2015 Trip Summary (10-23-2015)

We have been home for a few days now, have the RV mostly unloaded, and the laundry caught up.  I would say I was going to do this final blog when the dust settled, but the dust is pretty well settled, and no one has wiped it up yet, so I decided to just get this off my to do list because I was curious about some of these things myself.

We drove 13,026 miles in the RV, and another 7,000 in the car, so we have driven 20,000 miles this summer.  We were gone 199 days, and we covered 27 states!  And 4 Canadian Provinces, and I stuck my toes in all five of the Great Lakes. 

And I got to check off some things on my bucket list:  New York City, Niagara Falls, Epcot Center at Disney World.    We did city tours of:  Cleveland, Columbus, Montreal, Quebec City, Boston, New York, and Washington D.C., and a personal tour of Ottawa (the capital of Canada) with Marilyn's sister, Sylvia.  

Other highlights include:  waterfalls-Niagara Falls being the most significant, but others in Georgia and the Smokies, and other parts of the country as well.  Basicilas -- 3 or 4 -- and they were magnificent!  Capitol buildings -- Columbus, Ohio; Lansing, Michigan; Ottawa, Quebec City, and the Capitol in Washington D.C.  Fishing -- a couple times in Tampa, a few days on the Indian River Lagoon on the Atlantic side of Florida, once in a campground somewhere in Canada, and my big catch on the Charleston Lake in Ontario!!!  That was a biggie!

Several boat cruises and ferry rides, in Michigan, on the St. Lawrence Seaway, in New York City.  My class reunion and 2 alumni banquets in Indiana.  And countless museums.  We saw lots and lots of things.

And we saw some friends and relatives we don't usually cross paths with:  cousins of Joe's; a family friend in Virginia, a previous co-worker of mine in New York City who was a great help, a great-niece-in-law, and Collins and Marilyns family in Canada.  

Collins set out our route, so we owe him a great big thank you.  Although he deserted us before New York City, and we definitely could have used a route there!   

According to my calculation (with lots of room for error), we bought 1981.717 gallons of gas, for a total of $4,849.59.  Our average mph was 6.573.  We spent $3,104.95 on camping, but we had a lot of free nights which helped a lot.  I didn't keep track of our other expenses, but we just know they were plenty!!!  When I calculated our budget, based on Marilyn's efforts and my adjustments for what I thought we might do in addition, and a guess of fuel prices, I came out $3.44 over budget!!!  That really gave us a chuckle, because we were about 2500 miles over my estimated miles.  So the price of fuel was really in our favor, and the fact that it started coming back down, or maybe stayed down, for our return trip home, was really a blessing!

So the 6 Ruscateers all returned home safely, even though we all separated along the way.  We all had a great trip, saw lots of wonderful things, and are all thankful to be home.  And now that I'm a scrapbooker, I have lots of material to keep me busy for the next year or so.

Heading Home (10-16-2015 to 10-19-2015)

Time to go.  While this whole trip was great fun, we are both really ready to be home.  So we said our goodbyes, and pulled out about 8:40 on Friday morning.  We had talked about some of the stops we "could" make (San Antonio Riverwalk, Historic Austin, Texas, and West Monroe, Louisiana to see Duck Dynasty), but once Joe got behind the wheel, we just booked!  We took I-75 up to Gainesville, then angled across on U.S. 27 to the Florida Panhandle.  We considered driving the coastline again, but decided to take Florida 20 to Freeport and then hook up with I-10.  We crossed the Alabama state line at 6:20 (5:20 local time), then through the tunnel in Mobile, and across the Mississippi state line an hour later.

We finally stopped in Gulfport, Mississippi for the night at 8:20 EST, basically 12 hours in the saddle today.  595 miles.  Two tanks of gas, totalling 103 gallons.  We did find out our RV lights are not overly bright!  We stayed at the Island View Casino parking lot in Gulfport, MS, and gambled just a little, shared a chef salad, and called it a night.  But we came out $15 ahead, so it was all a plus.

We were up early and on the road at 8:00 a.m.  It was 61 degrees when I got up, and the beautiful Gulf coastline was just on the other side of the casino.  I walked over and got some beignets from the casino for breakfast, and Joe washed the Florida (and Louisiana and Mississippi) bugs off the windshield.  He thought he requested "bug-proof" windshields, but obviously that didn't happen!  But he did have to put a jacket on to do his morning chores.  There was an opossum sharing the casino parking lot with me when I walked back with the beignets, but he stayed one aisle over, so that was good.

 We crossed the Mississippi River at 10:40 at the Port of Baton Rouge, then got into the Louisiana swampland.  LSU has a big football game tonight, and we saw lots of cars heading into Baton Rouge with their LSU flags flying.

 This "canal" is right between the two lanes of the highway!

 And another bridge!

We hit Texas at 1:15 CST and just kept moving.  Joe found a Whataburger for lunch, so he was a happy camper.   Texas, across I-10, is 880 miles long!  We buzzed through Houston, which is a crazy traffic city.  We were glad to be going through on Saturday evening, but traffic was still awful, and there are lanes going off the freeway to the left onto toll roads, and lanes going off to the right onto other highways or streets, so Joe really had to watch his p's and q's through here.  But, thankfully, we made it.  Houston seemed to go on forever, with at least 3 separate "downtowns."

Houston, Texas

Joe made a pitstop just about dusk and a grassfire had just broken out between the medium of the freeway.  We just got through it but it was spreading quickly, and several miles down the road we saw the emergency vehicles heading that way.  We were lucky to not get held up by that.

 We made it all the way to San Antonio, actually we went around San Antonio, and stopped for the night in Boerne, Texas, at 8:05 p.m.  612 miles today!  Another 12-hour day, 73 gallons of gas today.  Fortunately, we found cheap gas -- $1.829 and $1.809. 

And so now it's Sunday.  We are more than half-way across Texas.  We got another early start, 8:10.  I even relieved him behind the wheel for an hour today so he could sit in a different position for a while.  We had a pretty good side wind for most of the day, but eventually it moved around to a tailwind which hopefully helped the fuel mileage.  Today we fueled 3 times!!!  And the price started moving upwards.  $1.869, $2.109, and $2.039.   We just drove and drove.  We crossed the New Mexico state line at 5:30 (4:30 local time), which was sort of our goal for the day -- getting through El Paso.  but it was now only 4:30, way too early to call it a day.  We made it all the way to Deming, and actually stopped before dark.  We decided to get something to eat before heading to the campground, so we did end up camping in the dark, but we were basically off the road at 6:00 local time.  Last night we just pulled into a Walmart, but tonight we decided we needed electricity, since our inverter doesn't seem to last through the night for his sleep machine and the fan.  We stayed at a very nice campground in Deming, Lo-Hi RV Ranch.  And a new driving record -- 620 miles today.  But we are within smelling distance of home, so it's all been good.

And now it's Monday.  I was up before the sun, and we were on the road at 7:30, crossed the Arizona state line at 9:30 (8:30 local time).  YEAH!!!

It had rained here during the night, but it was sunny now.  We cut up out of Lordsburg on U.S. 70 to Globe, going through lots of small towns but that is the route we prefer.  We talked to Dave and Mazie and found out that they had gone back to Sierra Vista from the lake this weekend and were driving back up today, along this same route, so we arranged to meet for lunch at the casino in Globe.  We got there about 30 minutes ahead of them, and had a nice visit with them (and I won $50) before our last leg home.  We probably spent 2 1/2 hours there, but we still pulled into the house at 2:55.  274 miles today.

Home Sweet Home!!!

Our time with Andrew (10-1-2015 to 10-16-2015)

Well, by popular demand (thank you for your comment, Cathy), I decided to finish out the blog for this trip, even though this is a week (or more) late.  Some of my pictures of Andrew were just too good not to share, especially the sandbox ones.

So we were at the Doctors Froeschke for 15 days.  The first week John had to travel to Galveston, so we (hopefully) were helpful to Bridgette as she was dealing with the last few days (hopefully) of morning/evening sickness.  We did a lot of book reading to Andrew, especially Grandpa who for some reason seemed to be points ahead of me.  Some mornings they had read 20 books before breakfast.

And we continued the daily popsicle ritual when he got home from daycare.

John returned Thursday night and we went to the zoo on Friday, except Bridgette who had to go to work.  I accidentally left my camera in the truck so no pictures from the zoo.  But we checked out the rhinos (his current favorite), the water buffalo (a close second), and of course the goats in the petting zoo.  Then he played in the water park, which was great because it was really hot and humid.  I wouldn't have minded running through some of those water sprays.

Saturday we all went to a Halloween pumpkin patch kind of place, with lots of exotic animals there too.  Andrew really enjoyed this.  We started and ended with pony rides, but he got to see and do a lot of things here.

Bridgette fell in love with a guinea pig, but we managed to leave there without adopting it.

We had a little rest, then Andrew tried out the tricycle, then we went on a hayride.

He loved playing on the hay, and in the pumpkin patch he has to try to move every pumpkin.  Then he found a palm frond that he became quite attached to and drug it around for a while.

And there was the python.  The biologist parents were excited that he wasn't afraid of it anymore.  Me, not so much.

We finished the day here by climbing on the posts, then we headed back home, plenty tired.

We did work in a birthday cake celebration for John today, since he was out of town on his birthday.

We managed to get in a little sandbox time on Sunday.

 John had a four-day weekend, so we had one more day for fun.  It was a fishing trip on Tampa Bay, launching their pontoon boat at Alfalfa River.  We didn't have too much success, although John caught one sheepshead, which is Bridgette's project fish, and Grandpa and Andrew snagged two small mangrove snappers, which I failed to get a picture of.  Grandpa let him work the fish in the water for a while, so Andrew really liked that.

John drove over and scared up a bunch of seagulls on the water, so Andrew got all excited watching them.  Then we had a small pod of dolphins performing around the boat for a while for our entertainment.

After the parents went back to work, we finally got some rest.  But then it was time to think about getting ready to leave.  Fortunately, Joe had a little help washing the motorhome.

The Halloween costume (rhinoceros) arrived the evening before we left, so we got a very short preview of that.

He wouldn't put the headgear on, so hopefully by Halloween that will change.

Finally, it was time for final reading on our last night, so Grandpa (of course) got the honors again.