A recap of our 2024 travel adventures
Camping means something different when you live in an RV. We were on the road for just shy of 9 months in 2024. Being in an RV daily for that long changes your perspective on travel and getting away. At some point during our extended trek, Jessi even said, “I miss camping.”
We both laughed when she said this, but then it sank in. We hadn’t been “camping” in a long time. “Camping” can mean many different things — it often depends on who you ask.
The Oxford Dictionary defines camping as “spending a vacation living in a camp, tent, or camper.” Humorous memes describe camping as “spending thousands of dollars to live like a homeless person.” We define camping as relaxing around a campfire at night, making s’mores, and looking at the stars after spending a day enjoying outdoor activities.
When we decided to hit the road for longer treks, we mistakenly assumed we would be camping a lot. We were prepared to have campfires, grill outside, and enjoy sitting and relaxing each night as the sun went down and the stars appeared. Then, real life took hold.
We don’t camp much
Because of remote work, our weekdays start early and often end late. We frequently take the simpler route to dinner, cooking inside instead of firing up the grill. And we rarely have the time or energy to start a fire and sit outside. But that’s because we’re not on vacation. We’re living in the same house day after day. It’s just our yard that changes.
Weekends are different, and that’s when we find ourselves doing more “camping.” Sometimes, we force the issue by finding a spot away from our Airstream to boondock with our van. It’s set up as a weekend camper, breaking us away from the glamping style of travel we experience on weekdays. It forces us to cook and eat outside. It forces us to talk or stare at the stars instead of quietly absorbing something from the television.
This blog post isn’t to register a complaint about our travel style. We love seeing the U.S. through the windshield of our van and the windows of our Airstream. But we aren’t on vacation, and we aren’t always camping. In 2024, the variety of places we stayed was quite varied. That’s what prompted this post. We were discussing with someone all the different places we stayed. And we quickly lost track of how many, where they were, or even what category they fell into.
Our 2024 trek
So, I dug into our calendar to find precisely how and where we stayed for our latest annual trek. There are a few gaps in the calendar, which generally represent quick overnight stops en route to our next destination. These are in a parking lot at Walmart, Cabella’s, maybe Lowe’s, or Home Depot. It all depends on who has room and who allows us to stay. If we can’t find a store parking lot to welcome us, we’ll stay overnight at a truck stop. Truck stops are usually a last resort because they are noisier and busier all night.
Usually, when we leave our sticks ‘n bricks in Michigan, it’s between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. We want to stay and spend as much time with family and friends around the holidays as possible. Our winter park hosting gigs usually start on January 1. So we plot a week of travel and head south, hopefully before the snow flies in central Michigan.
It started in 2023
In December 2023, we took off from Michigan. Our first overnight stop was at a brewery in Indianapolis, Indiana, thanks to our Harvest Hosts membership. We targeted Indianapolis as a stopover because it was on the way to our destination in Texas and Jessi has a friend there whom we met up with for dinner.
Our routes are often dictated by who we might visit in an area. It’s a perk of our travel lifestyle, and, hey, when you live in an RV, everything is “on the way.”
After Indy, we headed to another Harvest Hosts location. This time it was a Boondockers Welcome location, which is now part of Harvest Hosts. BW offers people’s yards and driveways for overnight stops. We found a perfect location in Brownsville, Kentucky, just down the road from Mammoth Cave National Park. That allowed us a safe, quiet stop and a convenient way to check off another national park.
The first travel gap in our calendar happens between Kentucky and our state park hosting gig in Texas. By this time, we needed to beeline it if we were going to make our commitment on time. So, it was parking lots and long drive days until we arrived at LBJ State Park on New Year’s Eve.
Texas is big and beautiful
We parkhosted at LBJ for four months. But that doesn’t mean we sat still.
Any chance we could get away and explore more of Texas, we did. That’s an advantage to parkhosting. We can set up a basecamp and then head out on weekends for van camping in all kinds of places. (This is how we knocked out six national parks in Utah and Nevada while camphosting at Fremont Indian State Park in 2023.) Looking back, we realize we did many more day trips this year, so there weren’t as many overnights. Plus, we had family visit us twice. So, those weekends were spent showing them around our temporary home area.
But we managed to break away a few times, camping at South Llano River State Park, Garner State Park, and Colorado Bend State Park in February and March. These were actual camping trips, using our van as our weekend home.
After our posting at LBJ State Park wrapped up in late April, we were hitting the road again full-time. We had to be at a family wedding in California in July. So, we decided to meander from Texas to the Pacific Ocean, exploring things along the way.
Leaving LBJ State Park in Stonewall, we headed west to Big Bend National Park. We stopped for a couple of days at an RV park in Fort Stockton. Full hookups and facilities allowed us to charge everything up, fill and dump our tanks, and do laundry before heading into a very remote national park.
Five nights of boondocking at Big Bend National Park were followed by two nights at Davis Mountains State Park. That still offered us beautiful night skies plus electric and water hookups to recover from a week of boondocking.
New Mexico is enchanting but dusty
Then, it was off to New Mexico, where we stayed for 13 nights at an RV park in Carlsbad. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was clean and safe and served as a good base camp as we took weekend trips to explore New Mexico. I should note that by clean, I am excluding all the dust that seems to blow around incessantly across New Mexico, coating everything! That included a day trip to Roswell. We visited Carlsbad Caverns twice — once to explore the caverns and once to see the nightly “bat flight” when thousands fly out of the caves searching for dinner. We also made a quick trip back into Texas, spending a weekend boondocking in our van at Guadalupe Mountains National Park.
From Carlsbad, we meandered west, staying at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park for a few days. While there, we checked out White Sands National Park and the greater Alamogordo area. En route to our next campground, we stayed at a cat rescue and a historic ghost town, both of which are Harvest Hosts locations. We did not see any ghosts, nor did we adopt a cat, so we got out of both locations safely!
Arizona is hot!
After New Mexico, we entered Arizona and stayed at an RV park in Benson. This was a good location to reach Saguaro National Park and historic Tombstone, Arizona.
We then made our way up to Munds Park for a night to make final preparations for boondocking near the Grand Canyon. The first eight nights of June were spent boondocking in a national forest campground down the road from Grand Canyon National Park. By the way, that is now my favorite national park.
Leaving the Grand Canyon too soon, in my opinion, we headed toward Phoenix. There we discovered why people don’t stay in Phoenix in June if they don’t have to! But Jessi had to fly out of town for work. So, I boondocked in a church parking lot — again, thanks to Harvest Hosts — when it was 114 during the day and 93 at night. Although, considering how much I dislike flying, I think Jessi still got the short end of the stick on that one.
While Jessi was at a conference, I moved around to check out additional sites. I stayed at a tribal land location, a museum outside Petrified Forest National Park, and an alpaca farm. All three are Harvest Hosts locations.
I also discovered new hiking spots and did some exploring when I stayed at Homolovi State Park and Fool Hollow Recreation Area while awaiting Jessi’s return.
Two nights at a KOA in Mesa, Arizona — so Jessi could recover from her trip with full hookups and laundry — led into another Harvests Hosts church for one night en route to Lost Dutchman State Park. This is one of Arizona’s great state parks. We wished we had more time to stay there and when it wasn’t so hot. Also, being evacuated for a wildfire is something we don’t want to experience the next time we visit!
California Dreamin’
After a few days at Lost Dutchman, we put in a long travel day and ended up at an RV resort in Desert Hot Springs, California, that we would call home for eight days. And yes, there is a difference between an RV park and an RV resort. Although many parks like to refer to themselves as resorts, they often aren’t. This one had all the amenities to be considered an actual resort. Unfortunately, it was so hot during the day you couldn’t do much outside comfortably. Still, the resort was a great spot to take a weekend trip with the van to Joshua Tree National Park. And it meant day trips to Palm Springs and a hike at San Jacinto Mountain State Park.
July found us working our way toward San Diego since Jessi had never visited. There, we stayed at another RV “resort,” which was really just an RV park in the suburbs. However, the location meant we could visit the USS Midway and spend Independence Day seeing a massive parade and fireworks display on Coronado Island.
Following San Diego, we beelined it to a lovely rural RV campground outside of Anaheim, California. At least it seemed nice, but we weren’t there much. We spent two full days at Disneyland thanks to a gift of two tickets from a friend. And we stayed at the Park Vue Inn because it is across the street from the entrance to Disneyland. And then, we had a family wedding to attend in Laguna Beach. We spent a couple of nights at a hotel thanks to my brother having a ton of points available due to the crazy amount of business travel he does all year.
Let me assure you that several nights in hotels, even overpriced fancy ones, did not change our minds about living in an RV. There’s just something satisfying about rolling into your own bed at night, no matter where your travels take you!
Continuing north after the wedding, we stayed at an RV park in Malibu with sort of a view of the Pacific Ocean. If we walked a couple of rows over from our rig, then we had a view. And a local seafood restaurant was within walking distance from our campsite, so that was a nice bonus. But we both agreed that we had higher hopes for what we would see on that part of trip. Our overall take was that Malibu Barbie lied about how luxurious the area is!
That stop gave us time to meet up with Jessi’s boss and one of her coworkers. It proved again that visiting people should be on everyone’s travel itinerary. After Malibu, we continued north to Morro Bay, staying two nights at a local RV park and one night at a state park campground because we found out some friends of ours were staying there. Boom! Check off another catch-up session.
On the trail to Oregon
Our plans to head inland got waylayed by the growing number of wildfires. So, we decided to stay along the coast and meander toward Oregon and Washington. Our target was Portland, Oregon, for two reasons. First, Jessi needed a big airport to take another flight out for work. Second, she would be running in the Hood to Coast race upon her return. That’s a 24-hour-ish relay race that covers roughly 200 miles from Mt. Hood, Oregon, to Seaside, Oregon.
Along the way, we stayed seven nights at three different RV parks. Thanks to our Passport America membership, we saved 50 percent on five of those nights.
While staying at the third park, we took advantage of its location in Klamath, California, to visit Redwood National and State Parks. We would have missed that one if we had turned inland. We’re so glad our plans made us detour up the coast to see Redwood.
Three more straight days on the road meant three different overnight locations. Because of Jessi’s work schedule, there are times when we need to make short hops, driving for just a few hours each evening after her workday is done. One of our hops landed us in an RV park. The other two nights were at Harvest Hosts locations: a golf course and a cheese company.
When we booked our stop at the cheese company, we knew it was in Tillamook, Oregon, but didn’t immediately make the connection that it was where THE Tillamook dairy is located. Once we did, we also found time to do an “ice cream experience” at the Tillamook factory. We highly recommend doing that and stocking up on ice cream and cheesy goodness while you’re there!
After a hectic travel schedule and with Jessi’s work trip and race coming up soon, we decided to settle into an RV park in southern Washington for an entire week. The location allowed us to explore the area, including many Lewis & Clark Trail stops, historic towns, and a cranberry museum. You never know what’s around the corner when you live in a house that moves!
Jessi was due to fly out of Portland soon, and we weren’t keen on trying to navigate the airport with the Airstream. That’s when another friend connection came into play. We were able to driveway surf on the street in front of their house for three nights, fitting in a visit and a guided tour of their area. Plus, I could disconnect the Airstream to run Jessi to the airport sans trailer.
While Jessi was gone, I went well out of my way — or should I say, further north on the way — to visit friends in the Port Orchard, Washington area. Moochdocking in their driveway for a week and catching up, plus snagging another guided tour from locals, made for a wonderful break from all the driving I had been doing. Plus, I saw the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan enter port, which was an unexpected experience.
When Jessi returned, we headed back to Oregon. I found an RV park a short drive from the airport. It’s not someplace I’d want to stay long-term, but it was clean, and it meant picking her up from a late-night flight wasn’t a big deal. Afterward, we bounced again en route to Mount Hood for the race.
An overnight stop at a Harvest Hosts farm meant we had some downtime visiting with the owners and learning about their goats and miniature cows. It was delightful. From there, we worked our way to L.L. Stubb Stewart State Park and then to a Thousand Trails campground near Mount Hood.
I should note that we are not TT members. However, some Thousand Trails welcome nonmembers, and I even found a few that honor Passport America discounts. So, if you’re searching for a campground, don’t dismiss the Thousand Trails locations without checking on their policies.
Jessi not only survived her race, but I think she actually enjoyed it. When she was done, we headed to Fort Stevens State Park, a very popular spot in Oregon. Thanks to a tip from a friend, I discovered a new secret weapon for securing sites at fully booked campgrounds. I used it twice on this year’s trek, and it paid off well both times.
The family wedding and Jessi’s race in Portland were two of the big events we planned our travels around. Another was an Airstream rally at The Ohio State Reformatory. That’s where they filmed one of Jessi’s favorite movies: The Shawshank Redemption. But that meant we needed to get from Oregon to Ohio in a relatively short time compared to how we prefer to travel.
So, a couple of overnights at store parking lots later, we were in Boise, Idaho, where we decided to set up camp at an RV park for a few days. That allowed us to visit friends from Michigan. They moved to Idaho years ago, and we have not seen each other since. Grabbing lunch with them was an extra unexpected treat on this year’s trek. Plus, we made time to visit downtown Boise and check off another state Capitol.
Remember that one of the recurring themes in our travels is “Everything is on the way.” That played a significant role in our next travel decision: to beeline it to South Dakota to spend a few days boondocking on The Wall just outside Badlands National Park. We stopped at a small KOA in South Dakota to ensure everything was reset and ready for The Wall. It’s a boondocking spot we had heard about for years and wanted to try.
It was a magical spot that lived up to the hype. And it gave us a chance to visit the national park, the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, and — big sigh — Wall Drug. (Wall Drug is someplace I think everyone should go to at least once. It’s a place Jessi believes we’re “close enough that we have to stop” anytime we’re within a hundred miles.)
After the serenity of The Wall, we were beelining the state highways and interstates again en route to Ohio. That meant a few store parking lots, plus a brewery and a restaurant that are both Harvest Hosts locations. By the way, we haven’t seen much improvement in the nation’s highways since our blog post complaining about them in 2023.
One side note about the store parking lots: You never know where you might meet interesting people. While setting up one night outside a Cabella’s, a young man came over and asked, in a heavy foreign accent, if he thought it would be okay if he and his friend car camped there. Having gotten approval from the manager to stay, we assured the gentleman he was also welcome to do so.
We didn’t expect them to pull closer to our rig for safety or spend hours chatting with them in the parking lot. We learned they are from Poland and had spent the summer as counselors at a camp in New York. For their last hurrah in the U.S., they flew to California, rented a car, and were making their way back east, checking out as many wonders as they could find.
We loved hearing their story. Plus, they benefitted from Jessi having maps and notes saved about our trips to Yellowstone National Park so we could help them navigate visiting that national treasure along their route.
Our rally destination was in Mansfield, Ohio, which we soon discovered was not that far from Jackson Center, Ohio, the birthplace and still the factory home of Airstream. So, we booked a tour of the trailer plant and visited the Heritage Center. It was a blast to learn about our Airstream from the ground up and the long history of Airstream’s iconic place in American history.
Our last official stop on the 2024 trek was the Airstream rally. That’s where we boondocked on the grounds of the Ohio State Reformatory. You are missing out if you haven’t been to an RV rally where everyone has the same brand as yours. There is so much to learn from people and about their rigs and yours. Plus, if you ever get to Mansfield, we highly recommend the reformatory tour for a fantastic glimpse at some surprising Ohio history.
Packing up on the last day of the rally, we bid farewell to newfound friends and pointed the van and Airstream toward Michigan. Later that day, we backed into the driveway at our sticks ‘n bricks. That’s something we had not done in over nine months.
We left for a long weekend in early October for an Airstream rally in Pentwater, Michigan. But since returning from West Michigan, we haven’t traveled in our Airstream.
It’s good to be in a stationary home for a bit. The Airstream needs some maintenance and repair work. We’re knocking out personal appointments and spending a lot of time visiting with family and friends.
But it won’t be long before we hit the road headed south to begin the our 2025 trek.
Stay tuned!