We have now arrived in Petaluma, CA, which is the furthest point away from home. When we leave from here here, we will be getting closer to home, rather than getting further away
So far, we have driven 5,106 miles pulling the RV, and another 2595 miles of local driving (truck only) for a total of 7701 miles (66% of miles driven were while pulling the RV).
To drive such a distance, we have consumed 713 gallons of diesel, for an overall average of 10.6 miles per gallon.
That diesel cost us $2,826, at an average price of $3.964 per gallon (min paid: $3.198; max paid: $5.799)
The fuel cost works out to an average of $37.45 per 100 miles.
We have been gone from home for 83 days, and this is our 34th stop, so on average, we move every 2.4 days. It works out that way because for stops that are destinations, we tend to stay 3 nights, which gives us 2 full days to explore. On locations that are mainly stopovers to limit how much driving we do in a day, we tend to stay 2 nights. We always find something interesting to see locally on the free day for these stopovers (17-mile drive was a good example of that). Our outliers so far are: 11 nights in Destin FL; 1 night in Gretna, VA on the day we left home.
5106 miles driven with the RV, moving between 34 stops, means we drove on average 150 miles on campground change days. As we limit ourselves to no more than 65 mph on the highway, not all driving is on highways, and we do sometimes do a pit stop, this amounts to roughly a 3-hour drive, with a 10AM departure and a 1PM arrival (campgrounds have varying departure and check-in times, but the most prevalent is 11AM checkout, and 1PM check-in, so that works out just right. The added benefit of that distance is that we do not have to fill-up in truck stops where fuel is typically quite a bit more expensive, and instead, we get a broader selection of fuel stations where we can go to while the RV is at the campground.
This may appear to be a lot of record keeping, but its really not. I have a spreadsheet with one tab for campgrounds and one tab for fuel.
On the campground tab, the key data to input is campground name, city, state, odometer at arrival, odometer at departure
On the fuel tab, its odometer at fill-up, gallons at total cost.
Everything else gets calculated by formulas in my spreadsheet…(that way I retain some proficiency with spreadsheets from my working days…)
The theme for our trip is National Parks, and so far we have visited the following 8:
- Carlsbad caverns National Park, NM https://www.nps.gov/cave/index.htm
- Guadalupe Mountains National Park, TX https://www.nps.gov/gumo/index.htm
- White Sands National Park, NM https://www.nps.gov/whsa/index.htm
- Petrified Forest National Park, AZ https://www.nps.gov/pefo/index.htm
- Grand Canyon National Park, AZ https://www.nps.gov/grca/index.htm
- Saguaro National Park, AZ https://www.nps.gov/sagu/index.htm
- Joshua Tree National Park https://www.nps.gov/jotr/index.htm
- Channel Islands National Park https://www.nps.gov/chis/index.htm
We have 9 more to go… and we also visited 14 museums and 7 National Monuments.
In between all of that we both keep up with our emails, make sure the bills are paid on time, and Claudette does her client calls…
In summary:
- 2 or 3 nights per stop
- 150 miles – 3 hours on days we move on.
- We are enjoying the places we visit, and we hope that by sharing the highlights on this blogpost, you might want to add some on your own bucket list!