Lake Wales, FL – Jan 2025

Welcome to 2025, and Happy Birthday to ME!  As I sit here to publish this blog, my 118th edition spanning 82 consecutive months of publication (that is just two months shy of a full 7 year run), it also happens to be my 66th birthday (well actually tomorrow, but close enough).  What better way to celebrate than to once again share the goings on in my little corner of the world. It’s early yet, but this year is looking to be a fantastic one.  Though not totally finalized, I’ve made significant progress in laying out the route and making campground reservations for this year’s RV adventure.  I’ve also wrapped up my 2024 stats and retrospective now that the year is over.  All those details, and more, follows in this edition of the Luv2RV Blog.

2024 In Review

The end of 2024 marks the completion of my 7th calendar year as a full time RVer.  It’s hard to fathom how quickly these past seven years have passed, but they certainly have not been without fun and adventure.  I have absolutely loved living aboard my 5th wheel RV and traveling around this country seeing all that there is to see.  As I’ve said before, I had visions and expectations of what life would be like as an unemployed homeless person (retired/full time RVer), all of which have been so fully exceeded. The annual statistics that I maintain, everything from costs to miles travelled and number of stops, paints a picture reflective of a true nomadic lifestyle.  So, let’s dive in to the stats so you can see what I’ve been up to these past seven years.  By the way, all these slides are available and viewable in larger format on my Fun Facts page which you can get to via the menu bar at the top right.

The first statistic I maintain is a simple one that shows the total number of days I have been on the road – not counting those that I now spend here at the Florida home base.  For the seven years beginning May 9, 2018 thru the end of 2024, I have spent a total of 1,541 days and nights in the RV traveling around the country.  That comes to a total of just over 51 months on the road.  Wow!

The second set of stats I like to keep track of are the total miles driven, and total number of stops for each calendar year.  As you can see at left, the last two years has seen significant increases in both mileage and stops – consistent with the fact that I’ve been exploring farther and farther west with each successive year.  In fact, 2025 will be taking me to the farthest points along the western coast, and will easily rack up in excess of 10,000 miles for the year.   Also, 2020 and 2021 were basically COVID years so my travels were severely limited during that time.  But, its interesting to see the progression from year to year.

The next set of stats I keep track of involve a bit more details into the places I’ve stayed.   First up is a list showing the number of nights I have spent in each of the 50 states.  Over the past seven years, I’ve managed to put days into 37 of the 48 contagious US states (kinda hard to drive to Hawaii or Alaska).  The top three have been Texas, Maryland, and Florida (again not counting Home Base stays), followed closely behind by South Carolina, New Mexico, Tennessee, and Michigan.  So, I’ve got 11 more state visits to tackle in my future travels – 5 of which will be accounted for in my 2025 travel plans.  That will bring my total to 42 of 48.  Not bad!

Next, I keep track of some various campground stats – including the most and least expensive ones I’ve stayed in on a cost per day basis, and a breakdown of the various types of campgrounds I stay in.  2024 brought with it two new all time most expensive campground stays with the most expensive being $111 per night in Browning, MT (not far from Glacier National Park), and seconded by a campground in Ponchatoula, LA at a cost of $104 per night.  Prior low record holders of $12 per night in Bushnell, FL in 2019, and $17 per night in Portland, TX in 2020 remain unbroken (and likely will never be bested).  As for types, I tend to favor mom & pop campgrounds by 71% of the time, with 24% of my stays at the heavily commercialized KOA or Yogi Bear campgrounds, with state or federal campgrounds representing about 5% of my stays.  Despite the low participation, I do enjoy staying at state parks or Core of Engineer/National Park Service campgrounds, but sadly few of them offer full hookup pull-thru sites which is pretty much all I’m interested in reserving.  So sadly, my options there are relatively limited.

The final statistic that I maintain on a rolling basis is my spend in various fiscal categories.  It’s interesting to see year over year how some categories are positively or negatively affected, while others remain relatively consistent from each successive year.  For example, my Campground Fees category varies from about $5,000 one year, to over $15,000 another year.  Easily explained – the $5,000 year was when I spent upwards of 7 months in a relatively inexpensive TX campground trying to ride out COVID, while the over $15k year represented the first and only full 12 months of full time RV travel in 2019 (2018 was a partial year as I started in May of that year, and every year from 2020 onward have only been partial years now that I spend my winters at my Florida Home Base).  Maintenance & Repair has been the most wildly inconsistent category – ranging from less than $1k one year, to a budget and chart busting $20k this past year.  I can only hope that my investments in 2024 will result in significant reductions in the years ahead.  One can only hope!  The final category with lots of varying cost has been healthcare.  The first couple of full years of ACA healthcare were extremely expensive – with very high premiums and high annual deductibles.  2021 brought a reduced premium via an available subsidy which helped.  Then in 2024, I hit the magical age of 65 and got myself enrolled in Medicare.  That, as it has turned out, has resulted in a wonderful reduction in my overall healthcare costs.  I look forward to even further reductions in 2025 now that we’ve got a $2k maximum cap on prescriptions.  Pretty much all the other categories are relatively consistent from year to year – such as eating out, entertainment, and the like.  I’m fairly consistent on my spend and budget in those categories.  Lastly, fuel costs have increased over the last three years as compared to the prior four years.  That is mostly due to the overall cost increase of fuel, and the fact that I’m driving more miles each year as I progress further west in my travels.  Not much I can do about that one other than suck it up!

So in recap, 2024 was a mostly good year – maintenance & repair costs not withstanding.  I visited 13 states (5 that I had never been to before), and checked off 5 additional National Parks from my must see list.  I also visited with lots of family and friends along the way which always offers a wonderful opportunity to connect and spend time with them.  At five months on the road (May thru Oct), it was shorter than prior years but turned out to be just the right amount of time for me.  My subsequent seven month respite here at the Home Base allows me to rest and recharge to get ready before heading out for another 5 months out on the road in 2025.

2025 Travel Plans

Again, these are still a work in progress, but I’m fairly far enough along in the planning and reservations phase to share what it is looking like.  2025 travel will be a 23 state, 51 stop, 10,000 mile marathon.  I leave on May 12th, and return on Oct 26th – making for a 167 day, almost 24 week trip.  Of the 51 stops, I have confirmed reservations for 46 of them.  Of the 5 remaining, I hope to confirm 4 of them in Feb, while the 5th and final one can’t be confirmed until early march due to a 6 month in advance limit on reservations.  I don’t anticipate having any problems confirming these final 5 places, but will remain flexible as needed to make any necessary adjustments to the itinerary.  One adjustment that I found myself having to make was my planned arrival in the Albuquerque, NM area conincidentially at the same exact time as Balloon Fiesta was just getting started.  I’ve been to the fiesta in years past, and was not up to paying 3 to 5 times the normal daily rate for a RV campsite.  So, I adjusted my travels heading north, and instead plan to stay an hour further north in Santa Fe to avoid the crazy crowds and crazy costs.  Other than that, the rest of my itinerary went pretty smoothly, and getting campground reservations has not been a problem.

In addition to visiting with friends and family along the way, I plan to visit no less than a dozen National Parks or Monuments, nine of my buddy Peter Toth’s carved wooden Indian statues, and seven Dambo Troll creatures.  The latter (pictures featured here) will be something new this year and is something that my brother Dick made me aware of.  These are really cool whimsical wooden troll creatures created by artist Thomas Dambo that, like Peter Toth, are featured all around the country.  I’ve plotted out their locations on a map, and hope to visit as many of them as possible in my remaining travel years.  If you are interested to see where they are all located, you can do so at the Troll Map HERE.

So overall, 2025 is shaping up to be yet another magnificent travel adventure, and I look forward to getting started in the spring.  Presented here is the almost finalized detailed plan, with dates, locations, and target campgrounds for the entire trip.  Those noted in BLACK are final, confirmed, and booked.  The five  in RED are those that I’m still working on, and hope to have finalized in the coming month or so.  For those family and friends that live in the areas I’ll be visiting, I have already reached out to most of them to let them know I’m heading their way, and look forward to seeing them.  For others that I may have missed, don’t hesitate to reach out to me so we can make some visiting plans.

Other Happenings

So, I continue to work on various maintenance and project items here at the home base.  Also, the community has swelled with most snowbirds having arrived from their northerly homes to fill in the many otherwise vacant homes.  With that, activities are plentiful and my role on the Tech Team working the sound and video streaming systems have been busy.  But I enjoy it, and it keeps me somewhat busy while I’m here in the winter months.

A couple of the projects I’ve tackled this month include these two.  First up, I’ve been having problems keeping my golf cart battery water levels up to their designated range – necessitating a more than normal frequent refill of distilled water.  There are 6 batteries in the cart, and removing the caps and filling the 4 individual cells with water was becoming a nuisance.  So, Amazon to the rescue!  There I found a system that I could replace each battery cap with this filling system, and connect them all together so that I can fill all of the batteries from a single feed hose – easy peasy!

Next, being a fully committed Apple device guy, I wanted to add Apple CarPlay to my Prius.  I found a device (on Amazon of course) that you can add to the factory Prius radio that will provide CarPlay services.  Of course I had to take apart the dash and remove the radio to install the thing.  But after watching a few YouTube videos of how exactly to do that, I was confident I could take on the challenge.  The hardest part of the entire process was me trying to release a plastic pin that needed to be removed to allow the dash to be removed.  I ended up busting that damn pin, but as it turns out, it doesn’t appear to be necessary overall.  With that done and the radio removed, it was a simple matter of interconnecting 4 cable assemblies between the existing radio, and the CarPlay device, and voila – I now have CarPlay in my car.  Now, when I do Google Maps navigation, or want to listen to XM Radio, it can all be done and/or displayed on the much larger car radio screen instead of the screen on my little phone.  All in, it was just about an hours job to get this done – half of which was dealing with that damn plastic pin.  Overall, I’m very pleased with the ease of this project, and especially the results.

Though it may seem a bit mundane and not necessarily newsworthy, I’m proud to announce that I’ve totally organized my fridge!  As depicted here at left, bottom left, stuff was just thrown in there wherever space allowed.  It was difficult to get to the things stored in the back of the shelves, and more importantly, after taking the RV bouncing down the road, many of the items in the fridge would have shifted and be strewned all about.  I purchased these clear plastic boxes and now all my stuff is safely stored, and easily accessible, and will remain so even during travel.  Wahoo!

Also, as noted, the community is bustling with residents – many having snow birdied here from their northern summer habitat.  Also, we have many new owners here who may not be fully aware of all the happenings and offerings within community.  To help these new owners, and even some of our more seasoned residents, we held an Expo in the clubhouse that featured representation from many clubs, committees, and community service groups.  Here I am at the Tech Committee table representing that group.  I used the opportunity to recruit any residents that might have a tech background or interest and want to join our comittee, as well as having a laptop setup and ready to help our residents register for an account on the new community website – something I had a hand in helping to develop over the past year.  I did get five new registrations, so that was a good day.

I had mentioned in my past couple of blogs about the RV site that is across the street from me went up for sale, and subsequently sold.  Well, my new neighbors have arrived!  They are a younger couple (50s?), and living about three hours away and still working full time.  It took the better part of a half a day, along with my loaner electric tree branch trimmer, to clear out the site enough in order to back in their travel trailer RV.  But, they got it in there, and have since setup a nice outdoor seating and BBQ areas.  They plan to spend mostly weekends here in the community. Welcome to them, and it’s nice to finally see that RV lot occupied.

Also in the community, a Spectrum technician was here either fixing or setting up a new cable customer.  When they pulled the cover off of the cable pedestal, they found this amazing bee sanctuary!  There are many beekeepers and honey makers nearby, so we presume one of those queens got away and she, along with many of her soldier followers, setup this new home.  My understanding is that one of these local beekeepers was contacted to help safely remove this hive.  That was quite the find!

I had an opportunity to catch up with various family members during the past month or so.  First up, my cousin Louise stopped by for a quick lunch as she was returning to her east coast home after visiting with our Aunt Marge and Uncle Ray over on the west coast.  It was great seeing and catching up with her, and I look forward to seeing her more over the winter.  Next, my brother Gerry came down for a few days this past weekend.  When he was here last in Nov, we made a plan to get together again in late Jan to attend a Lake Wales Little Theater show, and to take a trip out to the west coast to also visit with our Aunt Marge and Uncle Ray.  We had a wonderful meal with our aunt in a restaurant that was in the middle a marina on an island on the Manatee River.  We had a wonderful waterside view, and enjoyed a gorgeous sunset right from our table side window.  Truly beautiful!  Sadly, our uncle Ray is currently in rehab recovering from surgery, but we did have the opportunity to visit with him for a bit after our dinner.  We enjoyed seeing him, and wish him well and hope for a speedy recovery so that he may return home soon.  The following night when Gerry and I were back in Lake Wales, we hit up the local steak place for dinner and enjoyed a great carnivorous beef dinner.  Thanks again for treating for my birthday!

Final Thoughts

Well, this picture truly represents what we’ve been through during the month of Jan.  It’s hard not to feel bad for those who came down here from the north on vacation to get some fun and sun, but instead got lots of cold and, in some northerly places, even got some snow!  Total accumulations ranged from a dusting in some areas, to over 8 inches in Milton, FL in the panhandle – blasting way past historical records.  We had many days here in central Florida with highs in the 50s, and lows in the 30s.  Brrrrr  But, we appear to be past the arctic wave, and temps are returning to a more pleasant 70s and 80s during the day.  Hopefully, it will stay that way for the rest of the winter.  So, that’s about all I’ve got to report for this month.  Until next time, be well and safe travels!

I only show a sampling of my adventure pictures here in the blog, and do so mostly in collage format for brevity and ease of reading. If you want to view an album containing individual full fidelity and hi-res images of all my travel pictures related to this specific blog, click the image below. Enjoy!