Milestone Mileage !

While not as productive a trip as we had hoped it would be in getting my Dad settled into his new digs at a rehab / long-term care facility – he's a had a tough last 6 months physically and mentally at 94 years old – the trip produced one significant highlight in our full-time RV journey:

Ding, ding, ding, ding!

Our 2020 Tiffin Open Road 36LA just surpassed 50,000 miles driven since we picked it up new 4 years and 4 months ago!

 

While we had high hopes with our decision to go full-time RV-ing more than 7 years ago, I don't think we ever imagined seeing and experiencing all the sights and destinations we've encountered in these past 50,000 miles. Twenty-five states visited for more than a simple overnight stay, with about 1/3^rd of them visited multiple times for different reasons. If not for COVID-inspired cancellations and delays, we'd probably have added 3-6 more states to that total.

Memories made with our grandson, Jace, hopefully which will last for a lifetime with him. Barbara started having Jace write in a journal every day on his last trip so he can refer back to what he saw, and we've added pictures of those encounters to help him remember the things he's enjoyed. He's visited almost half of the states we've traveled to, racking up more than 2 ½ years of motor home living with us.

We've met incredible people on our journey as well. Many are fellow Tiffin owners, but others who travel in some other brand of motor home or in 5^th wheels and travel trailers. Many we've met just by stopping by and saying hi (we greet as many Tiffin owners as we can), but we've also met so many people through our beloved lemon-beagle, Grover. He's too stinkin' cute for his own good, and he's always a conversation starter. Some folks we keep in touch with through this blog or on Facebook, while others we've managed to travel with on multiple occasions when our destinations and schedules coincide.

If there's one question we're always asked when speaking with RV-ers and non-RV-ers (besides the usual “How have you managed to not kill each other in that time frame?” - just kidding), is “What has been your favorite place to visit”? And while many stand out for very different reasons – the quirky places like Roswell, NM, The Thing museum just over the AZ border on I-10, and Carhenge in Alliance, Nebraska – Barbara and I both agree that two places make our “must-see” places to visit when traveling in the US, whether you're in an RV or not:

The Black Hills of South Dakota, especially the Rapid City / Custer State Park area, and the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

So many things are must-see places to visit in South Dakota. The obvious one is Mt. Rushmore just outside of Rapid City. But for us, it's not THAT you just go there; it's WHEN you go there. As in what time of day you go there. Barbara and I found this out completely by accident when visiting the area to get our South Dakota residency established before buying our motor home. We only had a day in Rapid City, and had checked into our hotel for the night and had our dinner at a local restaurant. With nothing else to do and wanting to see the sights, we decided on a quick drive up to Mt. Rushmore about 20 minutes away.

Our timing couldn't have been better. At the end of the day (this was more than 4 years ago, so I hope they still do this now), they ask active-duty military and veterans if they want to participate in the flag lowering out front. At the time I wanted to spend this visit with Barbara by my side, so I declined the offer. Then as the sun starts to go down, they play the Star-Spangled Banner, and as the last notes of our national anthem fade away, they bring the lights up on the monument. It's a very moving ceremony, and something every American should experience in their lifetime.

So the moral of the story is if you're going to see Mt. Rushmore, time your visit for about a half-hour before sunset for the best view of this national treasure.

Also be sure to take in Custer State Park and Wall, SD while out west. Sure, Wall Drug is a tourist trap, but if you're an RV-er, you have to try to get a spot on some BLM land just south of Wall at a place called 'The Wall At Wall'. It's prime boondocking land overlooking the Black Hills where you park on the edge of a cliff looking out over 300 feet above the Badlands. The view is spectacular!

The Outer Banks of North Carolina gets our vote for a couple of reasons; first, in one day we watched the sun rise up out of the water (the Atlantic Ocean) and set in another body of water (Pamlico Sound) with no land in either view. Pretty cool!

You're also close to Kitty Hawk, where the Wright brothers made their first powered flights. The Outer Banks also features one of the most annoying accesses to any area we've been to; namely, the Washington Baum bridge. It's a slab bridge more than a mile long built in 1994, and the architect and builders should be horsewhipped. We call it the 'Porpoise Bridge' because each slab is not joined smoothly, making the front end of the motor home bounce up and down for more than a minute. The slabs are timed wrong for longer vehicles like ours, and as I said, it's annoying to drive.

Finally, these 50,000 miles wouldn't have been as easy and enjoyable as they have been without the skilled craftsmen and women at Tiffin Motorhomes. Not that our Open Road 36LA is exactly the same as it came out of the factory in August of 2019. With upgrades to our bedroom slide mechanism and interior cabinets, our home on wheels is better than even we imagined it would have been when we started this journey.

All-in-all, a great milestone and a great decision. Here's hoping for many more relatively trouble-free miles in the next 4 years!

 

Oh, the driving we've seen . . . .

When you've spent as much time on the road as we have (50,000 miles behind the wheel of our motor home in the past 4+ years), you get to see a LOT of bad driving. And sure, every state has their bad drivers, but some states go out of their way to prove THEIR drivers are the worst. And to be fair, some of the really idiotic things we've seen drivers do probably have something to do with attempting to get out from behind or around our motor home (we've learned that NO ONE likes to be behind an RV of any kind), but you can tell that a great many of these people have practiced these moves before encountering us!

So here's to the really bad drivers in the good old USA!

Merging onto a highway

I've written a bit about this is the past, but this is a skill that apparently isn't taught in Driver's Education anymore. Two things to remember; it's an ACCELERATION lane, but there's a yield to highway traffic at the end. So if you don't get the first part right, the second part – especially the timing of the yield – becomes very important. Add in the fact that no one wants to get behind an RV, and you have a ready-made recipe for disaster waiting to happen dozens of times on an average drive day.

And what is it about certain drivers being unable to see the big blue 38-foot motor home coming right up beside them?!?!

Case in point: A rainy afternoon heading northbound on I-75 in Florida. I'm tooling along in my preferred spot in the right hand lane doing my usual 58 MPH. It's courteous and fuel-efficient, because everyone can pass me on the left, and I'm getting pretty close to 8 MPG at that cruise speed. Checking to the right, I see a young guy in a white pickup truck heading onto the highway, as he's probably done every day for months. But he's looking STRAIGHT AHEAD, and for some strange and unfathomable reason he has no peripheral vision, because he just keeps moving at EXACTLY my speed up the ramp way. Now, of course I have the option of slowing down and letting him in, but I'm just enough ahead of him to make that unwieldy for me, not to mention anyone driving behind me, so I hit my horn to get his attention. His head turns, he hits the breaks - resulting in his fishtailing on the wet pavement – and suddenly he has a reason to head home to change his pants!

Another case in point: Heading northbound on I-985 in Gainesville, GA; again doing my usual 58 MPH thing. I see nobody in my side view mirror as we're passing the on-ramp. Now, I'm fully PAST the on-ramp, when suddenly I hear the sound of rumble strips; you know, those grooves they cut into the pavement to wake you up if you fall asleep driving and veer off the road? I check to see if I might have somehow strayed from the straight and narrow, but of course, I'm perfectly fine. But now the sound of the rumble strips get even louder and closer! Looking out Grover's doggie window on the passenger side of the motor home, I see a pickup truck zipping UP THE BREAKDOWN LANE so that he could get in front of me! Then he cuts out into my lane so quickly he almost takes out my front end. (I guess the rumble strips were getting on his nerves)

Final merging point: I have lost count the number of times I have had to slam on my brakes to allow people to merge onto the highway because they won't accelerate fast enough, or refuse to yield the right of way to oncoming traffic. And in case you didn't know this, it's hard to suddenly stop or slow down a 28,300 lb motor home towing a car behind it.

Weaving in and out

I can't really chalk this one up to people who don't want to be behind a motor home, as this happens in front of us and on each side of us. I basically chalk this up to people who think their time is more valuable than anyone else's and don't give a damn about the safety of those around them. I also think there's a certain sense of indestructibility in some people; individuals who think nothing bad will happen to them no matter how reckless they tend to act.

Case in point: What is it about motorcyclists in Connecticut? I'll cite one instance, but it's happened multiple times as we've driven on I-84 through the Nutmeg State. The overall traffic speed is moving well above 65 MPH, so we're looking as if we're standing still in the right lane. All of a sudden, a series of at least 20 bikers pass us on the left (not unusual), but over the course of nearly 5 minutes, these bikers – all well spaced out and not in a group – begin a series of death-defying weaves in and out of all three lanes at speeds that had to exceed 80 MPH! They were routinely cutting in front of cars that only had about 4-5 car lengths between them, while a couple of them even used the breakdown lanes ON BOTH SIDES of the highway to get their thrills. I just don't get it.

And cars are not immune to the weaving bug. While not concentrated in any state like the above example, we routinely see high-end BMW's and Jag's looking for any opening they can take to get a few car lengths ahead of the great unwashed. And again, they feel pretty sure that I can stop my motor home before hitting them if they have miscalculated their timing and distance estimates. One of these days I'll be very mad and they'll be very surprised that I could not.

The 4-lane change to get to an exit

This happens more often than you might think. And some of this can be attributed to an RV blocking the view to the right of many drives. After all, we're about the size of a billboard, and we're not sitting way up 40 feet or so above the freeway. We're right on your eye level. Now, this doesn't excuse bad behavior; in fact, it SHOULD make more drivers conscious of their surroundings so they can take time to plan their moves accordingly. But they don't. Instead, they make their way over to the fast lane, then find themselves between a rock (us) and a hard place (their exit). At this point, survival mode kicks in and they dive towards their exit like a hawk after a mouse, literally not caring one bit who they have to cut off.

Bad Truckers

This has been the most disappointing aspect of our full-time travels. Growing up, truckers were professionals who were careful of those around them, followed the rules of the road, and more importantly, they were polite drivers. Not so these days. I still think the majority of truckers are professionals, but that percentage has dwindled. And I get it; car drivers don't make the roads easier for truckers. Frankly, some RVers are also to blame, with RV's taking up valuable parking spots in small rest areas and truck stops that force truckers to park on ramps and breakdown lanes near rest stops. We find Walmarts, Cracker Barrels, Flying J's and even the occasional Camping World just to avoid taking up spots in rest areas. Oh, and I still flash my lights to tell a trucker when it's safe for him to move over in front of me.

Construction zones

Do American drivers read anymore? I ask this because some of the worst driving offenders are the people who will approach a construction zone and ignore the lane closure signs until the very last minute. These days with electronic signs being installed on most major highways, the amount of valuable information has never been greater. Usually construction zones are announced 5 or 10 miles beforehand. Bright orange signs telling you which lane is being closed begin at the 2 mile mark, and are repeated at the 1 mile, half mile and so many feet in advance. Yet tens of thousands of American drivers will drive right up to the cones marking the lane closure, and try to get into a line of vehicles that have been patiently waiting – sometimes 15 minutes or more – in the correct lane that is remaining open.

Is it arrogance? Stupidity? Inattention? Or is it just the “I'm too important to wait in line” syndrome? Either way, while I used to let these people merge in front of me, I no longer do so, moving my RV partly into the next lane on occasion to thwart their efforts to gain entrance. In addition, they now get to sit behind my big 'ol RV for a mile or two through the construction zone and have their view blocked for a long time. Serves them right.

Anyway, now you know that it's not just your state that does these things, but virtually every state (or at least the 25 states we've been through in the past 4 years). American drivers are bad, and they're getting worse.