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.
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