Camp Hosting at Bolding Mill COE

Over the years, Barbara and I have spoken to many fellow RVers who have taken on camp hosting duties. Their reasons vary from wanting to earn some extra money while on the road, to wanting to save on campground fees by staying in one place for an extended period of time, wanting to visit a particular area or enjoy a particular campground, or like us, to be able to spend time in an area for family reasons.

Camp hosting, or work camping, usually entails doing simple chores around the campground, like cleaning bathrooms, policing campsites when people check out, performing simple maintenance functions, or working in the campground office. It all depends on the campground and the contract being agreed to. All get you a free camp site for the duration of your contract; some pay a minimal stipend for hours worked. All with have a number of days and hours per day expected of you to work.

In our particular case working for Hall County, GA, who has a contract to manage a few Corps of Engineers campgrounds on Lake Lanier, we get a free camp site that has full hookups including sewer, which is not usually available in COE campgrounds, but no addition stipend. We have four days on duty and four days off, with a maximum of four hours per day we're expected to work. So it works out to be a maximum of 16 hours of work every 8 days on average. Frankly, that's a really nice deal, especially on a lake park with sewer hookups.

Our duties thus far are:

• Deep clean the two bath houses once every weekend day, with a cursory clean on a weekend early evening

• Cursory clean the bath houses on Tuesday-Thursday (deep clean if needed). The maintenance guy (Antonio) deep cleans the bath houses on Friday and Monday before and after each weekend as part of his regular duties.

• Once the busy summer season is in full swing, we'll be expected to deep clean them every day and a cursory clean each early evening.

• After Sunday checkout time, we check each camp site for trash left, or things left in the fire rings that don't belong there.

• I've taken to adopting the dump station as my own, as I have always hated a dirty dump station (especially after a rain) when you can't help but track in mud after dumping your tanks. So I sweep or blow the dirt and pine straw off to the side.

We're also expected to serve as camp ambassadors, walking or driving the park in the provided Kubota work vehicle, stopping by camp sites to say “Hi” and ask how their stay is going, and offer help if needed. Sometimes we gently counsel the occasional violator of a camp rule. If we don't enforce the COE rules, the county might lose their contract if the park ranger sees we're not doing our job.

I personally love the camp ambassador part of the job, and do it even on days I'm supposed to be off. The walk is good for my physical health and the socialization is good for my mental health.

Do we miss the road sometimes? Sure. We had a very nice summer vacation planned for Jace this year, hitting some western states we hadn't visited yet, but there's always next year. We've already been able to attend Jace's school's field day, and watched him expend a ton of energy on some pretty frenetic indoor games. Barbara gets some additional William Oliver time when Alicia needs some help with him, and we're available to take her to and from doctor's appointments until she's able to drive on her own again.

Cleaning the campground bathrooms (there are two of them at Bolding Mill) isn't so bad – yet. We fully expect them to be in worse shape as the park becomes full during the summer months, but for the most part, they've been pretty clean during our daily visits.

As for the campsites being vacated, we get a list from the office and check out each one after checkout time to make sure they're ready for the next occupant. I have yet to figure out why some people think the fire rings on each site are trash receptacles. Or that you're supposed to make sure the coals in them are completely out before leaving.

 

47 camp sites vacated on a Sunday afternoon. This is the trash take from all 47 of them. Some people are pigs. Just sayin'.

And why do people think they can just toss used teeth flossing instruments on the ground instead of in a trash bag? What's up with that?

Anyway, with just a couple of exceptions, sites have been left in pretty good condition for the next camper.

I'm sure we'll be chomping at the bit come January to get back on the road to a warmer destination, but we've committed to the first week of January to get Jace back into school after his winter break is over. They'll be some blog posts regarding day trips on which we'll be taking Jace, and of course updates concerning William Oliver. This will also be the first year we will not be taking the motorhome up to New England to see friends and family, breaking a four year tradition; thus proving that the only constant in life is change.

More to come.

Catching Up With May Travel

Lot's of travel, just not in the motorhome.

Usually, I'm writing about some destination in a state we've never visited before, or an interesting spot we think you should try out for yourselves, but this May brings a mixture of joy and sadness in the Richard family. In the span of three weeks time, Barbara and I will drive from our home base of Gainesville, Georgia down to Ocala, Florida for a weekend wedding of our last nephew, head back to Gainesville for a couple of days of rest, then drive 1,100 miles to Massachusetts to say a final goodbye to my father who passed away in late April, then rush back to Georgia for the birth of our second grandson!

Every mile done in our Jeep Cherokee.

Yeah, no RV. Strange beds. No comfortable captain's chairs to ride in.

Now, could we have done this travel in our Class A? Sure. And we had earlier intended to do the Florida portion of this travel doing just that. But our nice cozy and comfortable camp hosting spot at Bolding Mill COE, where we are nestled between and under tall pine trees with a lake view and including full hookups, was just too good a spot to be leaving and backing into for just a couple of days stay in Ocala, Florida.

The wedding was very nice, the room accommodations at the Howard Johnson – not so much. We ended up leaving a day early.

 

Me, Barbara and Kristen at the wedding

Our next travel was slated for a couple of days later; a scheduled two-day drive to Massachusetts for the memorial service for my father, and again, it was determined to be better handled in the Jeep than in the motorhome for a number of reasons. One, we could do the 1,100 miles in two days in the car, where it would have taken three days in the RV due to the slower speed I drive in the RV. Two, there are no campgrounds near the location of the church service and the friends and family we would need and want to see. And three, the cost of gas in the northeast made it cheaper to drive the Jeep and get a deal on a hotel than to pay for the campgrounds we'd need to use and the much lower miles per gallon cost of fuel for the RV. So time, money and convenience worked against us in taking the motorhome up north this trip.

We'd also have an additional passenger in the Jeep; our oldest daughter Kristen, who would be able to help out with driving duties (yay!) but would also be staying in our hotel room (boo!).

Oh, and for those Grover fans out there, he would be staying with our younger daughter, Alicia, and our grandson, Jace, back in Georgia, getting spoiled rotten as usual while she waited to deliver our next grandson. So Grover was just fine, thank you, while we were gone.

The memorial service for my Dad was quiet and reserved, as befitted his nature and his wishes, and his ashes were interred next to my Mom's in the church's memorial garden. He had almost 95 years on this earth, 94 of them pretty good years, so he owed no one anything. It was great seeing friends and family who took the time to come out in support and love.

The Hampton Inn Billerica /Bedford where we stayed was top-notch, with a very spacious room and a great breakfast every morning. While staying up there we were able to check off our Massachusetts meal destinations for Chinese food, seafood and roast beef sandwiches before having to head back South.

 

At the Wu Loon Ming. Cousin Gary and wife Lisa up front, Kristen and sister-in-law Tracey next, Barbara and I after that, and brother Doug all the way in back.

Due to an emergency in Kristen's boyfriend's family in the middle of our drive day back, we decided to forego the overnight stop in a hotel and push through for a single-day drive, doing the 1,100 miles in 18 hours and 45 minutes. Fortunately, I tend to wake up around midnight after 3-5 hours of sleep, so we had gotten on the road early enough to finish the day's drive to Georgia while it was still light outside.

Two days later, William Oliver Ashley made his grand entrance into the world. Now, the delicate balance of helping Jace bond with his new baby brother while giving him the one-on-one attention he needs begins. As always, he'll be spending a lot of time with us in the RV for his summer break, but no big trip to far away destinations this year so that he can be at home with his brother. We'll see how THAT goes . . .

 

Barbara's grandmaternal instincts have already kicked into high gear concerning William Oliver!

Coming up next month – The Joys of Camp Hosting!

Red Bay Remix

With our Liquidspring repair and refresh in our rear view window, it was time to head back to Red Bay, AL for some repairs that had to be postponed back in January due to service delays brought on by unexpected winter weather and an unusually heavy amount of visitors for that time of year.

After 3 straight days of driving 300 or so miles per day from Florida to just north of Indianapolis, we stopped for a couple of days at Dad's Bluegrass Campground in Franklin, KY to give some leg pains that had been developing a chance to rest up and relax (more on that later), and to let our upcoming appointments with third parties in Red Bay get a bit closer. The folks at Dad's are always very nice, and have good pull-through sites available for people like us who just need a couple of days.

Franklin is just about 30 minutes down the road from where the classic America car – the Corvette – is made, and they have a really nice Corvette museum there to celebrate the history of this uniquely American sports car. There are some really clunky designs in the early years of the Corvette before the classic Stingray was introduced, and some really bland designs from the 1980's to see, but the number and condition of the cars is impressive to even someone like me who isn't a car guy.

A short drive southward gets us into Red Bay on a Sunday afternoon, and we're sitting in our usual place to stay – Convenient Campground – for 2 weeks. Sign up with Tiffin for some Express Bay service, hopefully in the first week, and then have a couple of third parties coming by on the second week. We park ourselves in Site #1, next to a pile of campground – stuff – waiting for it's owner to bring their unit back from some Sunday service.

Come to find out, our neighbors have been nicknamed “The Hoarders”. They have picked up a used early 2000's Tiffin Zephyr and have been putting more than $20k in repairs into it to get it road ready, but they are – different – to say the least. They are traveling with 6 – SIX! - adult cats (one of which loves to escape when they open their door), and at least 3 kittens! He's older than her, and is either on some sort of medication or has been socially stunted since birth. The – stuff - taking up space between our site and theirs is apparently the contents of at least 2 storage bays, and they don't appear to have any urgency to put it back in the bays, as it sits outside for the 12 days we're parked next to him. One day, I'm walking Grover and see water pouring out of their Zephyr onto the ground. I put Grover back in our home and knock on their door. I tell him about the water, a cat escapes, and he ambles around back to shut off the water he was over-filling his fresh tank with. Goes back inside without a word of thanks. And now more – stuff – has to come out of a couple of storage bays in order to dry out. Needless to say, we were very happy to see them packing up and leaving.

We did meet some new friends in the campground - Lynn and Ray Lindsey. Really great people. Proud owners of an Open Road 34PA, they were in town getting a few things fixed. I like to stop by and say "Hi" to fellow gasser owners in campgrounds, so we chatted, made plans to take them to some local eateries, and generally had a great time sharing stories. We hope to see them later this year after they move to the Cleveland, OH area.

 

A farewell picture before Lynn and Ray hit the road

We ended up having our first unsatisfactory service experience with Tiffin in more than 4 years. The guy who was doing our service in Bay 15 was finally able to get my rear basement bay door adjusted to close properly after being replaced a few years ago following an accident, but his efforts to replace some floor tiles along the length of our main slide fell far short of expectations. Due to some extremely high winds, we ended up bringing our main slide in and back out earlier than planned, and found his tile work popping back up when the slide rolled over it. It was a good thing the bad weather had come in, as we likely would not have caught this problem until the day we had to leave to head back to Georgia, so it gave us, and Tiffin, a chance to get it fixed right. Which they did in another service bay for free.

So it's now week two, and we're waiting for the nice folks at Lindsey and Winchester to repair a couple of shade rollers whose internals had broken, and Dillon Massey to replace a washer door seal, and the pain in my right leg which had appeared off and on following long travel days over the past year suddenly reappears – without any driving days! I had been using a walking stick to help me get around, but it seemed as if it wasn't getting any better even though we were stationary, so it was time to get me to the hospital while Barbara held down the fort waiting for our repaired shades to be reinstalled and Dillon to do his stuff (plus she needed to keep Grover company).

As hospitals go, Red Bay Hospital is small, but they have a very nice staff and a small 5-bay Emergency Room. What's nice about the small size is that they have all the equipment and departments needed to help diagnose my problem, without the wait times found in larger hospitals. Vitals were taken, blood was drawn, and I await the lone ER doctor to get to me so that he can order my CT scan with contrast and an ultrasound taken of my leg. They are concerned about possible clots being the cause of my pain. Scans come back negative for clots, but I do have some minor arthritis in the ankle and foot joint, but they don't think that's the problem.

Seems their diagnosis is that I suffer from tenosynovitis, which is an inflammation of the tendon and the sheath surrounding the tendon. What's interesting is that repetitive movement is usually the cause of tenosynovitis, but in my case it's after a day of driving where my leg actually DOESN'T move very much. So now that I'm back in Georgia I'll have my primary care physician at the VA take a look at it and see if she concurs, or has another diagnosis.

Needless to say, Barbara and I are concerned that this might impact future travel plans in the RV. Could this condition spell doom for Parental Parolees and the lifestyle we have come to love? Tune it to see what happens next.

I Sing The Praises Of Liquidspring!

As many of our followers on Parental Parolees already know, our Tiffin Open Road 36LA came with an innovative option at build; a Liquidspring rear suspension system. It replaced the old-style shocks and leaf springs typically put on large trucks with a hydraulic arm (among other things) which adjusts 1000 times per second to road conditions. It's designed to make these harsh-riding truck chassis ride smoother and more stable, and it has been a godsend for me as a driver of over 50,000 miles on America's sometimes horrendous roads.

Because the Liquidspring suspension is an active system (vs. a passive air bag system on most diesel motorhomes), it actually makes the ride on our gas motorhome better than a diesel. Not only do the arms in back smooth out the ride vertically over potholes and bridge transitions, it holds the house to the chassis horizontally, reducing side-to-side (or top to bottom) sway from crosswinds and 18-wheelers passing by at speed.

But on the (thankfully rare) times it doesn't work right, the full experience of our bad roads in America can be felt through my steering wheel, and things start bouncing in the back, making for very long, very tiring days behind the wheel.

Back in November of 2023, the control module beside my driver's seat began to flash red spasmodically rather than indicate Liquidspring's usual status of green and amber lights. Not for long, and it always came back to normal. Through December it got worse, to the point where sometimes the suspension wouldn't rise to it's normal ride height, and the ride became harsh with little or no control. Finally, on our drive from Red Bay, AL to our winter stay in Chiefland, FL, the system failed completely. Fortunately, we were going to be sitting for 2 months without moving the motorhome, so I called the folks at Liquidspring to give them the bad news.

They suspected that some moisture might have gotten into our Electronic Control Unit (ECU) underneath the chassis, and offered to program a new one and send it to us for me to install. Alas, the recent left hand break during last year's vacation and the location of the control unit made that impossible. Rather than head just a bit south to one of their authorized installers for the repair, I opted to set up an appointment in mid-March in Lafayette, IN - home of Liquidspring itself - to have the service done. While I have no doubt the folks in Florida would have done their best, I didn't want any issues with “We don't have the part(s) needed and have to order it” delays, and the techs at Liquidspring have computer diagnostics that their installers do not.

So, three days of about 300 miles each (about 6.5 - 7 hours driving each day), heading steadily northward with stops just south of Atlanta, southern Kentucky and finally Lafayette, Indiana, and we're plugged into a recently-installed 50A receptacle on the side of Liquidspring headquarters for the night, awaiting our technician the following morning.

After looking at our driver's controller, unplugging and reconnecting it in hopes that the system would recognize it for something other than a fatal error, our tech opts to forego the planned test drive because he knows the system is well and fully hosed. He seats us (with Grover – who had already wheedled a biscuit from a soft-touch at the door) in their comfortable lounge, and went to work at 9:00.

Two hours later (and after a refreshing nap on their comfortable couch) in comes two technicians with smiling faces. They've replaced the balky ECU with a newly-programmed one based on our specific chassis and Liquidspring unit, they've replaced our old ride height sensors with new ones that will provide better and smoother control down the road, and replaced the wiring harnesses for the ECU and ride height sensors. We take a test drive, and it appears that the system is working even better than it had previously!

This, after 4.5 years and 51,000 miles on the road.

We pull back into their parking lot, and they tell us we're ready to head back on the road. “No paperwork”? “Nope”. “Nothing to sign”? “Nope”. And more importantly, nothing to PAY.  Just like that, we're done and gliding down the road to our next destination.

THIS is what working with American companies used to be like; well-trained people who understand not only the technical side of their business, but the customer-service side as well. A company who doesn't hem and haw when it comes to supporting their product and standing by their warranty. A company that makes an outstanding product in the first place, then backs it up with something even better when an occasional problem occurs.

That's why I put their product on our home on wheels in the first place, and why I tell anyone with a gas motorhome who thinks they might want a better ride on the road to get their motorhome upgraded with Liquidspring.

Great product, great people, great company!

Snow Removal In January - In Florida !?!?!?

Yeah, what's up with that?

Once a year, I'm guaranteed to have to do snow removal during our travels. Guaranteed. No matter where we are. This year, it was in Florida. Sunny, warm Florida, and I'm removing snow from our motor home.

But not to worry; the world hasn't turned upside down and the climate hasn't changed. But this is a very rare form of snow.

Tiffin Snow.

Tiffin Snow is generated by just one thing; a hard ride down bad roads. Our roof is assembled in the Tiffin manufacturing plant upside-down. The fiberglass top layer lies at the bottom on a large table, then the Styrofoam layer of insulation is added, wiring and lights and air ducts are put in place, then finally our padded ceiling is placed on top. The whole assembly is secured, flipped over and carefully lifted onto the completed exterior walls of the motor home as it works it's way down the assembly line. So with each hit of a bad pothole or poor bridge transition, Tiffin Snow is generated by little pieces of that Styrofoam insulation breaking free, getting caught in our air vent system, and finally being deposited in the little light disks covering our LED ceiling bulbs.

No, that's not a bad picture of a full moon. It's a light cover full of Tiffin Snow.

So every year, I have to unscrew over 30 glass disks that have a VERY tight seal, and dump my collection of Tiffin Snow. Otherwise, the collection gets large enough in some of the disks to block some serious light - especially if an errant bug managed to be attracted to the light and ends up getting trapped in one.

It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.

This is what it looks like when the cover is removed.

This year's haul of Tiffin Snow.

Snow removal in January - the Parental Parolees way! Now I can get back to relaxing in the resort's hot tub . . .

Handling Winter In Our Motor Home

Winter of 2021. NOT fun!

OK, so the first rule of thumb in handling winter in your motor home is to move to warmer weather! After all, it's a MOTOR home!

But sometimes, family obligations get in the way of chasing 70 degrees or more, as it just did recently where we had to be in Massachusetts for more than a couple of days to take care of my Dad's transition to another level of elderly care. And as it does every year over the holidays when spending time with kids and grandkids is important. Now, North Georgia in winter (our usual haunt in Nov. and Dec.) isn't New England by any stretch of the imagination, but in December and January their weather is remarkably similar. Usually just less snow, but temperatures are within a few degrees of each other on average.

As we've written about before, most campgrounds in MA, NH, VT and ME close for the season no later than Columbus Day, sometimes due to state regulations, other times due to owners who want to spend their winters in Florida or Arizona, and sometimes just because of the hassle of keeping campgrounds open in sub-freezing temperatures.

But a rare few stay open all year 'round, mostly to take care of their permanent residents who live in RV's that frankly can no longer move from place to place, as they've sat for so long in ONE place. Or in the case of Field and Stream RV Park in Brookline, NH and Circle CG Farm in Bellingham, MA, to accommodate the occasional traveler like us when emergencies arrive.

So first off, providing water is a problem up north. Unlike homes, campground infrastructure is shallow, plus the water supply doesn't come into a nice heated basement, but to an outdoor spigot exposed to the cold. Now, in North Georgia, some campgrounds will wrap heating elements around their water supply, while others just cover their spigots in insulation for the rare sub-freezing events. Not so up north. If the temperatures get much below freezing for more than a day, the campground shuts off their water, and depending on the size of the campground, keeps it off until nightly temperatures remain above freezing for a while.

So how do residents and visitors get water when the temperatures go low up north? Deliveries! Both campgrounds mentioned above have trucks on-site with tanks that are filled from the main water supply (with heated infrastructure), and they go from site to site every other day and fill everyone's fresh water tank. In our case, our Tiffin comes with a gravity fill that can be unlocked as needed, then a hose from their water truck is inserted, and we're good to go with normal operations for the next two days using our onboard water pump. Our 70 gallon fresh water capacity is more than enough to handle a couple of days.

So that covers water, but what about keeping the interior warm? The easy answer would be propane, as our Open Road 36LA comes with two propane-fed heaters, But propane is expensive, and unless you want to move every week or so to a propane filling station on-site (packing up and disconnecting everything each time you need propane), it's also inconvenient. Field and Stream RV in NH can set you up with a “buddy tank” that can be filled by the local provider, and if you have an external connector as we do, the need to move goes away. But it's still expensive. We end up setting our propane furnaces to kick on if internal temps get below 63 degrees.

So we rely on propane in extreme low temperature conditions (for an RV anyway), usually below 23 degrees or so, but employ a variety of resources whenever possible, and let the campground pay to keep us warm.

I'll mention our heat pump only in passing, as it ceases to be effective below 40 degrees, so most nights up north it's useless in keeping us warm.

So, what remains are both Tiffin-supplied and other purchased heaters. The first is the fireplace that came with our 36LA. Made by Furrion, is has the capacity to heat up to 500 sq. ft. of an area. Technically, it could heat the entire living area of our home, but it doesn't handle the extreme ends of the motor home very efficiently. It IS very effective at warming up the main galley / living area, but should only be run for up to 5 hours at a time according to manufacturer specs. We never leave this on at night when we're sleeping, but do use it during the day.

We have a 1 1/5 foot-tall Lasko oscillating tower heater we plug into the front passenger area, as that plug is more robust than the plugs in other areas of the RV. This keeps the plug from heating up and potentially damaging the electronics of the heater and reduces any fire risk. We can run this heater pretty much all day or night. This heater handles the front of the coach closest to the main door, and also provides heat to the “thermister” thermostat right below it. This keeps the propane from kicking on too many times at night, as the front appears to be warmer to the Spyder control panel than the rest of the main cabin.

In our bedroom we employ the most efficient heat source known to mankind – a lemon-beagle named Grover. If there is a must-have heater for your RV, it's a beagle! The only trouble you can get into is that beagles are not UL listed . . .

 

He's not UL listed, but he's more efficient than any heater on the market!

For especially cold nights, we turn on a small oscillating cube heater in the bedroom that sits easily on our dresser's shelf. With Grover and the cube heater, we can maintain temperatures in the low 70's all night long.

Now, a point of caution: the inverter that comes with our Tiffin (and many other RV's) can only handle so many heat-producing devices being on at one time. That means heaters, microwaves, hair dryers, toasters, etc. We've found 3 to be the maximum before the inverter's circuit breaker kicks off. Your mileage may vary, but not by much.

Final point to surviving in cold weather is to make sure you take care of your wet bay. Use a heated hose if you are able to attach to outside water. Make sure that there are no plastic filters attached to your water hose that cannot conduct heat – make sure it's metal from spigot to internal water hookup! If no attachment is possible because of water being shut off, coil your heated hose up in your wet bay, but keep it plugged in – preferably to the campground's power pole via a standard 120V outlet. This will keep your wet bay warm, and prevent your water pump from freezing up overnight. Plugging it outside to the power pole removes one heat-producing source plugged into your motor home and protects your inverter.

Bottom-line, while it isn't preferable to spend time in colder weather in an RV, it can be done with just a little bit of thought and planning. And unless you have to go outside, it can be tolerable. Having a beagle just makes it easier and more enjoyable!

If you have your own hints and tips on surviving colder weather in an RV, or have any questions or want more detail about this post, feel free to use the comments section below, or drop us an email using the Contact section on our blog page.

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!