How long are your typical trips?

[Mtbikelover]

When DH and I retire in a few years, we want to travel around the US in a camper.  We are trying to figure out what the right amount of time for a trip is.  I know there are tons of variables but I would love to get an idea of how long your typical trips are (for those that don't travel around full time in theirs).  DH thinks he would want to come home every 3-4 weeks but I am feeling that isn't near enough time to really explore areas...especially if we are going out west (we live in Wisconsin).

Truth be told, I would be happy to go for a year but he has hobbies at home that he wants to be able to do so we need to reach a compromise.

 

[Tom Hoffman]

We leave Iowa Mid Nov and go home Mid April.  We go to Yuma AZ and spend the winter there I do new kinds of hobbies in Yuma that I can't do at home or some I can do both locations.

Tom

I would not recommend short trips in the winter.  Pulling through ice and snow is not fun as well a very dangerous.

 

[SeilerBird]

I used to travel once a week. I would spend a week at a nice destination then on Sunday morning I would drive to a new destination usually within 200 miles. RVing for me is not about endless driving, it is about exploring destinations.

 

[Mtbikelover]

I used to travel once a week. I would spend a week at a nice destination then on Sunday morning I would drive to a new destination usually within 200 miles. RVing for me is not about endless driving, it is about exploring destinations.

But how long are you away from your actual home or your home base if you have one?

 

[Mtbikelover]

I would not recommend short trips in the winter.  Pulling through ice and snow is not fun as well a very dangerous.

That is a very good point!

 

[SeilerBird]

But how long are you away from your actual home or your home base if you have one?

The first six months I was full timing I did 6 one months trips. I went to four National Parks then returned to Reno. After six months I sold everything bought a class B and hit the road permanently. That was 2003, still there but settled down permanently in Florida.

 

[jackiemac]

We travel for 6 months but we are from the UK. 

What are your husband's hobbies that he cannot take them with him?  Perhaps he can consider some new things he might like to learn, photography, painting etc. that he can do on the road.  You could even plan some trips around going to some places to learn a new hobby.  Out West you could learn to ride, go white water rafting etc.

There is so much to see that I think 3-4 weeks would just not do.  You would spend more time getting there than doing things I think. 

Maybe you need to consider where/what you want to see and do and then look at travel times and discuss what would best suit you.  You could do a few months one trip and one month another trip.  Maybe once you start your husband will love it so much he won't want to go home

Have a trial run and see what comes out of it.

Good luck. 

 

[Alaskansnowbirds]

We would leave around the 1st of May (until the grandkids started graduating, then we left after graduation) and would get home late September. Did that for about 10 years.

 

[RVMommaTo6]

Our longest trips have been 3-4 weeks. We have a 10 month trip planned for next year, I would love to go longer but I'm taking my kids and need to return home.

 

[Larry N.]

Our trips vary from two nights and one to two hundred miles to three or four weeks and 2500+ miles one way.

 

[camperAL]

Greetings,

My wife and I like to travel a couple of months at a time when we do a trip an can get away. One of the things to consider (unless money isn't an object) is the cost of travel for short periods of time. Depending on your rig, fuel can add up and a short trip far away costs a lot more per day than if you spend some time at your destination. Campgrounds usually have lower rates if you stay for a month rather than a day. We average about $45 per day and I consider that acceptable cost wise.

I suggest some sort of compromise on time. Perhaps leaving the rig in storage and returning home for some time then going back and traveling again where you left off. Just an idea.

 

[SeilerBird]

Al brings up some good points. A typical RV park may charge $45 per night, $195 per week and $380 a month. Staying in one spot saves a lot of money on gas and rent plus you get to explore an area more thoroughly.

 

[Bobtop46]

Typically, 3-9 months.  We have done a week or two a couple times.

 

[garyb1st]

Since you're from Wisconsin, you're at least a weeks drive to the West Coast.  Unless drive 5-600 miles a day for 4 or 5 days, you won't have much time to explore.  And the West is Huge.  It's more than 1300 miles from San Diego to the Canadian Border in Washington.  Then there is so much to see in every Western State starting with the Montana and Wyoming areas to Utah and Idaho, you will need to make repeated trips from Wisconsin for each area you want to explore.  The cost of fuel will be significant.  Traveling to the East Coast will be easier, but still 3 or 4 days of significant driving.  Then traveling from the Florida Keys to Maine will be similar to driving the West Coast.  Lot's to see and do but not much time to explore. 

We have been RVing for 10 years.  Rarely do we go anywhere when the total travel is less than 4 to 6 weeks.  Usually we travel for 3 months and longer.  At 75, driving is no longer as easy as it was when I was 55.  My reflexes were faster and my vision better.  Today we like to keep the daily mileage to a manageable 150 to 200 miles. 

 

[ArdraF]

Our trips vary greatly from a few weeks to a few months, depending on what we're doing and where we're going.  When we lived near San Francisco and went to either Alaska or Newfoundland we'd take a month to get there (lots to see and do along the way), spend a month there, and then another month coming home by another route with other things to see and do.  So, three month trips are not unusual.  If you want to circumnavigate the entire country, which we've done a couple of times, it's a minimum of three months but that's pretty much keeping on the move so four or five months would be better.  We were still working when we did those trips so needed to return within a certain period of time.  You can easily spend a month in the Four Corners area, for example.  The west has numerous wonderful national and state parks, monuments, and historical sites.  Another example is California where you can easily spend a month seeing just the state and just barely getting a sample of everything.  Leave a week to see Yellowstone because it's HUGE!  You don't want to spend all your time driving so shorter days allow you to relax and enjoy your location.  You'll be surprised at how fast the time goes when you're having new adventures.

By the way, many people take their hobbies with them, depending on the hobby of course.

ArdraF

ArdraF

 

[Cooperhawk]

I like where I live, but not in Winter!  Nevertheless, I get tired of the MH after six weeks or so. 

We've traveled a lot in the last ten years and it's getting harder to find interesting places we haven't already visited, so I get bored easily.

What we do is a long Winter trip to escape the Minnesota Winter, but of course we simply can't leave until all the Grandkids have had their birthday parties.

In the warm months we take shorter trips usually involving music or rallys.  Usually a week or so.

I'm simply not as comfortable on the road as I am at home.  Of course we have a large home on a lake deep in the woods here in Minnesota.  That probably explains a lot right there.

 

[Mtbikelover]

Thanks everyone! This is all very helpful and gives us stuff to think about.

His hobby is woodworking so it would be hard to take that on the road - too much equipment, too loud, and needs way too much electricity.

He also thinks we will get bored with each other after 4-5 weeks which is another reason he wants shorter trips. I suggested then he could leave me parked somewhere and I could invite friends or family out for a few weeks and he could fly home. But I definitely don?t want to spend time and money driving to a farther location and feel like I have to hurry back.

 

[UTTransplant]

Since you're from Wisconsin, you're at least a weeks drive to the West Coast.  Unless drive 5-600 miles a day for 4 or 5 days, you won't have much time to explore.  And the West is Huge.  It's more than 1300 miles from San Diego to the Canadian Border in Washington.  Then there is so much to see in every Western State starting with the Montana and Wyoming areas to Utah and Idaho, you will need to make repeated trips from Wisconsin for each area you want to explore.  The cost of fuel will be significant.  Traveling to the East Coast will be easier, but still 3 or 4 days of significant driving.  Then traveling from the Florida Keys to Maine will be similar to driving the West Coast.  Lot's to see and do but not much time to explore. 

We have been RVing for 10 years.  Rarely do we go anywhere when the total travel is less than 4 to 6 weeks.  Usually we travel for 3 months and longer.  At 75, driving is no longer as easy as it was when I was 55.  My reflexes were faster and my vision better.  Today we like to keep the daily mileage to a manageable 150 to 200 miles.

We used to live in Utah, and it was 100-150 miles to lovely places. It was only 300 miles to Yellowstone. We could take trips of 2-3 weeks and be in gorgeous places without any issue. Now we live in Iowa, brought back by the endless gravitational pull of grandchildren, and it isn?t as simple. It takes us 3 days to get to our old stomping grounds, and three to five days to get back home, depending on where we are. Three week trips west just don?t make sense anymore. This fall we are doing something different. We will be taking about 3 months on a long trip, then storing the motorhome in Nevada or California. We will drive home in our comfortable toad, stay in Iowa from Thanksgiving until after Christmas, then drive the toad back to pick up the motorhome. We won?t drive both back until March some time. I was afraid of getting stuck in Iowa with bad weather, knowing I can?t drive the motorhome on roads that are a piece of cake in the Jeep.

We got the idea from some folks we met in Death Valley last year. They had a nice class B they stored in the West, but they lived in Pennsylvania. They just few back and forth as desired.

 

[Graycat]

We aren't retired, so most of our trips are long weekends, with a 10 day trip once a year.  Our goal is to become sunbirds when dh retires in 5 years.  Then we'll leave after first cutting of hay and not come back until it's time to cut again a couple of months later.

 

[Isaac-1]

I am semi-retired, my wife still works full time, but gets over 30 vacation days per year, local government job, she earns about an additional 1.5 vacation days each year she stays there.  So far my longest trip has been 4,200 miles in 31 days, traveling from Louisiana to Wyoming and back (loop though TX,OK,CO,WY,NE,KS,MO,AR and back to LA, partly trying to avoid Hurricane Harvey on the return drive) for the Yellowstone and the big solar eclipse last summer, with my wife flying up to join me for the Wyoming part (she flew into Laramie, WY, so was along for about 1,200 miles of the loop around Wyoming). 

All things considered I would not want to average more miles than that in the allotted time, even at this pace the longest I spent at any one place was 2-3 nights in a row, with some days traveling almost 400 miles.  Even with all that this trip still averaged over 130 miles per day for a month, the western US is vast, and our problem is it seems everywhere we want to go is at least 250-300 miles from where we live, most places are more like 800 or 900.