Getting the Land Yacht Ready

I know it seems like we just came home from a cruise, but we’re ready to go “cruisin’” again, this time in our land yacht. The price of diesel has gone down since last summer, so we are heading out for a long-ish RV trip. I think we’ll be on the road about 6-7 weeks, before we finally land back home. The route will be circuitous as we like to follow the sun and it’s still cool out there. We’ll head south first to Southern California, then east toward Tennessee, then north toward Minnesota and finally west back to Wyoming. Along the way we hope to visit friends, find our “fortune” in diamonds at the only public diamond mine in world, attend the International Reading Association annual conference, and we'll see a lot of pretty stuff along the way.

We’ve not been a long RV trip for a few years, so this is a treat we are both looking forward to. If you have been reading Cruztalking, you know we have sailed on over a dozen cruises the last 2 years. While sailing does assuage our wanderlust, it’s not like the lure of the open road. I just read an article stating that most of the big RV companies are going out of business, the RV lifestyle is on the wane, and the death knell is ringing for “full timers” who have called the open road their home. We’ll ignore the dire warnings, and have a grand time cruisin’ America’s highways.

So we are sorting out our gear and packing it into the RV. This is about a 3-4 day process. It could be done in a day, but it’s such a hateful day, we’ve learned that when we take our time, we forget less and like each other more. We have a master list of all the stuff that we need. Over the years, we’ve discovered we need about 10 days worth of clothing. We’ve also discovered we don’t need to bring a lot of food, as there are stores everywhere. If we plan to do any “back woods camping” we’ll have to stock up on a few supplies, but generally we can survive in the RV for 3 days before we need to tank up on water and food. We’ve also learned that life on the open road is less expensive than life in our home! I wonder if that will still be the case this year? I’ll let you know when all is said and done.

We are looking forward to this adventure. Just because we are "camping" does not mean we will be cut off from the modern world. To keep us connected with the world, we have electronic goodies ranging from a roof mounted satellite dome (that finds the satellite all by itself) to a secure wifi connection for internet use. For this trip, our computers will be an Asus 1000HA micro-computer and a MacBookPro for blogging and collecting pictures along the way. Watch this space as I’ll have pictures and stories from our beautiful country posted along the way.