It’s a swampy night here in Vero, and we’ve spent the last few hours swatting away bugs while enjoying the last of the holiday season. This monumental year is coming to a close, and even after thousands of miles and too many towns to count, we are both nowhere closer to deciding where we want to live, or what we want to be when we grow up.
We have our favorite regions, but really, the only decision we’ve been able to make, is to decide not to decide. In essence, that is a decision of sorts, right?
I just had to share this classic RVing video I found on YouTube. Ya gotta love the old school slide out (at 01:21) circa 1937! You can find this and other funny RV videos in our Road Trip Favorites video playlist.
How appropriate since it talks about RVers flocking to the “Land of the Palms” and we are currently sweltering in Florida. Note the date of this post!
As we chase the sun from North to South, we are living out an eternal summer. It’s wonderful being in Floriduh, where we have all the farm fresh produce we want, and the sun shines all day while the rest of the country is freezing their butts off. But life in Margaritaville makes it a little hard for us to get into that ol’ Christmas spirit. It seems so ridiculous to hear a country version of White Christmas on the radio, when it’s eighty one freekin’ degrees outside, humid as all hell, and we’re sipping Mojitos.
But last Saturday morning, bright and early at 8 AM, Santa came to visit us at Jetty Park. He wanted to make sure us fulltimers knew what time of year it really is.
After Santa’s visit, I got a little sad that we won’t be seeing our families in California this Christmas. But still, we’re glad to be escaping the annual consumer shopping orgy, and not doing much of anything on the 25th. Now, our New Year’s Eve plans are another story . . .
Workamping can be anything from being a campground host, to running an office at a KOA campground. Sometimes it pays, often it doesn’t, but it always includes free rent of a full hookup site and other perks, like free laundry. It’s a great way to stretch your budget.
This will be the first Halloween in 41 years when I didn’t spend weeks preparing for a big party complete with decorations, props, costumes, and… oh yeah, birthday cake.
Having been born on All Saint’s Day – or Dia De Los Muertos to be precise – I have always enjoyed my birthdays in full costume. As I grew older, the parties I threw for myself got bigger and more elaborate. Last year, we made sure my 40th was the mother of all blowouts. It would be the last in our stick house, so we raised the roof and scared all the spirits away with the help of DJ Headcase and his special guest, none other than Buck Calhoun.
But enough about myself. I really wonder where we will be and what we will do this year without all our boxes of costumes and props we’ve collected and built over the years. Unlike a number of full-timers we’ve met, we did not bring our lawn ornaments along with us. I think it’s great, but ya gotta wonder where they keep all this stuff.
Come September, scenes like this put a wide smile on campground owner’s faces.
We have often considered buying a campground when this trip is over. So whenever we can find an owner who has time to chat about what it’s like to run one, we love to listen and hear about what it’s really like. When we arrived at one resort in Maine, it was a quiet weekday, and the owner was happy to share some advice about the realities of running a campground.
Whenever we find locals willing to chat (of which there are many in the rural places we visit), we ask loads of questions about the area, their work, the weather, you name it. They think we’re playing “20 Questions,” but what we’re really doing is trying to figure out:
where the heck we might move to, permanently
and what on earth we’ll do for a living
As summer winds down, the locals have more time to talk. Information is getting thrown at us as quickly as the summer days are going by. The following is a summary of what we’ve learned recently, so we can look back on it a year from now — if we do decide to settle down somewhere . . . or start to run out of money, whichever comes first!
For the record, the trees all over the hills around Deadwood, SD have always been dead. One can only assume that’s how the town got it name.
But one thing I enjoy about this full-time RVing thing is how the view from our kitchen table is always different. and whenever I look up through the skylight in our shower – yeah, that’s cool too – I get a kick out of the different view depending on where we’ve stopped.
Granted, it’s a gamble. Sometimes the view is breathtaking like at Silver Lake in the Sierras, Seedhouse in the Rockies, or Crags Campground in Bridgeport. And other times, it’s a freeway or the side of someone else’s big rig. Today we happen to be looking out at the side of an Intruder, the driver of which it seems is intent on leaving the exterior lights on all night. It’s give and take though, a very brief walks puts us deep in the Black Hills complete with old abandoned mining equipment.
So please be considerate to your RVing neighbors and turn off your exterior lights. They may shine directly into someone else’s bedroom window. And if you don’t like the view, draw your shades and rest assured that it will probably be better the next place you stop.
Worked most of the day yesterday, finally developing our long-awaited road trip soundtrack page – complete with lyrics to classic travel tunes we’ve deemed appropriate for our trip, local radio stations that have stuck on our dial, and interesting internet radio streams.
But I couldn’t leave Devil’s Tower without a report of this awesome place I’ve always wanted to visit. OK, technically, I did leave since I’m writing this from our new home for the week at Whistler Gulch Campground in Deadwood South Dakota. But I digress…
Traveling across Wyoming, we saw numerous signs stressing that we were in cattle country. As if all the herds weren’t enough to indicate such. As a vegetarian, René was especially amused by the billboards boldy telling us to “Eat Beef!” Personally, I took it as a sign to seek out and grill a great big Wyoming steak. And of course, I would just have to do my best Richard Dreyfus impression by sculpting a replica of the Bear’s Lodge from my mashed potatoes.
After a long day of driving, the last thing you want to hear is that the only campground in a small town is booked. But of course, that’s exactly what we were told when we called the KOA in Devils Tower, WY at 4;30 pm on a Monday. We were only about 50 miles from the KOA, and they are the only game in town. Not wanting to boondock at a rest area on I-90, we pulled out our Woodall’s Directory and found a small listing for Keyhole State Park, about 35 miles away.
The Eastern Wyoming countryside approaching Keyhole is dry, scrubby and blazing hot. Keyhole State Park is a reservoir (really, really low right now), in the middle of dry high country. We weren’t expecting much, just a spot for the night that would be better than the dumpy “RV Park” we saw in Moorcroft, the nearest town to Devils Tower.
We pulled up, tired and hungry and expecting a low quality experience. But what we are learning most on this trip is, don’t assume before you get somewhere, and open your eyes before drawing any conclusions on a place. We were relieved when we arrived at Keyhole.
For just $12 a night, you get:
huge, shady, level RV spots
no hookups, but there’s drinking water (you pump it )
clean, new restrooms
walking distance to the lakeshore
big new picnic tables
walking / bike paths
a gorgeous prairie and waterfront view
Keyhole is well worth the 9 mile detour off I-90. If all of Wyoming’s state parks are this nice, we are impressed. In comparison to the California State Park System (sorry Ranger Mike and Cindi), Wyoming’s parks rank high above the $20-something a night, no-hookup spots we had in CA, where you have to make reservations six months ahead of time and solitude is impossible because campers are crammed right next to each other.
If you’re in a tight spot on the way to Devils Tower or the Dakotas, be sure to make Keyhole State Park a stop. You won’t regret it.
It’s a swampy night here in Vero, and we’ve spent the last few hours swatting away bugs while enjoying the last of the holiday season. This monumental year is coming to a close, and even after thousands of miles and too many towns to count, we are both nowhere closer to deciding where we want to live, or what we want to be when we grow up.
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