shop – not the one that ripped us off – came back pretty quick a while ago and never went away.

When we were visiting the Davenports before the holidays, Randy convinced me that if you want something done right you really do have to do it yourself. He has a garage fully equipped with tools, and knows how to use them. So we tore apart our brand new brake system and applied brake silencer spray to the back of all the pads. Something the last Dodge shop we went to – the one that did rip us off – did not do when they installed them.

Upon completion, I was confident we had conquered the brake squeal once and for all. And I was happy it didn’t cost a dime.

This time it took almost a couple weeks before the persistent chirp returned every time we applied the brakes.

After researching Chrysler brake issues, and noticing the same squeak coming from various other Dodge trucks at many an intersection, we’ve decided we can live with this.

Or as this AA1Car report on Silencing Disc Brake Squeal says …

“If an inspection of the brake system reveals no serious faults such as worn, loose or damaged parts, you have a choice to make. You can live with the noise, or you can pay to eliminate the noise.”

Well, with brand new brakes and a squeak that can’t be eliminated, our choice is simple – we are going to live with it. Or I’ll try to fix it myself the again next time we get fed up. Now if only I could learn how to do my own front end work, or learn to live with how our truck drifts when hands are released from the wheel …

We took our Dodge Ram 2500 to a Big-O shop for an alignment after noticing this new issue. After waiting for a couple hours and seeing them test drive the truck a couple times, they told us it didn’t need an alignment. According to the computer, it was fine.

But I don’t a computer to know when my truck won’t cruise in a straight line. Which it still wouldn’t do, after they charged us for the alignment it didn’t need. So they rotated the tires. And it still drifted, though not nearly as bad. Here we go again.

Queen of the Road – A Book Review

The True Tale of 47 States, 22,000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband, and a Bus with a Will of Its Own

by Doreen Orion

There are two kinds of fulltime RVer couples on the road. There are couples where both partners really love the lifestyle, and can’t think of living any other way. Then, there are couples where one partner loves it, and the other was dragged on the bus kicking and screaming. Some couples’ personalities fit perfectly into fulltime RVing, while others try it, then put their RV on the market before summer’s end.

If you happen to be the reluctant RVer, Doreen Orion’s book – Queen of the Road – is perfect for you.

Read the rest of this entry »

For anyone who wants to see what it costs to live a (relatively) frugal lifestyle on the road for seven months, here’s our last Expense Report of 2008. It shows December numbers, along with totals from June to December. The most surprising finding? We actually lived on $23,597. That’s $11,799 each. I think the last time I lived on that kind of dough was back in high school.

Our Top Six Expenses from June to December 2008 were as follows:

1. Food: $3,725 total / $532 average each month (about the same as last year, same timeframe)
2. Truck: $3,621 total / $517 average each month ($2k was for the hideous brake system overhaul)
3. Insurance: $2,709 total / $387 average each month (our State Farm agent is really good)
4. Fuel: $2,364 total / $338 average each month (not as bad as I thought)
5. Rent: $1,745 total / $249 average each month (workamping rocks!)
6. Booze; $864 total / $123 average each month ($100 more than last year…can I blame it on the economy?)

For you detail oriented readers, here’s a PDF with all of the gruesome details.

Didn’t mean to be such a Holiday Downer. So here’s a quick recipe for some Holiday Cheer…

Let’s get one thing straight first: When it comes to fine cooking and cocktails, I don’t like recipes. But I will turn to one for inspiration and run with it. For instance … Liz’s theme cocktail at her Christmas party this year was a pomegranate martini of sorts.

I forget the exact name on the printed recipe placed by the ingredients, but I was more than happy to oblige as mixologist for the night and improvised with the following:

• Lemon Smirnoff Vodka
• Pomegranate Juice
• Cointreau
• Fresh Lemon
• Soda Water (Optional)

I proceeded to make a pitcher of mix as requested so we could shake, chill, and serve upon request. I doubled the first batch, but it was way too dark. I mean really, three cups of juice!?

I like to taste the vodka in my martinis. I also left out the soda water, after all it was “optional” and no martini I know of calls for bubbles.

The end result was pretty tasty though … if I were to try and remember how I’d got there – for you recipe minded folks – I’d say start with a couple ounces of vodka, add a half ounce Cointreau, splash with pomegranate juice, rim your glass with the lemon, and save the soda for the morning. My only change might be to opt for Absolut Citron inshtead of Shmirnoff.

Living in a stick house with a well stocked bar, this is all fine and dandy. Believe me, ours was well stocked. But living on the road has it’s limitations when it comes to libations. With a cabinet full of bottles we once enjoyed the variety and choice of rum, vodka, tequila, gin, whiskey, brandy, or some combination thereof.

Living in an RV, we now drink the cocktail of the month. Without room to stock multiple bottles, we now focus on quality over quantity and buy one big bottle of good stuff at a time. It’s either Margarita time, or time for a Bombay Sapphire tonic. In a plastic glass of course. Or this time of year, perhaps brandy and cocoa in a travel mug.

So what am I to do with the large bottle of Bailey’s and two real glasses I got in this year’s White Elephant present exchange? Trying to polish off the sweet stuff by the time we hit the road will have us seeing more than pink elephants!