Our travel trailer recently crossed the Rainbow Bridge; passing on to a consignment lot in New Braunfels (which is sort of like purgatory for RVs).
We are now travel-trailer-less for the first time since 2011, and a decade of epic cross-country trips has likely come to an end.
We’ve spent 1,100-plus nights – three out of the last 10 years - in one of the two travel trailers we’ve owned. We’ve crisscrossed the country with those trailers; from ocean to ocean (twice), through 37 states and every region of the lower 48 except the northeast. We even took the first trailer, very briefly, into Canada when we camped one night at the International Peace Garden on the Manitoba-North Dakota border.
It’s been a good run with lots of adventures, many good memories and, frankly, few if any bad experiences.
The reasons for selling out of trailer life right now are a bit nuanced but, suffice to say, with a house in Texas, AND a townhouse in Colorado, AND a travel trailer; something had to give. There just aren’t enough weeks in the year to make practical use of all three. Plus, if we change our minds, we can always get a new trailer.
Here’s a (relatively) brief recap of ten years of trailer trips, which really boils down to eleven gargantuan trips in a span of nine years; followed by an 18-month cool-down period before making the final decision to pull the plug.
Getting Started
We bought the first trailer on June 7, 2011. Betsy had just retired from her job at USAA, I had just “re-retired” from my job as a part-time reporter, Tex had just graduated from college, and we were fresh off of a six-week “really-get-to-know-a-state” stay in Delaware that left us eager to “R-G-T-K” more states.
We decided the most flexible and affordable way to travel the country was to buy a recreational vehicle and, after much consideration, we settled on the travel trailer option (as opposed to a motor home or a fifth-wheel).
Not entirely sure this was a good choice, we went to a huge consignment lot in Houston and purchased a new-to-us travel trailer, hitched it to our brand-new Ford F-150 pickup truck and eased out into Houston traffic. It was baptism under fire but, somehow, we managed to get the rig safely out of Houston and all the way through San Antonio to it’s very first (with us) campground; the Fiesta Trails RV “Resort” in Boerne. We spent a couple of days there practicing getting the awning out, unhitching, leveling, dumping wastewater tanks, etc.
After that dose of OJT we closed the trailer up and put it
in a storage lot in Boerne to await the start of our first big trip, in August,
2011. I should also note that both the new truck and the new (to us) trailer received
their names during this time; Plato for the truck and Socrates for the trailer.
When we traded Socrates in for a new trailer, in 2015, the newbie was
christened Socrates II.
Plato, Socrates I and Dave, in 2014, at a "dump station" in a state park near Delaware, Ohio.
Trip #1: Minnesota to Yellowstone; August-October, 2011
With a few exceptions most of our trips with the two trailers have been weeks-long epics to out-of-state destinations, and that was certainly the case with our first trip in the fall of 2011. This is how I described the trip plans in a blog post:
Objective #1; go north to cooler weather ASAP.
Our initial destination is the Minnesota State Fair where we have a campsite reserved through Labor Day. We plan to arrive there on Sept. 1.
I was on the ferry at Isle Royale National Park last year and struck up a conversation with a fellow adventurer who alerted me to several cool Minnesota camping ideas – including the fact that there is a campground on the Minnesota State Fair grounds. Who would have guessed?
I doubt we will go to the fair every day, but the location will put us in biking/mass transit reach of downtown Minneapolis, where a Twins game is on tap for Labor Day. And when we do get a hankering for a Schell’s Pils and some cheese curds (or chicken-fried bacon?), we won’t have far to go.
From the Twin Cities we will go further north, to the North Shore of Lake Superior, where there are several great state parks. A backpacking trip out to Isle Royale NP is also in the plans.
Around mid-September we will head west in a leisurely fashion, through North Dakota and Montana, to Yellowstone National Park. We will stay there until early October when Betsy wants to race back home.
And that’s pretty much what we did, leaving in late August and arriving home in early October.
It was a great trip, and we still, occasionally, talk about random recollections from it.
We learned a lot too, especially about how to select campgrounds and the desirability of calling ahead for reservations[1].
Another thing we learned on that trip is that, if you stay in a place that doesn’t have electricity, the battery runs down pretty quickly; and, even though the heater runs on propane the blower for the fan runs on electricity and, if you don’t have any electricity, you don’t have any heat and, it gets pretty cold in Yellowstone National Park in late September.
So, yeah, we learned a lot on that first trip.
[1] Our very first night was spent in a rundown RV “park” in Ardmore, Oklahoma that may have been a halfway home for methamphetamine dealers. Our second night was spent roaming around southeastern Nebraska looking for a campground that had not been destroyed by recent flooding.
Entering Yellowstone National Park, September, 2011.
Trip #2: Arizona-New Mexico; November, 2011
After graduating from college Tex had moved to Arizona to brew beer, so we decided to pay him a visit over Thanksgiving. We could have, of course, made a traditional quick trip, flying or driving and staying in hotels/motels. Instead, we took the trailer and used it sort of like a small apartment, to efficiently extend our stay and do some sightseeing along the way. Over the years, we made similar use of both trailers; sometimes staying weeks, or even months, in the same location; essentially establishing a comfortable and affordable temporary residence. For example, we took the trailer to Austin several times to attend the annual Texas Book Festival.
On the 2011 trip to Arizona we stayed in the Phoenix area for about a week and spent about a week-and-half leisurely traveling there and back home to San Antonio; including fun stops at the Gila Cliff Dwellings near Silver City, New Mexico and Hueco Tanks State Park near El Paso.
We made a similar trip to Arizona, in March, 2014; primarily
to attend MLB Spring Training games (and visit Tex, of course!). We also made a few Texas-only trips with the trailers, perhaps most notably to Big Bend National Park in 2013.
Trip #3: The Colorado 14ers; May-September, 2012
For reasons that are still not entirely clear I decided to spend the summer in Colorado trying to “climb as many 14ers as possible”. Looking at a map, the town of Buena Vista seemed like a central location that was close to many of the state’s 14,000-foot mountains, and the Snowy Peaks RV Park in Buena Vista seemed aptly named. So I reserved a spot at Snowy Peaks and took the trailer to BV for a month, which led to another month and then another; before I knew it fall had arrived, the Aspen leaves were turning yellow and I had run out of 14ers to climb. This random and not particularly well-thought-out decision turned out be a significant one because we ended up returning to Buena Vista, and Snowy Peaks, many times in future years. Eventually, we bought a townhouse in BV which, as previously mentioned, contributed to the decision to sell the trailer. Weird, huh?
Socrates I at the Snowy Peaks RV Park in 2012. It was the first of many stays at Snowy Peaks, in both trailers.
Trip #4: Florida; April, 2013
Neither of us is a particularly big fan of Florida, and we had been underwhelmed with the place on previous visits. Nonetheless we set off in April to circumnavigate the Florida coastline, starting in Pensacola and ending up in Jacksonville. It turned out to be one of our favorite trips. We ignored the junk in the middle, e.g. Orlando, and skipped past the Palm Beach/Daytona Beach area; so it was not a complete, really-get-to-know-a-state experience. But it was pretty darn close. We visited the state capitol in Tallahassee, hit every national park site in the state, went all the way down to Key West (although the trailer went only as far as Long Key State Park) and spent several days each in the Tampa Bay, Miami and Jacksonville areas. Of course, we went to both Marlins and Rays games, giving us a clean sweep of attending games at the home stadiums of all 30 MLB teams. Our favorite stop was a state park on St. George Island on Apalachicola Bay. SGI was memorable for the raw oyster/Pabst Blue Ribbon happy hours at Eddy Teach’s Raw Bar (which, I am sad to report, recently closed). Our stay at SGI State Park is also memorable because we went out sightseeing one day and left the awning out on the trailer. While we were gone a squall blew through and, when we got back to the campsite, the awning was a mangled mess. I had to cut through the fabric just to get in the door of the trailer. Eventually I got the sad, shattered remains of the awning untangled and disconnected from the trailer and we left the whole thing sticking out of a trash bin at the park. We never replaced that awning on Socrates I – and we never left the trailer with the awning out on Socrates II.
This was the view of the Atlantic Ocean from the back window of the trailer at our campsite on Long Key, in the Florida Keys in April, 2013.
Trip #5: Apostle Islands-Oregon; July-September, 2013
This was an epic trip, but it got off to a bad start that turned out to have a silver lining.
We had landed our first-ever National Park Service volunteer gig, working in a small visitor center at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore on Lake Superior in northwest Wisconsin.
So we hitched up in early July and set out to drive, more or less straight there. We made it all the way to the Chickasha National Recreation Area in Oklahoma on the first day only to discover that the air conditioner on the trailer was barely working. It was hot and Betsy was not happy. Fortunately, we now had a new-fangled thing called a smartphone with us and we were able to use that to locate an RV repair place near Oklahoma City. That detour set us back a day (and a few hundred bucks) but we were very pleased with the service at Motley RV Repair and we took both Socrates I and II back there for repairs over the years with excellent results.
The volunteer job at Apostle Islands came with a trailer pad near the visitor center and we stayed there into early August.
When our NPS duty was finished we hitched up and headed out to “really-get-to-know” the state of Oregon. And what better way to get to Oregon than to follow the Oregon Trail? So we dipped south to take in the Iowa State Fair and then joined up with the Oregon Trail in eastern Nebraska.
We got to Oregon in mid-August and stayed until late September, crisscrossing the state while staying in nearly a dozen of Oregon’s outstanding state parks.
We also took a short break from Oregon to sneak across the state line into southwestern Washington (Vancouver, etc.) to attend the Washington State Fair (we also attended, of course, the Oregon State Fair).
The end. We made it! Betsy poses with a map of the Oregon Trail, in Oregon City, Oregon.
Trip #6: Apostle Islands-Michigan; June-July: Ohio;
August-September, 2014
We had several crazy trips, but our 2014 travels may take the Crazy Prize. Buckle up and pay close attention.
We left in early June for another volunteer gig at Apostle Islands. But this time, most of our time was spent on Sand Island where we stayed in a ranger cabin. So we left the trailer hooked up, but unoccupied, at one of the park campsites on the mainland while we were on the island.
We left the park on July 10 and went east through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and then south to Toledo, Ohio where we put the trailer into storage (keep reading, this might make more sense in a few paragraphs).
Then we drove back to San Antonio, sans trailer. Then we drove to Arizona and helped Tex pack up his belongings. Then the three of us drove back to San Antonio, stayed there a few days and then the three of us drove to Charlottesville, Virginia to unpack Tex’s belongings and leave him there for his first year of law school. Then Betsy and I drove back to Toledo (via Louisville for the Kentucky State Fair) and retrieved the trailer from storage. Then we began (on August 16) our five-week, really-get-to-know tour of Ohio.
Similar to Oregon, we systematically crisscrossed the state of Ohio, staying in a half-dozen state parks while immersing ourselves in the state’s rich history. Unfortunately, we had to leave about a week earlier than planned to get back to San Antonio to attend funeral services for a close friend who died unexpectedly. (Note: in 2016 we returned to the Dayton area to complete our R-G-T-K tour of Ohio).
Trip #7: Apostle Islands, California, Colorado; June-October, 2015
Again, forewarning, 2015 is another good candidate for the Crazy Prize.
In April I took the trailer to Bishop, California and put it into storage. I car-camped my way back home, stopping at several national parks in southern Utah.
In June we drove, in separate vehicles, to Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Wisconsin. But not directly. We “detoured” through Denver, where Tex was doing an internship after his first year of law school. When we got to Wisconsin, we did another three-week volunteer stint on Sand Island.
When that was over, on July 9, Betsy and I parted ways. She drove her car east to attend the ceremony for Craig Biggio’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York and then made numerous other stops, visiting friends and family up and down the east coast as she made her way back to San Antonio.
Meanwhile, I headed west in Plato, returning to Bishop to get the trailer out of storage (via Denver, where Tex was still interning).
Why did I go to Bishop, California? Remember those 14ers in Colorado? Well, guess what. California also has a bunch of 14ers and I climbed about two-thirds of them during a one-month stay (in Socrates I) in Bishop.
On August 17 I left Bishop, with the trailer in tow, and drove to the Snowy Peaks RV Park in Buena Vista, Colorado. Betsy then drove up to BV from San Antonio to join me, and we stayed there until the end of September.
Then we drove back to Texas, went to the Texas Book Festival, and traded Socrates I in for Socrates II.
Socrates II makes his debut; at a state park near Abilene, Texas in November, 2015.
Trip #8: Arizona-Utah, February-March;
Wisconsin-Illinois-Indiana-Ohio-Colordo; May-October, 2016
2016 was the first of a three-year run when at least one of us was gone from home for more than half of the year.
Obviously, as the proud owners of a brand-new trailer, we were itching to try it out. So we took our only extended winter-time trip, which we dubbed the Canyons Trip. Stops included Palo Duro Canyon State Park (Texas), the Grand Canyon (Arizona) and Zion National Park (Utah). We wrapped up by spending several days in the Phoenix area attending MLB spring training games. We left home on Feb. 22 and returned on March 19.
We left home again, on May 23, and drove pretty much straight to Madison, Wisconsin to attend the city’s annual Brat Fest and kick off our R-G-T-K tour of Wisconsin. Similar to other R-G-T-K-A-S tours we stayed primarily in state parks as we systematically crisscrossed the state. However, we threw in a few new twists this time.
Because Apostle Islands National Lakeshore is in Wisconsin – and because the National Park Service was celebrating its 100th birthday – we decided to do two volunteer gigs on Sand Island, one in June and a second in late August and early September. We also left Wisconsin for several weeks to visit Tex and Rachel in Chicago (where they were doing internships after their second years of law school), to go to Dayton, Ohio to complete our 2014 R-G-T-K-Ohio tour and to attend the Indiana and Illinois state fairs. Naturally, we also attended the Wisconsin State Fair and, for all three fairs, we stayed on the fairgrounds in the travel trailer.
We also, sans trailer, made a 10-day circumnavigational tour of Lake Superior, traveling through parts of Minnesota, Ontario, Michigan and Wisconsin. And we attended two days of Ryder Cup matches in Minnesota. Yet another new twist came when Betsy flew home to San Antonio (from Minneapolis) while I took the trailer to Colorado to attend a rock-climbing school. I finally got back home on October 29.
Trip #9: Virginia-North Carolina-Kentucky-Washington D.C.; May-September, 2017: Guadalupe Mountains NP; November, 2017
I know this sounds like a broken record, but this was another crazy year. In May Tex and Rachel graduated from law school in Charlottesville, VA and moved to Knoxville, TN. Then they got married in Lexington, KY in August. Obviously, we were going to attend both ceremonies; but we had to figure out what to do in-between. We settled on volunteering at Moore’s Creek National Battlefield in North Carolina and R-G-T-K-ing North Carolina. Moore’s Creek, which is located in southeastern North Carolina, provided us with an on-site camping spot and required us to work only three days per week. So, we used our four off days to make mini-trips around the central and eastern parts of the state, leaving the trailer at the park and staying in hotels or Air B&Bs. When our volunteer gig was finished, we used the trailer to R-G-T-K the western half of the state.
We wrapped up our North Carolina tour in Asheville in August and continued east on I-40, put the trailer in storage in Knoxville, and attended the wedding in Lexington. After the wedding we drove to Decatur, TN – smack in the middle of the solar eclipse totality zone – and witnessed the full effect of the eclipse on a beautiful, clear day.
From there we drove to Washington D.C. for a week and took the train on to Philadelphia for a few days. Then we backtracked to Knoxville where we checked in on the newlyweds, picked up the trailer, and headed home to Texas; arriving on Sept. 24.
But we were not done.
In October we took the trailer to Austin and spent several days there attending the Texas Book Festival. Betsy then went home for a few days while I took the trailer to Guadalupe Mountains National Park, which is on the Texas-New Mexico border in far west Texas. Betsy soon joined me, and we spent nearly a month there, through Thanksgiving, volunteering at the park.
Trip #10: California-Colorado-GMNP, May-December, 2018
Remember those un-climbed California 14ers I mentioned earlier? I had not forgotten them either. So I took the trailer back to California and spent the month of May and some of June in the Lone Pine – Bishop area trying to finish them off. Unfortunately, I was able to bag only one new 14er summit before Betsy arrived in early June and we spent the next month R-G-T-K-ing a sizeable chunk of central California, including a 10-day stretch when we left the trailer in Bishop and made a “circle-tour” of the Sierra Nevada in Betsy’s convertible Mini-Cooper. That excursion took us all the way to the coast at Big Sur, across the Golden Gate Bridge and as far north as Lassen Volcanic National Park on the southern edge of the Cascade Mountain range.
We left California on July 10, made a relatively leisurely traverse of the Great Basin and Utah, and arrived back in – where else? – Buena Vista, Colorado on July 16. We stayed in BV, at the Snowy Peaks RV Park, until September 30 and arrived home in San Antonio on October 4.
We weren’t home long though, leaving on October 25 for the Texas Book Festival in Austin and then on to Guadalupe Mountains NP for another volunteering gig.
I finally got back home and put the trailer in storage on
December 5, having spent a record-setting 196 days on the road.
Trip #11: Washington, June-July, 2019
Our travel patterns changed some in 2019, starting off with several extended trips without the trailer. Two of those were short trips to BV that were related to the purchase of the townhouse. In February we drove to Chicago to take some furniture to Tex and Rachel, and we went back to Apostle Islands in June for another volunteer gig, sans trailer.
However, we still used Socrates II for an epic two-month R-G-T-K trip to Washington (the state) that ranks as – possibly – our best trip ever.
We left San Antonio on June 3 and arrived in Spokane, Washington on June 14; making some fun and memorable stops along the way in Wyoming and Montana.
From Spokane we rotated in a more or less counterclockwise circle around the state, including a 19-night stay in Gig Harbor that we used as our home base for visiting the Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia-Olympic Peninsula area.
We left Washington on July 28. By August 5 we were back in – take a wild guess – the Snowy Peaks RV Park in Buena Vista, Colorado. That place just kept pulling us back like a magnet.
We hung out there a few days, checked on the townhouse, put the trailer into storage in BV and drove to the (speaking of magnets) Apostle Islands for our fifth (and, possibly, last) time volunteering for the National Park Service on Sand Island where duties include giving tours of the historic lighthouse, cleaning privies and serving as the face of the NPS on the island. We arrived in Wisconsin on August 11, finished with the volunteer duties in early September and eventually got home in mid-September, after stops in Chicago, several NPS sites and the Oklahoma State Fair.
There was just one tiny problem. Attentive readers may have noted that the travel trailer was still in Colorado. So, after a few weeks at home, I drove up to Colorado to fetch the trailer and dropped it off at Motley RV Repair in Oklahoma City on my way back to San Antonio (we had been having trouble with the electric brakes). A week or so later, when the repairs were completed, I went to OKC to get the trailer and brought it home to its storage lot in Boerne.
It came at the tail end of the 2019 trip to Washington, and it was just a one-night stop at Rifle Gap State Park in Colorado, but it stands out as one of the nicest travel trailer campsites we've ever had.
2020-2021: Reckoning with change
Then, just as suddenly as they started, our trailer travels came to a screeching halt. The repair stop in OKC was the last time the trailer was outside of Texas. In fact, it rarely left the storage lot over the next 18 months. We did take it out for a one-week trip to south-central Texas in early March of 2020, to research Gerhardt family history with Betsy’s sister and brother-in-law. That was just days before the Covid-19 shutdown and the trailer never left storage for the remainder of the year. Two short trips to nearby state parks in the Spring of 2021 turned out to be our final nights in the trailer.
Socrates I was purchased from a consignment lot, now Socrates II is on a consignment lot. Dust to dust. They’ve gone full circle. Hopefully their new owners love them as much as we have.
