I must say we have had fun putting this post together and reminiscing on all the places we have been!  Truly an amazing adventure and we got to see family and friends along the way and even made some new friends for which we are ever grateful!

We have traveled to 16 different states and put 9860 miles on the Solitude.  Many people qualify a state they stayed in differently and for us that is staying at least one night in the state, not just driving through.

We stayed at 50 different locations.  That is almost 1 new location a week, however some were just a day while we were traveling to a new location and others were for over a month. 
Of those, we stayed at:
​-2 free workamping spots
-2 family & friends moochdocking spots
-1 Boondockers Welcome spot
-2 Harvest Host spots
-2 Fairgrounds
-7 Passport America locations
-2 County Parks
-3 City Parks
-3 Corp of Engineers Parks
-11 State Parks
-15 Private Parks

Favorite Places We Have Stayed
Of course our friends and family are tops on the list!!!

Fort Wilderness at Disney is a no brainer, but at an avg night rate of $115, this was a special visit and not a normal occurrence!  We stayed in the 1200 loop and really liked the location.  It was half way between the lake and the bus stop to the parks.  We rented a golf cart from an off-site vendor and had a great time zipping around the campground because it is sooo big!  THe amenities were amazing, including the laundry rooms that had a site online you could see if there were machines free to use or how long your laundry had to go!  Amazing idea!  We stayed 11 nights, which was perfect to visit Disney and the greater Orlando area.  We flew our boys down and enjoyed a memorable family vacation!  Read about our Disney trip here.

Another great, but expensive place was Anchor Down in Dandridge, TN, just north of Pigeon Forge and the Great Smoky Mountains.  Beautiful views, great amenities and the sites with fireplaces...oh my!!  Read about our time at Anchors Down here.

In the reasonably priced private campground category, Belle Ridge Retreat in small town Monterey, TN was a winner.  This is a relatively new campground that has some great amenities!  Nestled in the woods on the Cumberland Plateau,  this beautiful park has tons of trails for hiking and ATV's.  You can rent an UTV and go exploring, including caves!  The bath house and laundry room is also top notch!  Read about our peaceful time here.

Best up and coming park is Rest Up Camping & RV Corral in southern IL.  When we visited in July 2018, they had just opened and we were one of the first campers.  This will definitely be a contender for top park with FHU and lots of activities and a yummy saloon and grill!  You can read about our time here.

Best Corp of Engineer park had to be hands down Mill Creek COE park on Table Rock Lake in Branson.  Our site out on the end of the Peninsula had water views on three sides with amazing sunsets.  Great site to relax and enjoy time with friends.  Read about our time at Mill Creek here.

Best State Park is a tough category because we had a bunch of great parks that we love but Topsail Preserve State Park in Santa Rosa Beach, FL topped the list.  How can you beat being that close to the gulf and have full hook ups!  A true gem and we met up with friends and had a great time!  Read about our time here.

We really do need to mention Don Carter State Park in Gainesville, GA as a runner up!  Most sites have lake views and with almost FHU (except for black tank), it really was a wonderful park.  This is also close to where we used to live in GA so we had a great home base for visiting the old haunts and friends. Read about our time at this great park here.

Our best public free spot has to be Mortimer Farms in AZ, part of the Harvest Host network.  Rick made a lifelong friend with Pedro the donkey and we enjoyed the hospitality and delicious food they have to offer!

We could mention soo many other parks that were close runners up.  We really got lucky with some great places to stay this first year but had a couple of duds.  Oh well, that is why the house has wheels, right?!  For those interested in all the locations we stayed, you can check out our campground tab here.  We will try to keep that up with every place we stayed and the details in hopes that it helps others find great sites too.

Workamping Gigs

We have been fortunate to find some pretty cool workamping gigs in our first year on the road.  We have heard horror stories from other workampers and we are happy to say that we did not have any crazy stories to add!  We really did enjoy all three of our gigs and, they were all different.

-Peninsula State Park-  We were camp hosts in one of the 5 campgrounds within the park for a month in July and August.  We took care of Welker's campground and Welker's Point day use area.  We had about 55 sites that we picked up in after campers left, checked trash and spot checked the restrooms.  There was full time staff who cleaned the restrooms.  You can read about our time here.

​-Lee Bottom Flying Field- Here we helped the really cool owners, Rich & Ginger, on some projects around the airfield such as powerwashing and painting picnic tables and a fuel wagon, replace a door and cleaned up a bath house, some landscaping and much more.  We spent September and October down on the river bottom and had a great time exploring the area and hanging out watching the planes land right in front of our RV!  You can read about our time here.

We have some really neat workamping gigs lined up for our second year.  These workamping opportunities allow us to not only continue this lifestyle, but explore places for longer periods of time that we may not have gone to without the job.  We really love all the different experiences and will continue to search out the next cool opportunity.  Who knows...we might just be photographers in the near future...hint, hint.  ​

Top Places We Visited

We also want to identify the top places we have visited and again, really hard to keep this to just a couple so we will post pictures from some of them.

Again, we could go on and on because we have seen an unbelievable amount of amazing things!  This year has allowed us to see more than we ever would have in our old sticks & bricks life.  We are truly blessed and are excited to see what year 2 brings!

Speaking of year 2, we are back in the Midwest for a couple more months and then we will be making our way down to TX for some camp hosting and some R&R on the beach for the winter.  After that remains to be seen.  Now that we have a year under our belts, I am trying to lay back a bit on the planning and see where the road takes us.  

Wow, we still cannot believe an entire year has gone by since Rick retired, we sold the house and everything in it and hit the road!  We are now a month into our second year and we can both confidently and passionately say that we love it and have no regrets!!  

Has every day been rainbows and unicorns?  Hello no, but what lifestyle is?  Life is a rollercoaster and we take the ups with the downs but we love this full time RV rollercoaster.  Cruisin down the road in our rolling earthquake! 

​We always are checking the truck and RV to ensure we are staying on top of any issues and fixing them as they come up.  Thank goodness Rick is very handy and we are not left to waste away at a RV dealership while we wait for them to fix something.   So let's start there...

What have we fixed or updated this year??  

​Upgrades
--We have replaced the micro/conv oven...twice.  We had internal circuits and fuses blow.  The first time Grand Design shipped us a new one to where we were workamping and the second time we went and bought a nicer Samsung residential unit that fit in our space with an extended warranty.  We are currently working with Grand Design on a possible reimbursement.

--We replaced our TV's with all Samsung Smart TV's.  We also installed a TV in our front bay so we can watch sports and movies outside.  The Samsung's also give us the ability to mirror off of our Samsung phones.  We have an AT&T unlimited plan and with that, we got a mini Directv Now package that gives us some cable channels and we download channel and sports apps to mirror shows onto our TV screen.  That has worked really well and we don't pay for any satellite or other TV packages.​

--As you can see in the picture, we also installed Snap Pads on our jacks.  They are made from recycled materials and really give a nice big foot pad and in parks that require something under your jacks, these fit the bill.  Super easy to put on!

--Early on we were faced with no cell or internet service so we needed to solve for that one quickly.  We had no Verizon or AT&T...ohh the horror!  LOL  We invested in a WeBoost cell booster were able to boost the almost non existent signal we had to something we could use.  This baby is not cheap but saved our bacon several times and since I now do some online work as we travel, it is really now a necessity to have a good connection.

--Decorating...or shall we say lack of.  I have not done much of anything in this area.  I am not sure I want a bunch of stuff that I need to put away and set up again every time we move.  We have come to like the simplicity and the quick cleaning around the RV, so we may not do too much decorating.  One thing I did want were some pictures.  We found a great solution for a family picture wall.  We use WallPops frames.  Think of them like FatHead stick on/peel off which hold pictures and you can easily switch out pictures.  We also then ordered a cute custom family name wall decal on to complete the grouping.

--In the area of comfort, we decided to take the leap and upgrade our RV mattress.  We did a good bit of research and went with a Tuft & Needle mattress.  We really liked that it had cooling features and a 100 day sleep guarantee.  Another plus was that we bought it while in Mesa and it just so happened they had a storefront where you can go and try out the mattresses, hassle free.  Super duper bonus, they offered a military discount!  After 6 months, we can confidently say that it provides the needed support and for me with my joint replacements, it cradles my hip and shoulder nicely.

--One thing we loved from our previous camper that we immediately did in our new home was to upgrade our showerhead with an Oxygenix showerhead.  It really does give you the feel of more water pressure with less water!

Finally, we added an On the Go portable water softener as we find ourself in areas with hard water often.  It really is a nice unit that is easy to regen and set up.  

Whew...that's alot of stuff, not to mention several are pricey investments, but in the end, that is what they are, investments for our home on wheels.  And first year ones at that.  The first year is always the most expensive.  So from here, we should hopefully have less upgrades...well umm, except for the big one we just had done in Elkhart, but more to come on that in another post coming soon!

Repairs
We would be lying if we said the rig was perfect and had no issues.  However, as rolling earthquakes go, we have been fortunate to have had some minor things that we could repair, besides our one ooops.

--While at our first workamping gig at Peninsula State Park in WI, we had a stuck gray dump valve.  You can read about how Rick fixed it here.

--As we left our first workamping gig , we bent the back left jack and foot.  Fortunately we were on our way to the Grand Design rally in Elkhart, IN and they replaced that free of charge for us!  They also fixed a couple other minor things for us as well.   Read about the repairs and our first rally here.

--When we arrived at our second workamping job in S. IN, we noticed that the living room AC was not operating as well anymore.  Rick found the issue with the divider baffle and then tapes all the vents, greatly improving the output.  Read about that here. 
​
--During our stay here we also found the electric side of the hot water heater was not working.  Rick talked with one of the GD techs online and was able to fix it by replacing the electric side thermostat.

--For the rest of 2018 into 2019 we were doing well with just regular maintenance such as servicing the generator for the first time, flushing the water heater and replacing water filters.  We even made it across the country on the very bumpy I-10 to AZ without any issues.

--March 1st, as we got ready to move from one RV park to another down the street, we uncovered the RV tires to find a flat tire that we must have picked up a nail in AZ somewhere.  This was our first time changing a tire on the RV and working with the spare.  Read about it here.

--While we wandered around northern AZ, we picked up a stone that cracked the windshield on the truck and had to have that replaced while we were visiting the Grand Canyon.

Looking back over the year and recounting our repairs, we really did not have that many issues.  Nothing we couldn't take care of.  Thankfully!!!  I think some of that comes with the anal vigilance we have in checking  everything on every move and throughout our travels.  Here's hoping our future years are as good as our year one shakedown!!

Up next, our first year numbers, where we've been, what we saw and where we worked.  Thanks for stopping by!!!

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