On the old highway maps of America, the main routes were red and the back roads blue. … It’s that time when the pull of the blue highway is strongest, when the open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself.
— William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways
The trip began as a one-week trip to test out and familiarize ourselves with the Dodge Sprinter and ended up being nearly a two-week, cross-half-country extravaganza of weather and terrain. We drove through rain, sleet, snow, blizzards, and desert heat, often in less than a day.
We rented a Great West Van Sprinter Legend from Obie's RV and set out with no fixed plan beyond the blue highways (William Least Heat-Moon's name for the back roads drawn in blue on the old road atlases) and whatever roadside oddities they led us to: me, Jess (still fighting a cold), our Labrador Simon (13), and a brand new Garmin we named Jill. The long version of how I came to want this is in How I Fell in Love with Camper Vans. These are my notes from the road.
Day 1 - Thu, Nov 9: Naperville, IL to Davenport, IA
A Prelude
We picked up the motorhome yesterday, got home late afternoon, and spent the rest of the day packing the RV. I spent a little time familiarizing myself with the coach systems (generator, A/C, switches, blips, and so forth) and playing with the hookups. We thought about spending the night in the motorhome, but Jess was feeling under the weather, so after packing we called it a night and hit the sack - in our house.
Heading West and Quick Lessons
In the morning, Jess was still sick: sore throat, drippy nose, body aches. Not a good way to start a vacation. But she's a trooper and hauled her achy body into the motorhome. Simon jumped in. And around 11 AM, we finally took off. West-ish.
We had decided we didn't want to spend days on the homogenous US highway system - miles of wide highway, green signs, exit ramps, and billboards. We wanted side roads and back roads, small towns and villages, "real life." So around 2 PM, we pulled over in Yorkville, IL, turned on the TV, and ate some of Jess' sesame peanut chicken noodle while parked a short distance off the road. It was a bit surreal eating in a motorhome watching TV and the world go by.
Somewhere outside of Ohio, IL, we pulled over at an abandoned barn to take some pictures. Jess headed out while I checked the motorhome and walked Simon around. After a few minutes, she came back with her camera saying there was something I had to see. I walked toward the barn, toward a large crack where sections of the wall had warped away from the frame. As I got closer, I saw a dark shape inside - a large, low, white, immobile shape. I crept up closer and saw that, inside the barn, surrounded by a few rays of sunlight coming in from the broken ceiling, was a large white dollhouse in perfect condition. It was just a creepy sight, and we had no idea what it was doing there. But it was getting dark, and we had to get going.
The barn outside Ohio, Illinois, and what was waiting inside the crack.
About 15 minutes later, we noticed a large home with a big mishmash of what looked like junk by the side of the road. As we got closer, we saw it was a collection of macabre scenes - a gruesome tea party, accident sites, a road-kill cafe, corpses strewn about - the sort of thing you'd expect in a haunted house. Jess hopped out to take pictures and found out it was a Halloween display they'd been doing for years, half of it already taken down. Still pretty cool to stumble upon.
The Sprinter by a harvested cornfield outside Ohio, Illinois, and the Halloween display down the road.
It didn't take long to notice a few very annoying things. The bathroom door kept sliding open on its rails, blocking the view into the back and making a racket. The refrigerator door kept bursting open around turns even with the lock on, spilling food all over. (Note: this is why you use containers, especially in a motorhome.) In general it was all too easy to leave something unsecured only to have it launch when we took off, or rattle loose a while later. Simon jumped more than once as something crashed to the floor. Poor boy.
→ Always double check the doors, cabinets, and counters before you pull out.
Our Friend, Jill, and Technology to the Rescue
We bought a Garmin Nuvi 360 for this trip and dubbed her "Jill" after her voice. I had programmed her to take us to Davenport avoiding highways and tollways. Somewhere well into the first leg, Jill just went black. No warning, no cry for help, nothing. I tried to turn her back on, and she'd shut right off again. I was convinced I had crashed her by plotting such a long, convoluted trip, and we were hours from home without the manual.
Technology to the rescue. I had set up my Motorola Q phone as a Bluetooth EVDO modem for my MacBook Pro, so we pulled over, I dialed out, and there we were in the boonies, surfing the web at a decent speed. Googling turned up a few reports of Nuvis failing outright and needing to go back to Garmin. Damn. I shut the Mac and drove off in frustration.
A few miles down the road, I had another idea. I plugged in the charger. Jill turned on immediately and resumed telling us where to go. Doh.
Getting Comfortable
Jess gets motion sick easily, but after a few hours she felt bad enough to try resting on the bed in back. Moving around the coach made her queasy, but lying on the bed she felt fine.
Simon, meanwhile, spent the day trying to figure out exactly what we were doing. Were we in a car? Or were we in a house? He climbed up on the back passenger seat to look out the window and sat up there a bit. What a cutie. But then he got stuck and we had to pull over and get him down.
Around 7 PM, well after sunset, we got onto Interstate 80 to make time, grabbed burgers around Moline, and had Jill find a Wal-Mart for the things we hadn't packed: travel Wet Ones, zip lock bags, bottled water, hand sanitizer, and hand lotion (the sanitizer gets brutal).
Around 9 PM, we spotted "Iowa 80, the World's Largest Truck Stop" and pulled in for the night to wind down and watch a movie. It was our first time sleeping in the coach and our first time sleeping at a truck stop. A bit nerve-racking at first, but with the curtains pulled, the other travelers around us, and the well-lit building nearby, things felt pretty safe. We still locked the doors.
Our first night at Iowa 80, the World's Largest Truck Stop, and Simon on his bed between the seats.
The two single beds, separated by a nightstand, were the one thing we really didn't like about the rental. We figured we could lay a board and pillows across the gap and sleep together sideways. But Jess was still sick and we were both tired, so we slept separately.
Day 2 - Fri, Nov 10: Davenport, IA to York, NE
The night was cool, so we had the heat going, and I woke up in the middle of the night because Simon was panting loudly. It was, in fact, pretty hot, so I turned off the heat, turned on the ceiling fan, and opened my window a crack. By morning it was cold and dreary.
Morning at Iowa 80: Jess sleeping off her cold under every blanket we brought, Simon keeping watch from the other bed, and the two singles we were still learning to live with.
We headed into the World's Largest Truck Stop for breakfast. It was like walking straight into the 70s. There were phones on every table - the old, classic kind the phone company owned - presumably so truckers could call home.
Day 2 started out cold and got colder. Around Des Moines it was raining, sleeting, and snowing, so we gave up on the blue highways for I-80. By the western border of Iowa, it was back to just cold.
We tried two sites, both without success. The squirrel cage jail in Council Bluffs was already closed for the season when we arrived around 6 PM. We snapped some pictures and moved on. Then Lincoln, Nebraska, for the Museum of Odd, which I'd found in Eccentric America. Jess and I were both really impressed by the University of Nebraska campus, a stretch of renovated brick reminiscent of Georgetown. The museum, though, was closed - just a dark, run-down house with a bunch of stuff in the yard. Jess took a picture of the front, and we scrammed.
Council Bluffs after dark: the van, and the squirrel cage jail's sign. Closed for the season.
We spent the night at a Petro truck stop and watched Cowboy Bebop over Arby's. (It seems an Iron Skillet is always a sign of a truck stop.)
Our challenge for the night was heat. With the generator on, we turned on the furnace. Cool air. We tried the heat strip. Cool air. Thermostat high, ceiling fan in reverse, engine on. Cool air. Finally I got online through the Q phone, searched "sprinter generator furnace" in the rv-travel Google Group, and found the answer right away: shut off the generator and let the furnace run on propane by itself. Who knew? Blessed hot air came rushing out.
Day 3 - Sat, Nov 11: York, NE to Sterling, CO
The furnace worked like a charm and we had a warm, cozy night.
Simon woke me up in the middle of the night, standing over me on our makeshift bed and looking scared. When I talked to him, he just put his paw on me. I figured he wanted to be with his people, so I had him lie down. He did, and seemed pretty content afterward.
We took our first Navy shower. The real trick is getting the water to the right temperature without wasting too much of it.
Jess at the van door. She took most of the pictures on this trip.
This is also the day we noticed the leaking water. We had filled the tank that morning at the truck stop, and by afternoon it was nearly empty. I jumped out and checked the undercarriage. Sure enough, a big leak.
We spent most of the day crossing Nebraska and made it into Colorado around 8:30 PM. Jill insisted there was a national park just north of Sterling, so we followed her onto unpaved roads as it got darker, and then really dark, and then pitch black. Eventually we realized we weren't heading to any forest. We seemed to be heading to the nearby correctional facility. Yikes. We gave up the chase and slept at the Sterling visitor's bureau.
Day 4 - Sun, Nov 12: Sterling, CO to Boulder, CO
We started the day with another check on the water. At first it didn't seem to leak, but when we started the pump, water came out from multiple places.
Today we finally drove out of the farming flatlands. From Sterling we hedged our bets: drive to Brush, take 71 to the sadly but appropriately named Last Chance, and decide there whether to head west to Denver or keep south on the blue highways. Last Chance itself was mostly a collection of abandoned buildings, with maybe a single working farmhouse and a church. We parked at the closed Dairy King (yes, King), ate lunch, and decided on Denver.
We didn't spend much time in Denver because really, let's face it, it's a city. We still had to reconcile the places we wanted to see with getting the Sprinter repaired. Fortunately, Jess remembered our America's Most Scenic Drives book, and after some study it looked like we could hit all the Colorado drives: Central City up to Estes Park, back down to Georgetown, then hightail it to Montrose for the third. What a plan.
The drive west out of Denver finally brought us to mountains - real mountains. Our ears were popping (well, mine; Jess was too congested to feel it), and then we hit the 6 percent grade sign warning trucks, and maybe us, to stay in low gear. Central City was pretty awesome, an old, old town where you could imagine the miners building wherever there were more than a few feet of flat land. Set against that historic feel were the anachronistic, probably booming casinos.
From Central City we headed north on 72 toward Nederland, with cliffside roads and jaw-dropping views of forests and small villages below. As we headed north, the temperature dropped and the snow started. First it was snow along the sides of the road. Then it was snow coming down at a constant pace. Then it was snow-covered roads. Jess and I laughed at how each of our driving adventures had gotten progressively harder. In California, it was winding roads along a sheer drop-off. In Maui, winding roads along a sheer drop-off with single-lane stretches and large unpaved chunks. Now it was winding roads along a sheer drop-off in a snowstorm, on icy roads, in a 10'4" tall Dodge Sprinter.
After about 15 miles of white-knuckle driving, with another 10 or 12 to go before Estes Park, we decided a change of plans was in order. Conditions were getting worse, the day was getting later, and we'd still have to come down the other side. After checking the atlas and Jill, we decided we'd always wanted to see Boulder, and now was the perfect time.
Snow closing in on the road toward Estes Park, and Simon keeping watch from his seat.
The drive down to Boulder was even more amazing, though it wasn't on the list of scenic drives. The road cut through a mountain so that on either side of us were 200- to 300-foot walls of boulders, which often seemed to have shapes or faces hidden in them.
We ate dinner at Turley's, a restaurant specializing in organic and natural foods. (The fact that it was right next to a Whole Foods and a Whole Pets should have been our first tip.) We worried our trucker-style clothes would stand out. They didn't. The waiter pushed a spiced iced tea on me, saying it was popular even though he personally didn't like it - "Too much cinnamon for my taste." I ordered it. It was pretty darn good.
We started toward a KOA, but right outside Boulder we saw the Boulder Mountain Lodge and, after some discussion (Jess wanting the known route, me arguing the lodge was the known and the KOA could mean more difficult terrain), we pulled in. When I went to plug in the electrical, the cable was wet, and Jess got worked up that I was going to electrocute myself, and I got worked up that she thought I'd plug it in without any precautions.
For the record, I lived. I plugged it in, and it was fine.
Day 5 - Mon, Nov 13: Boulder, CO to Alamosa, CO
We got up at 6 AM to get more daylight on the road and drove down to Colorado Springs to get the water leak fixed. The Dodge dealer on the sheet Obie gave us told us they only work on the auto parts, not the RV parts.
In Cañon City we found the Museum of Colorado Prisons from Eccentric America, open Wednesday to Sunday. It was Monday.
Just outside Cañon City, we started seeing signs for something called Royal Gorge (which I kept reading as Royal George). We hit a tumbleweed, which went right under us, and in my side mirror I watched it stick to the grill of the car behind us. Jess was saying we should get a picture, and at the last minute I pulled off the road - right at the exit for the Royal Gorge. Signs promised a tremendous suspension bridge and a full day of fun.
Out on the Royal Gorge bridge, and the aerial tram across the gorge.
It was one of the first big, unexpected sights of the trip. Neither of us had heard of it before. The place was nearly empty, and the tram lifts hanging over the gorge reminded me of a Silent Hill game we'd played before the trip, so it had a bit of a spook factor. But it was really fun wandering around and walking out onto the bridge itself.
We were aiming for Montrose over Monarch Pass, but the pass was looking really nasty, so we turned around at Monarch and headed south through Salida, Villa Grove, and Alamosa instead. We ended the day at the UFO Watchtower outside Hooper.
The UFO Watchtower at dusk: "Come on in. Explore the UFO phenomena."
It was just a fun tourist trap, and we were happy to be trapped. We found the aliens.
Jess piloting the saucer, and me, finally among my people.
At a McDonald's along the way, a man in the bathroom asked if we were having a good time in our RV. He and his family owned a KOA in New Mexico. I said we were having a really good time. That night we checked in after hours at our first KOA, in Alamosa, with maybe three or four other RVs and no tents. It was pretty darn cold.
Day 6 - Tue, Nov 14: Alamosa, CO to Santa Fe, NM
Jess' phone had quietly switched to mountain time, so we ran an hour behind all morning without knowing it.
The weather swung from snowing and freezing to the upper 50s within a few miles. The route from Alamosa to Taos was beautiful, and just outside Taos we stopped at the Earthship community, homes built into the earth from tires and bottles. Then lunch at Mante's Chow Cart: a bit of a dump on the outside, a bunch of hunters waiting inside, and the best enchiladas of the trip.
On the road into Taos: painted grain silos, and a pink roadside art gallery.
The Earthship community outside Taos, with Jess for scale.
Holy smokes, the Rio Grande Gorge is huge. The bridge over it is solid enough that I didn't get my usual uneasy feeling hundreds of feet in the air - not a crippling fear of heights, just a funny feeling in my gut.
Not long after, turning around on the highway, I hurt the van. I think it was the engine crawl Sprinters are infamous for, where the van drops into a protective slow mode and barely makes speed. It still ran, and it got us to Santa Fe, but it put a mechanic on our list.
In Santa Fe, the EVDO connection failed us, so we drove around heading uphill (always a good choice when trying to go upscale), found a strip of boutique stores, and kept climbing until we were among homes with seriously sweeping views. We always make fun of anything with "vista" in the name, thanks to Seinfeld, but this was a place where it would have been appropriate.
Me trying to get online to figure out Santa Fe, and Santa Fe found the old-fashioned way, the cathedral at the end of the street.
We walked Simon around a park for a good long while. His back leg had been giving him trouble again and gave out a bit when he ran. What makes it so sad is that Simon just keeps on trucking, oblivious to it. I can see it makes him nervous, so all I can do is hold him still and calm him down.
Dinner was La Choza, found on TripAdvisor, and it was excellent. That's where I noticed there are no sharp corners on any structure in Santa Fe. The outside walls are curved, the inside walls are curved, the window wells are curved. If you need to baby-proof a house, start by moving to Santa Fe.
Jess at La Choza.
We slept in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
Day 7 - Wed, Nov 15: Santa Fe to Chaco Canyon
We slept on one bed, which is to say both of us on something slightly narrower than a single. Fortunately, we're thinnish people, so we fit, more or less: more when we were both on our sides head to toe, less with me on my back. A midnight misunderstanding about the generator and furnace left the coach freezing, but we were cozy under a thick comforter, spooning like camping flatware. Jess was finally much recovered, and we had the interior organized, with open space throughout.
Artists of Cerrillos
Heading toward Madrid, we followed a sign for a historic something and a museum in Cerrillos and found a small village, quaint in a Western movie way. It must have been a town once abandoned and now revived by artists: metal sculptures tacked onto wooden fences, primitive murals on stucco walls, elaborate metalwork everywhere. A trading post, long and low, with rusted farm or mining equipment outside and bottles along the windows, and a petting zoo with some llamas.
As we left, I noticed on the GPS that Cerrillos was still up ahead and started to wonder. What if we had just stopped in some pseudo-Cerrillos that had co-opted the real town, the way a mirage co-opts weary travelers?
Cerrillos, or something calling itself Cerrillos: the signpost, and the Clear Light Opera House.
Tammy from Tiny Town
Along Highway 14 between Santa Fe and Madrid, there's a small roadside setup called Tiny Town. It's really just an eccentric collection of junk laid out to attract people like us. With its broken-down dollhouse-sized structures, skulls, and random stuff like bowling pins and balls, it's surreal and a bit macabre. Shortly after we walked in, a woman in hot pink polka dot tights, something like chaps, a deerskin coat, and a cowboy hat with a skull on the back walked toward us with a small dog. She welcomed us and told us her name was Tammy. She's been set up here for ten years. She told us she'd like to convert it into a putt-putt course, which explains the AstroTurf. As we walked past the bowling pins, she said she'd like to set up a bowling alley, and looking harder, I realized there was indeed a wooden alley-like structure by the pins.
Jess was, of course, immediately enamored, and wandered Tiny Town for a good half hour taking tons of pictures with her macro lens. After 10 or 15 minutes, I decided we needed to donate more (I started with $2 and added another $5) and went back to the van to wait and type this up.
Tiny Town on Highway 14, and one of its dollhouses, with a resident cat.
Zia
Along the highway, I noticed a sign for the pueblo that's home of the Zia sun symbol. I'd seen the symbol many times, so I thought it'd be cool to check it out. As we pulled off, signs flashed by that Jess said we probably should have read. Being male, I didn't worry about it. At the town itself, an unpaved affair winding up a mountainside, another sign made clear we were entering tribal land and should not be taking pictures. We turned around.
The (Bumpy) Road to Chaco
We trusted Jill to take us to Chaco and followed her blindly. At first it was just a beautiful drive with changing scenery and wild horses rambling along the highway as if they were going home, or hanging out in groups like they were planning some mischief.
Eventually, Jill showed a road that didn't exist, and then I knew we were in trouble. She kept recalculating onto new roads that also didn't exist. We doubled back and found a sign for Chaco on a nearby road, and a mile later another one telling us Chaco was 40-some miles away - or so we thought, since it was heavily tagged with graffiti. We kept going while Jill kept telling us to turn onto roads that didn't exist. We ridiculed her for her constant blabbering but were impressed by her persistence.
Within a few miles, the road became unpaved clay with some gravel. We realized Jill had taken us in by the southern route, through significant amounts of unpaved road. I suggested we just try for a bit, and Jess hesitantly agreed. It started rough, with serious rattling and teeth shaking and the back of the RV sounding like pots and pans were flying about, but we found the rhythm and made slow progress. We drove for maybe an hour. I could tell Jess was getting nervous, and I was a bit concerned too. But we had two-thirds of a tank, plenty of propane, water, and food. We found a sign for 7970, remembered the Chaco website said to take 7950, and followed 7970 in what looked like the right direction - until, five miles in, a fence told us it was private property. Damn.
We turned back around and continued on 7900.
Eventually, we drove off Jill's map entirely. Her screen showed nothing but a big green field with no roads in it, presumably because no one had mapped it, or maybe because it was tribal land. So we just drove by direction, following the gravel and pointing the van at where Chaco ought to be. It was a jarring drive. But it got us there.
On the clay road into Chaco.
Day 8 - Thu, Nov 16: Chaco Canyon to Albuquerque
Sleeping in Chaco was excellent, and cold. When I took Simon out that night, it was pitch black. No lights anywhere, and hardly any stars. Pretty spooky, really.
Chaco itself was so much fun. We hiked and explored the ruins of Pueblo Bonito, room after room.
Jess in the doorways of Pueblo Bonito, one room deeper at a time.
The trail to Pueblo Alto was awesome: about six miles with some seriously sweeping views. The brochure estimated three to four hours for the 5.6-mile loop, and we did the whole thing (and then some) in about 2¾. I got it on my Garmin Forerunner. At one point we came across someone lying perfectly still at one of the trail stops, and for a long moment I thought we had walked onto a dead body. Then he woke up, said he was resting, and went on his way.
Jess at the Jackson Staircase, and me wedged in the crack at the start of the Pueblo Alto trail.
Chaco Canyon's great houses from the rim on the Pueblo Alto trail.
That night we found what we called the Mother KOA in Albuquerque: a full hookup, a nice site, a family shower, laundry, and a pet run for Simon.
Day 9 - Fri, Nov 17: Albuquerque to Santa Rosa, NM
Jess figured out an awesome trick for the sofa-bed cushions that kept separating. It's a bit hard to explain, but the pictures say it all.
The sofa-bed cushions, tamed.
We couldn't find anyone who could work on the motorhome side of the van that day. At the Dodge dealer, we met a group from Switzerland who had shipped two Sprinter motorhomes over to travel the States. One had broken down, the part had to come from Germany, and the dealer had set them up with a hookup, so they'd been camping at the dealership for days. We did squeeze in an oil change and picked up Route 66 outside Albuquerque.
Waiting out the oil change at the Dodge dealer in Albuquerque.
We couldn't decide whether to go to Roswell, since we'd come all this way, or head home on Route 66.
At a Wal-Mart, we realized neither of us knew Simon's doses. We asked Sandy, our neighbor back home, to stop by the house and check, she set off the burglar alarm, ADT tried to call me but my phone was dead, and then they tried Vish, who was traveling. We got it sorted, and Sandy read us the list from our kitchen.
We slept at a TA truck stop in Santa Rosa, NM.
Day 10 - Sat, Nov 18: Santa Rosa, NM to Sayre, OK
Sleeping was getting harder in this RV because so many things seemed to be conspiring against us. The coach battery drained in about an hour with nothing running, which made the CO detector sound off. To recharge it, we could run the engine, which automatically turned on the headlights and shone them into our neighbors, or run the generator, which was loud and made the furnace blow cold air. The TV had quit, too.
Simon was having more hind leg spasms. As I walked him on the pavement (the "grass" here is really rocks and burrs), his legs gave out a few times, but he kept going. He got two cuts on his hind paws in the process. I just feel so bad watching his legs give out on him. I keep feeling there must be something we can do, but we probably just need to get him home.
We stopped at Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo and ate at the Red River Steakhouse.
Cholla and burrs in New Mexico, and Jess inside one of the cars at Cadillac Ranch.
That night at a Flying J, I finally cracked the generator and furnace. Both needed the engine running when they started, and the order mattered: engine, then furnace, then generator. Hot air, then the generator, and the furnace kept going. Then engine off, and everything kept running. Excellent.
Day 11 - Sun, Nov 19: Sayre, OK to Joplin, MO
I only thought we had figured out the heat. Last night the furnace petered out completely. Around 1:30 AM, the CO detector went off for real. Jess at first mistook it for the propane alarm and thought we needed to evacuate, but we just opened the door and windows and took Simon outside, and I went into the Flying J to see if they sold a CO detector (by now I had low faith in the van's). They didn't, and by the time I got back, the alarm had stopped. Jess was nervous about both the generator and the furnace, so we left them off and piled the comforter on top of our blanket. In the morning we started the engine, sucked it up until the heater warmed things, and packed on the move.
The funny thing about Route 66 in Oklahoma is that the towns seemed to have fared better than in New Mexico and Texas. Those were often complete ghost towns. In Oklahoma there were still empty, decrepit buildings, but there were new ones alongside them, and some towns had obviously survived on their own tourist attractions.
We stopped at the National Route 66 Museum in Elk City. The museum itself was closed (apparently everything is on Sunday in Oklahoma), but they'd built a replica old town, complete with wax figures, and that was open. Jess spent a good while taking pictures of windmills, and we learned windmills were often used for pumping water. I brought Simon along, who as usual spent the whole time sniffing the ground. He hates the stiff, burr-filled dry grass out here, and more than once I noticed him limping only to find burrs stuck in his paws.
Simon and me at the National Route 66 Museum in Elk City, and Jess among the windmills.
We only caught a 12-mile stretch of Route 66 in Kansas, and it was already getting dark, but we did cross the original Route 66 bridge, since replaced by a modern one.
That night at the KOA in Joplin, Jess made ravioli with pesto, zucchini and squash, and toasted rye. Yum. I spent about an hour on the furnace, got the cover off, and found a blinking light whose legend pointed to the air flow limiter, but vacuuming out loose hair didn't fix it. The TV still didn't work, the water didn't work, and the hookup caused a massive leak into the carpet between the beds. Ah well. The heat strip, maybe thanks to shore power, finally blew reasonably warm air.
Day 12 - Mon, Nov 20: Joplin, MO to Lincoln, IL
At a Hardee's in Missouri, we met an elderly woman who traveled alone in a 32-foot RV with her two dogs.
I don't remember her words anymore. What I remember is how she made it sound: no house to keep, no schedule, just her and the dogs and the next town. She didn't talk about it as an adventure or a sacrifice. To her it was simply how she lived, and by the time we left Hardee's it seemed perfectly reasonable to me too.
After trying a few travel centers with no RV spots, we settled in at a Love's, about three hours from home, in a corner of the lot that was probably technically a Steak 'n Shake. No one seemed to be policing the area. The rear window curtain fell apart that morning.
Day 13 - Tue, Nov 21: Lincoln, IL to Naperville, IL
Pulling into Naperville, it didn't feel like the end of something. It felt like the start of something. It was.
The van the day we brought it back: Simon's spot between the seats, the galley, the drawers, and every cabinet we learned to latch.
What We Learned
- Always use the pre-flight checklist.
- GPS is indispensable, and so is the paper atlas: for when the GPS is wrong, when it goes on the fritz, and for seeing across two states at once.
- An EVDO modem can provide connectivity in the middle of nowhere.
- A "command console" for the things you grab every time you leave the van: backpacks, cameras, hats, gloves.
- An ABC (Always Be Charging) area for PDAs and camera batteries.
- A garbage can built into the space.
- Hard flooring that's easy to clean, with a removable rug on top.
- Fewer, more versatile sheets and blankets.
- Window panes that form to the glass instead of a snap-on privacy curtain.
- A paper KOA directory.
- Record the mileage each day, and draw the route in the atlas as you go.
- Buy and learn more about CBs.
And one from a road sign somewhere in Oklahoma or Texas: "Gusty winds may exist." How existential of the sign makers.