RVgapyear | Page 2Jason, Author at RVgapyear

Grand Teton National Resort…errrr, I mean National Park

15/07/09 at 10.00am / by Jason / 0 Comment

After our brief stay in Idaho we were bound for Jackson Hole, WY and Grand Teton National Park. We soon realized we’d have to climb over a fairly substantial mountain pass. Grades of 10% for 5+ miles up and grades of 10% for 5+ miles down. And we were carrying a full load of water (approx. 500 lbs. between all three tanks), meaning we were HEAVY. Not overweight heavy, but just under the limit. So after chug-a-lugging along at 20mph on the way up, stopping once to let the transmission cool, and stopping once on the way down to let the brakes cool (and readjust the trailer brake after the pedal in the truck nearly went to the floor…I was legitimately looking for a run-away truck ramp) we were extremely pleased to see the terrain flatten out significantly as “civilization” appeared before us.

There is a lot of hype about Jackson Hole (Jackson is the town, Jackson Hole is the bigger geographic region). It promises an amazing national park experience, luxury for those willing and able to afford it, and four-seasons of outdoor activity. In reality I think Jackson Hole has two seasons: warm and frigid. We arrived in town in need of an easy campsite, grocery resupply, some internet connectivity, and an itch to get into Grand Teton. I dropped Jessie off at the nicest public library anyone’s ever seen and proceeded to set-up a pricey campsite inside the park and drop by the the local (expensive) grocery store to pick up provisions. I was also on a quest to pick up a fire-extinguisher sized can of bear spray. Bears are a big draw for the parks in this part of the country. In fact, if you pay attention to the retailers and many park officials in the Grand Teton/Yellowstone region there is a 700lbs mama grizzly bear with cubs waiting around every bend to dismember you. To be fair there are documented accounts of parents putting peanut butter on their child’s hand and sending him/her over to a bear to “get a good picture”. You can imagine how that ended. I suppose putting a healthy dose of fear into the general public is a good idea.

With a restocked pantry and a place to park “Moby” (our RV), we were ready to explore Grand Teton NP. Wow, just wow. Grand Teton is among the most majestic places we’ve ever been. To see the mountain range rise from the valley floor, to see the wild flowers in full bloom, to see the abundant wildlife (from a safe distance), to see the amazingly well constructed and preserved barns of “Mormon Row”; it is a special place.

After our day one hike around Jenny Lake up to Hidden Falls we knew we’d want to spend significant time in the park. Our travel plans, or lack there of, give us the freedom to stay in a park until we feel like we are “done”. We knew it was going to be a while. There was so much hiking, cycling, and sightseeing to do. What this also meant is that we couldn’t afford to spend $24/night on camping fees. So part of our day-two activities included scouting out Bridger-Teton National Forest that held the promise of free camping. We indeed found a lovely campsite and after filling up our freshwater tank and getting set-up in the forest, we were looking at 5 days of free, quiet camping with stunning views and a centrality to the park that we couldn’t even get by staying INSIDE the park! What a deal!

The days that followed were some of the best of our gap year thus far. We enjoyed the miles and miles of mostly flat (but still 6,500′-7,000′ elevation) bike path. We hiked an epic 12.5-13.0 mile, 9-hour trail with 4,000+ feet of elevation gain, snow, and boulder field crossings that allowed us to explore several of the more difficult-to-reach spots in the park. We had our first bear sighting in the backcountry from a safe 250 meter distance. We sang loudly as the sun faded and bears were on the move so as to not encounter a bear closer than 250 meters (despite the $50 worth of bear spray on my hip). We grilled out and enjoyed our 10 million dollar view from our free campsite. We cooled off with a swim in one of the many snow melt/glacier fed lakes. We rented our first Redbox on the road and watched “Wild” (after reading it and having “family book club”) powered exclusively by solar. We cycled into Jackson to return said Redbox. We found the cheaper of the two grocery stores in town that shared a parking lot with a laundromat (double win) with WiFi (triple win). It was a fantastic week.

A few things to know about Grand Teton and the greater Jackson Hole area. First, unless you are camping in Grand Teton or the national forest, this area isn’t cheap. In fact, it can be downright pricey. For example, the local private RV campground charges $80/night. Second, there is a major airport in the national park. It is indeed weird to see many planes landing and taking off (private, corporate, and commercial) daily. Third, Grand Teton definitely has more of a resort feel than any of the other parks we’ve been to. Perhaps it’s the multi-million dollar homes surrounding the park, the ski slopes directly adjacent to the park, the semi-formal dress suggested for meals at one of the lodges, or the town of Jackson with it’s Western-luxury feel, which is a different vibe than we’re used to. Not that we didn’t enjoy it. In fact, it might be the most livable (for us) place we’ve visited so far. Affording it would be a different matter entirely. And finally, to truly “get” this park you must hike deep into the park. Hike until you reach the snow or you haven’t gone far enough.

Be Cool Man

15/07/08 at 11.00am / by Jason / 0 Comment

***This is simply an account of how I optimized our refrigerator efficiency. It is not technical advice. I am not qualified to give anyone technical advice about RV refrigerators. Don’t go monkeying around with your refrigerator based on this post. Do your homework, call your manufacturer, and/or consult a professional.***

Early in this blogging endeavor, Jessie gave a good overview of the electrical system of our RV (Link to Jessie’s earlier post). We knew from the beginning that we needed to keep our electrical needs at a minimum so that we could avoid having to pay for electrical hookups and so that we could remain generator-free. We’d need several things to make this happen.

First, we’d need to follow the weather to the best of our ability to minimize our need for A/C. We don’t mind being hot and sweaty during the day. We are usually out hiking or doing something active, so this is to be expected. But we do want to be somewhat comfortable at night so that we can sleep well. We are both cranky monsters if we are sleep deprived and/or hungry. You see, to run A/C on most RV’s you need (1) an electrical hookup OR (2) a serious generator which would be: heavy, loud, expensive, and in constant need of gas.

Second, we’d need decent battery capacity. We decided on two 6-volt golf cart batteries wired in series to produce 12-volts with the capacity (215 amp hours) we needed to “get by” for several days of LED light use, inverter use (to charge phones, our laptop, run the blender for smoothies, our small “house fan”, etc), and water pump use in a conservative but comfortable manner.

And finally, we needed a way to recharge our batteries at least to a small degree to slow the rate of discharge of our battery bank (all two of them). A generator will do just that and then some, but for the reasons listed above and our huge desire to keep this endeavor as “green” as possible, we decided to go with a 100w portable solar panel. I’d done the research, crunched the numbers, and devoured every article/blog post I could find on the subject. I purchased all of the necessary equipment and proceeded to very carefully, so as not to electrocute myself or blow anything up, install all of the necessary components Jessie referenced in her “It’s Electric” post many months ago. I had supreme confidence that all would work as planned. And everything did work as planned except we just weren’t able to recharge the batteries using the solar panel at the rate I’d calculated. It became clear in Texas that we had an energy vampire.

Energy vampires are sometimes difficult to ferret out and this one proved particularly elusive. It even got to the point where we began shopping for a (gasp!) generator. But that would be a $1,000 commitment and an admission that I was wrong. Not something I’m good at. So we decided to give it another couple weeks. I’d finally identified our vampire as our refrigerator. All of the literature I’d read said running your RV refrigerator on LP gas mode uses virtually no power except for a tiny bit used by the electronic monitoring hardware that tells the unit what to do and when to do it. But it became increasingly clear that everything I’d read was wrong in our particular case.

I began our investigation of this vampire by isolating variables. This proved tricky because we needed power and time to test the multitude of theories I had. Finally, we arranged for a campsite at Zion NP that had power. So we defrosted the refrigerator (RV refrigerators in most travel trailers are not frost free) and we purchased a small RV refrigerator fan designed to run off two D batteries and circulate air to help prevent frost inside the refrigerator. Both of these things seemed to have helped to a small degree but they weren’t “the” answer we were looking for.

Enter our campground neighbors at Bryce Canyon. A lovely retired couple from New Orleans who ran the generator in their motorhome a lot. More than anyone we’ve encountered by a wide margin. He struck up a conversation with me about our portable solar unit, which turned into a lengthy conversation about boondocking/dry camping/off-the-grid. He knew nothing about his battery bank. Not how many batteries he had, what kind, not the capacity. He’d never so much as opened the battery compartment in his motorhome. I spent a bit of time educating him about batteries and capacity. He seemed interested but he was well into his 3^rd-12^thcocktail of the evening. Then he mentioned the heater in his refrigerator as being a big energy draw and proceeded to tell me about how he’d installed an on/off switch to disable this heater. To say I was skeptical would be an understatement. He showed me the switch he’d installed and explained the heater to the best of his ability. At the very least I figured it would be something worth reading about so that I could dismiss his information or, in the very unlikely scenario that he had provided us with the magic bullet, I could take action.

Son-of-a-bitch if this guy who knew NOTHING except the exact thing that I didn’t know was right. The RV refrigerator manufacturer of our unit had indeed hardwired a heating coil around part of the door frame to prevent condensation from building up and preventing a tight seal (not a bad idea in very humid climates, but we were in Utah). For a very long time the manufacturer had installed an on/off switch to allow the user to disable this feature. Somebody in their infinite, bean counting wisdom decided to do away with this switch to save a few bucks on each unit. Anything that produces heat uses power at a high rate, especially when you are running on battery power. This was, indeed, the silver bullet we’d been looking for. A couple of hours of cellphone internet research later, I was able to disconnect the cable providing power to this little heater (it also provides power to the refrigerator light, so ours is now dark), wrapped it in approximately 17 feet of electrical tape (perhaps a small exaggeration), and taped it out of the way but in an easily accessible place if we decide we need to reconnect it. I’d considered installing a switch similar to what our campground neighbor had done but I’m reasonably sure that would void our two-year refrigerator warranty. I am happy to report that the next day our TOTAL energy usage for the day was cut in half and we’ve had no problem keeping our batteries charged with our 100w solar panel. We are now as energy efficient as possible and we’ve driven a stake into the heart of our energy vampire.

Link to the article I found online that helped me solve this problem.

Mesa Verde National Park

15/06/29 at 1.30pm / by Jason / 0 Comment

I’m a bit of a procrastinator so this post is now wildly overdue according to the unofficial deadline in my head that has long since passed. But that’s the beauty of living in an RV, being a rather unprofessional/less-than-dedicated assistant blogger, the deadlines don’t matter much. And don’t let the brevity of this post or the fact that we only spent two days at Mesa Verde National park fool you, we loved this park. The vistas, the varied landscape, the ever-changing spring weather, the unusually friendly park rangers, and most especially the cliff dwellings in this park are amazing. Sure the lone campground is wildly overpriced for what you get, but beggars can be choosers if you want to stay in the park.

Chances are you haven’t heard much about Mesa Verde National Park. And it’s a shame. The park is spectacular. And really only about a two hour drive from Moab, which many people use as a hub to do Arches and perhaps Canyonlands. Do yourself a favor, if you are planning a trip to Arches, find a way to add Mesa Verde to your itinerary.

Mesa Verde is home to some of the best preserved, most intricate cliff dwellings in the world. Pair that with stunning landscapes and vistas and you have a recipe for a great 1-2 day experience.

We spent two nights at Mesa Verde and this seemed like the perfect amount of time to do roughly 85% of what the park had to offer at the time we were there. Be sure to sign up for one (or more) of the very affordable ranger guided tours of a cliff dwelling. This is the best, most interesting way to get up-close-and-personal with the park’s best features. Tours only run late spring-early fall due to weather and closings of the dwellings are frequent for research and preservation purposes. Chances are, not all of the tours will be available during your visit.

The park essentially sits on top of several mesas with the Pueblo cliff dwellings located just below. However, getting to them frequently requires some comfort with ladders and some steep hiking. Nothing all that dangerous, but not the easiest entry to a park feature, just something to be aware of. The tour we were fortunate enough to take was of Balcony House (most of the dwellings are referred to as houses) led by Ranger Kim. The tour lasted roughly two hours and involved some serious ladder climbing and a bit of crawling to get into some of the rooms open to our tour group of 50.

While the park is visually stunning, the preservation work, research, and educational efforts by park staff are to be commended. We learned a ton about the semi-nomadic prehistoric peoples who inhabited these dwellings and were struck by how many unanswered questions there are about them and their decision to leave the area (drought is the chief suspect).

Most folks spend only one day at Mesa Verde visiting Chapin Mesa. We’d suggest adding a day or at least making it a point to visit Wetherill Mesa as well. This part of the park gets only about 25% of the traffic and is just as spectacular as Chapin. In fact, you’re much more likely to see wildlife in this area.

There are several cliff dwellings throughout the park that aren’t on any park map. There are simply dwellings everywhere, and if you take the time to look for them you will definitely see some that you’ll swear you are the first to discover (you aren’t).

Mesa Verde has been one of the most delightful surprises for us thus far in our travels. We simply can’t recommend it enough, especially if you are already planning to be “in the neighborhood” to see Arches or happen to be visiting Durango, Colorado. Just go. Seriously.

So How Much Does It Cost?

15/06/22 at 5.04pm / by Jason / 0 Comment

A while ago I wrote about how we are able to afford this “gap year” (see that post here) and now, well over three months in, 12 states, 12 National Parks & Monuments, and 40+ different camp/overnight locations later, we have a good idea about how our planned budget is/isn’t working. We’d planned on spending about 3k/month, hoped for $2500 and were prepared for $3,500 (ugh). So basic math tells us that our travel budget for the 9-10 months we plan to be on the road is roughly $27,000-30,000. So far we are hitting the 3k mark on the nose with reasonable hopes of being in the $2,500 range in coming months. And if we really cut deep we could reasonably have a $2,000 month this fall if we find a cheap spot we’d like to stay for a few weeks.

Our monthly budget is roughly six items (details on each category below):

Fixed costs:

1) This includes various insurances, RV and truck payments, cellphones, and our storage unit rent-$1,000

Variable Costs (and they can vary a lot from month-to-month):

2) Fuel/Gas/Propane-$600

3) Groceries-$350

4) Entertainment/Dining Out/”Fun” Fees (think kayak rentals, tours, museum entrance fees, etc.)-$200

5) Everything Else (think laundry, medicines, sunscreen, bug spray, camping gear, clothes/shoes, bike gear, etc.)-$350

6) Camping Fees-$550

Fixed Costs:

So, let’s talk frankly about fixed costs. Yes, we bought a brand-spanking-new truck and RV and financed them both at very low interest rates. We negotiated a once-in-a lifetime-deal on the truck and a very fair deal on the RV. We also made fairly sizeable down payments on both. Could we have paid cash for them and still done this trip? The short answer is yes, but we decided we wouldn’t be comfortable with our come-back-home-cushion when we finished our gap year. This is arguably the most questionable part of our financial plan. But we don’t have rent or a house payment. The truck and Moby (the RV) ARE our house. That said, we could pay them both off tomorrow and still continue our journey.

The other questionable fixed cost we have is our health insurance purchased through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Healthcare Exchange. We’d initially planned to purchase a high deductible, catastrophic plan for roughly $100 per month and call it a day. But as it turns out, according to the great minds that lead our country, I’m too old to qualify for this type of plan under the ACA. So, we faced two options: buy the catastrophic plan we wanted, pay for it 100% out-of-pocket, and pay a penalty at the end of the year for not having the “right” coverage OR purchase a more expensive plan with much better coverage and receive a monthly subsidy to help offset the cost. Guess which one we picked.

There are many, many strange things about the ACA. Perhaps the strangest is that eligibility for a subsidy is based solely on your annual Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI). When you apply for ACA coverage, you estimate what your MAGI will be for the year; thus, for us, we estimated our MAGI for 2015. The law doesn’t to take into account money in savings or other assets. So, essentially, you can be a billionaire and if you keep your MAGI under say, 25k per couple for a given year, you can get “free” or significantly reduced-cost, via subsidy, health insurance. Weird. Anyway, we are living on our savings for the year so our MAGI will be very, very low for 2015. Hence, the subsidy. I guess this is what you get when you merge the health insurance companies and the IRS. Government, go figure.

Our other fixed monthly expenses are pretty boring and include: monthly rental of our storage unit (because we’ll head home at some point and need something to sit on), cell phone bill, and truck/RV/life/disability/car insurances (we left our Hyundai sedan with Jessie’s parents).

Feeding “Earl” (our truck):

Gas expenses increase as we get further out west since everything is more spread out and we have to drive longer distances (especially in Texas). So far most gas west of Texas is 85/86 octane so we have to buy “premium” gas to get 87 octane. We’d probably be fine with 85 octane but we aren’t interested in experimenting with new gas while towing our 6,000+ lbs RV up 10-14% grades in the middle-of-nowhere Utah. Earl also requires some basic maintenance and we don’t ignore this. Oil changes and tire rotations aren’t neglected. We also anticipate we’ll need a brake job and maybe some tires before we make it home.

Feeding Us, Cheap:

We buy and eat a lot of groceries. We are doing a lot of hiking so we burn a lot of calories. We prepare almost all of our meals rather than eating out, so buying good groceries and eating well are big priorities. We shop almost exclusively at Wal-Mart and Aldi, with an occasional Trader Joe’s or local farmer’s markets thrown in, though these latter options are much harder to come by. We know by now which stores have the best prices on which items (e.g., nuts and chips are significantly cheaper at Aldi and Trader Joe’s, so we try to skip these items at Wal-Mart and wait to purchase them during our next Aldi/Trader Joe’s trip) and we regularly have several shopping lists going, one for each store. Alcohol is rarely on a list. We also have virtually zero food waste. If something is going bad or we are sick of eating it, we eat it anyway.

Feeding Us, Expensive:

We eat out very rarely and try to limit it to special occasions, times when we need a morale booster, times of utter desperation, or to enjoy local/regional fare, like beignets and oysters in New Orleans. When we do eat out, we try to order on the cheaper side, we never pay for beverages, and we often split a larger entrée. We do tip well for good service, as our servers shouldn’t suffer because of our frugality. It’s not that we don’t enjoy eating out – we just prioritize other things. For the price of one meal out, we can usually buy groceries for 2-3+ days, pay for a night or two of camping, or cover the cost of visiting a cool museum. In short, eating out is a really big deal for us so we savor every-last-bite.

Entertainment/”Fun” Money:

Prioritization is also key when it comes to our entertainment/fun money. Do we want to pay for museum admission or for a ranger-guided tour in the next national park? There are no right or wrong answers here, and these are easily the toughest decisions we make on the road. It takes compromise, critical thinking, and some planning/thinking ahead. There is SO much to see, and we’d love to see and do it all, but we simply don’t have limitless funds or time. The good news is that hiking is free and we do a lot of hiking. Seriously, A LOT.

Camping:

The price of camping varies greatly. With the exception of camping at the 4-H campground during our two weeks with Habitat for Humanity Care-A-Vanners in Florida, we’ve paid for camping exclusively at state or federal parks, including national parks/forests. Prices range from $8/night to $43/night, with our average cost running at about $15/night. At state parks, this price usually gets us water and electric hook-ups, a nice campsite with some shade, a spread-out and quiet campground, access to nice bathhouses with flush toilets and showers (should we choose to use them), and cheap no-frills laundry facilities (though the presence of washers/dryers varies pretty widely among state park systems); rarely, state parks will also have wireless. Federal parks (Army Corps of Engineers and National Forests) sometimes offer hook-ups, nice spread-out sites, and decent bathhouses. National parks rarely have hook-ups or bathhouses with showers (they typically have only pit or flush toilets); basically, these campgrounds are without amenities except for a fairly spacious site with a picnic table and fire ring/grill, potable water, and dump station (usually) – you’re paying to stay at the park, which is quite enough for us. So far, our experience is that there are sometimes third-party concessionaires that run more full-service campgrounds within the national parks, or just outside them, at a premium price. We skip those.

We’re learning to take advantage of free “camping” as well, especially when we’re traveling from one destination to another or visiting cities where our interest isn’t tied to enjoying a park. Unless city ordinances state otherwise, most Wal-Mart stores allow overnight RV parking (not camping, don’t get out the grill and lawn chairs); you simply walk in and ask for the manager’s approval. We spend quite enough money at Wal-Mart, so we don’t feel the least bit guilty taking advantage of this for an occasional night. We also found that many casinos out west that allow free overnight RV parking, with no permission required. Overnights at truck stops have happened a couple of times in rural areas, though this isn’t our preferred option due to noise, as many truckers idle their engines all night so they can run their AC. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) allows free camping at hundreds of locations across the west. Some of these locations are in semi-established “campgrounds” but most are available as “dispersed” camping along BLM roads and recreation areas. Most of the time these locations are amazing but do be aware they can attract the rough-and-tumble crowd and there is rarely a campground host or park ranger to enforce rules about noise or generators, etc. That said, we’ve very much enjoyed all of our BLM camping thus far.

We use an Iphone app called AllStays that we paid roughly $10 for, which shows most free overnight parking options along our route. As a side note, it also shows rest areas, camping and RV stores, some propane dealers, most gas locations, and tons of campgrounds, along with various other useful stores; users regularly write notes or reviews for overnight locations, which is super helpful. In short, we love this app and it saves us a ton of money.

We’ve also used the Harvest Hosts program a couple of times for overnight camping/parking, which has been easy but variable in terms of overnight road noise. We paid less than $50 for an annual membership, which gives us access to park on the lands of farmers, ranchers, and other business or venue owners (e.g., museums). There is an online directory available to members where we can find locations and contact information. We then call ahead to the owner and ask for permission to stay the night. Generally, it’s understood that you arrive during operating business hours, park wherever you’re told, and buy a little something produced at the location (e.g., a bottle of wine, a museum admission pass, etc.). While not exactly free, it’s a good way to save money, see some things “off the beaten path”, and meet local folks while traveling.

Stuff:

Perhaps the least fun category we’ve spent money on is ongoing start-up costs and stuff that needs replacing. Our start-up costs are generally behind us now, but over the first 8-12 weeks on the road we realized we needed new hiking shoes (our treads were more worn than we realized), a few pieces of warmer/cooler clothing, trekking poles, new camp chairs, a few RV items, some more decent water bottles, etc. Many of these items get a lot of tough use and simply wear out over time. We know things will pop up (like broken dishes when a cabinet door flies open in transit) and we’re prepared, just not excited about them. Thrift stores can help take the sting out of this category if you don’t mind wearing someone else’s hiking shorts.

We also need many of the same unsexy items we’d need at home like laundry detergent, soap, toilet paper, gallons of sunscreen, new underwear (not a thrift store item for us), etc. These are not fun items to shop for but very necessary. Laundromat expenses also go in this category. We spend about $30-40 a month at the Laundromat generally doing laundry once a week. Could we stretch it further, sure, but we sweat a lot and our clothes stink and we generally don’t have A/C in the RV and it’s roughly 160 sq ft. Anyway, you get the idea, so we do laundry at least once a week.

So there you have it – our rough but pretty accurate monthly budget and a glimpse into some of our decision making (warts and all). Thus far it’s safe to say that the money we’ve spent on our gap year has been some of the best money we’ve ever spent. As some of the more famous RV bloggers like to say “we are enriching our lives, not our bank accounts”.

We are comfortable with the decisions we’ve made. They might not work for everyone, but they work for us. If you have questions or tips about how we might save money please feel free to drop us a line. We’d love to hear from you.

Glee and RV Travel

15/05/21 at 1.53pm / by Jason / 0 Comment

There is a television program called Glee that does one thing (and perhaps only one thing, aside from try to pass off attractive 20 somethings as teens) really, really well. They get you caught up on what you missed in about 14 seconds before launching directly into the next episode. So in proper Glee fashion I’m going to tell you about what we’ve done between Big Bend National Park and Mesa Verde National Park. Here goes:

Spent way too much time in West Texas oil towns including an overnight stay at a truck stop
Got the truck serviced
Two days of down time at Guadeloupe National Park
A day at Carlsbad Caverns National Park
Had some quick warranty service performed on the RV
Enjoyed several days in Roswell, New Mexico restocking our pantry, doing laundry, looking for aliens, getting good haircuts at the local cosmetology school, and dodging tornados
Spent 36 hours in Albuquerque including visits to Trader Joes, REI, the residence of Walt and Skyler White (Google it if you don’t know Walt and Skyler), and the Sandia Casio where we spent the night in their parking lot
Ate overpriced corndogs at a roadside fair and spent yet another night in a Wal-Mart parking lot
Decided NOT to go into Colorado as planned due to cold temps and snow so spent an extra couple days at a lovely New Mexico State Park at Navajo Dam
Cussed at a broken water pump until it complied
Took a quick day trip into Durango, Colorado and nearly applied for a job at Fort Lewis College

So now you’re caught up. Pictures of nearly all of these adventures and misadventures are on our Instagram account and Facebook page. Coming soon a full accounting of our time at Mesa Verde National Park. What a fantastic surprise of a National Park!

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