One Year Financial Summary

Jan 2, 2018

Before starting out, one of the most helpful things I could find on other blogs were details of budgets.  Based on those numbers I guessed I could come in around $600, and after traveling for the last few months of 2016 I revised that number to $650.  To avoid ever being stranded without money, my number crunching sets my available budget at $800 so even a major issue won't be an issue.

Although the numbers didn't line up correctly in their categories, I still ended up pretty close to my proposed budget.  There were more repairs than I planned for (muffler, two new batteries, valve adjustment) and Rabies shots for the cats in July messed up the health budget a bit (also the price of my thyroxin more than doubled in Dec because apparently the plant is in Puerto Rico).  I spent almost nothing on clothes and less than expected on lodging.  Some time in friends' driveways cut the gas bill down as did same friends and family buying a few meals.

Most of the descriptions make sense, but 'food' should be called 'grocery' as it includes food, cat food and accouterments,  anything small I might pick up at the store and probably some clothes.

'Gym' is for Planet Fitness that I started mid year to have a guaranteed place for showers.

Dumping my tanks and getting water (when I had to pay for it) falls variously under 'entertainment', 'lodging' or 'misc' depending on what else I did (stayed overnight, spent the day in the park, etc.

Item	Proposed	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	average	total
Gas	150	176	96	91	97	139	69	48	135	153	71	161	189	118.75	1425
Propane	8	29	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	24	0	0	0	4.42	53
Food	250	370	370	286	354	312	216	230	387	303	300	209	318	304.58	3655
lodging	20	5	29	0	0	56	15	0	45	0	0	0	0	12.50	150
Insurance + tags	50	30	30	30	30	51	51	51	51	51	51	51	51	44.00	528
maintenance	20	0	46	11	185	0	0	60	36	0	15	57	0	34.17	410
emergency	20	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	276	0	222	0	41.58	499
entertainment	20	0	25	0	0	24	35	25	15	0	5	31	25	15.42	185
gym	23	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	19	58	19	19	19	11.17	134
misc	10	15	0	0	11	19	22	31	0	0	0	103	5	17.17	206
phone	40	40	40	40	40	40	40	40	40	40	40	40	40	40.00	480
health	10	25	0	0	20	0	0	89	0	20	0	0	71	18.75	225
laundry	5	0	6	0	0	5	0	9	0	8	0	5	5	3.17	38
clothing	20	0	0	1	0	0	0	5	11	0	0	0	0	1.42	17
	646	691	642	459	737	646	448	588	739	933	501	898	723	667.08	8005

Obviously I adjusted the 'proposed' column when I added the gym and the insurance/tags went up but everything else was set at the beginning of the year.  For 2018 I'll adjust the numbers again to reflect the reality 2017 provided and set a budget for about $670 a month. 

Hopefully there won't be so many repairs this year.

Desert Sunsets and Goodbye to my First Full Year on the Road

Dec 20 - 31, 2017

I've been hauling butt, well, crawling butt in Rigadoon, to get somewhere warmer but continual driving gets tiring.  I decided to spend a few days in the Sonoran Desert to take a break because deserts are warm, right?  Mostly right.  The Sonoran was still chilly at night although nowhere near freezing.  The sky was clear and I got a slight sunburn from a Christmas Day hike.  Sigh.  Lovely.

After those few days of R'n'R (ha!) I continued west towards Yuma.  Totally flat until this weird streak of mountains right across the sky.

Once over those the air became noticeably warmer.  I guess The Chihuahuan is more of a desert than the Sonoran.

After a couple days in Yuma dealing with showers and laundry I crossed the border in California to park at the Quechan Casino.  They have a huge parking lot and it was packed with RVs just hanging out, maybe doing the trek down to Mexico for dinner and drugs.  I parked on the edge of the semi lot next to a little Sunrader and some big RV from Canada. 

I walked the two miles to the border (I'm so cheap; there's a parking lot near the border but I didn't want to pay RV prices for a couple hours of parking.  Some people drive to the point where 'No Parking' signs are erected and stop on the side of the road just before them.  Cuts about 1.5 miles from the journey.) Walking across is quick and free, and once over there you are continually assailed by people asking you if you're looking for dental or eye care.  I do want my teeth cleaned ($20) but not without researching the dentists first and I wasn't prepared this time.

Grabbed some ventolin (3 for $4.50 vs $100 each in the U.S.), paid probably too much for a pretty silver bracelet and escaped the streets without being dragged into an optometrists office.

While at the casino I met this lady:

She couldn't afford a hightop van so her son improvised, adding a truck top to the top of her van. There's plenty of standing room underneath it and her bed is in the section without added height.

One more night in Yuma to really stock up before tooling north to Quartzsite to find out what the deal is with desert boondocking and the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous.

Driving Through New Mexico

Dec 15 - 19, 2017

The first time I passed through New Mexico it was following I40 and then down I25.  I loved the scenery, the colors of the earth and the sunsets.  This time I cruised along I10 through the Chihuahuan Desert and I still love it.  Rather than the towering, rounded mountains of the Pacific Northwest, the desert has sharp spines that look as though they've sawn through the earth like some giant beast hunching its back.

 Sunsets turn the mountains pink.

Veterans' Park, Lordsburg NM

Even the truck stops are pretty.

You may, however, want to keep a close eye on your pets.  See that little sign in the back?

This is it...

Kind of Like the Beach

Dec 11 - 13, 2017

Onward towards the sun...although we may have left the electricity a little too soon.  It was so cold for several days that even Bo wanted some lap time and Butch needed a blankie.  I was wearing two shirts, a hoodie and a fleece jacket while using my bathrobe and a flannel sheet as a lap cover.  Yes, that is bubble wrap around my cup and my stainless steel French Press was wrapped in towels.  Not so cold that the cats' water froze (which has happened) but cold enough to slow us down for a while.

This lovely place is Ruidosa Downs on the Billy the Kid Highway. Somewhere around here he is buried but the actual location isn't precisely known.  Instead, the town of Fort Sumner has a conveniently located grave in town that has nothing to do with The Kid, and another site in the Old Fort Sumner Cemetery that is probably close to where the grave is.

Next stop is Alamogordo and the White Sands National Monument that encloses a small section of the gypsum dunes in the Tularosa Basin.  There are several small hikes to interesting areas and one big one through some very large dunes.

The big hike through the Alkali Flats. I only went as far as the first hill to get some photos.  The distance is only about five miles but hiking in sand is a slow process and they suggest planning at least three hours to cover the route.

Aliens!

Dec 2 - 10, 2017

There are some cool parks in Texas, but none of them are along my route and I don't want to detour north to colder weather so I just kind of slogged across the state.

Cotton harvest is a little later than the one in Alabama

Free!! City park in Lamesa, TX with water, electric and dump station.  The sign says only four days are free but I stayed six, using my electric heater on the last two when the temps dropped to the 20s and it started snowing.

In 1947, an unidentified flying object crashed near Roswell, NM according to witness accounts and left a trail of debris and legends in its wake. And some tourist entertainment.

In case it isn't obvious, that's a street lamp with alien eyes and a Santa hat

Cheesy as all get out, but the UFO Museum is fun to visit.  They have several films to watch, tons of newspaper clippings and some interesting art.

There are aliens and spaceships all over the city if you keep your eyes open and alien-themed welcome signs along the roads.

After the mountains of New England, flat and straight is kind of nice.

Fort Worth

Nov 20 - Dec 2, 2017

My brother and sister-in-law were nice enough to invite me back for Thanksgiving despite me crashing their house for a month last year.  Not only was it good to catch up with family, it also gave me a chance to glue my house back together.  The panel looked mainly decorative and after some elbow grease and Goo-Gone to get the tape off, I used liquid nails and some two-by-fours to stick the panel back down.  It seemed to work well enough that I did some preventative maintenance on other sections and glued other parts of the top panel to the rest of the siding.

Back in the late 1800s, Fort Worth was the last safe place to stop and resupply before driving the cattle into Indian Country.  The Stockyards were a big part of growing Cowtown into the city it is today and the historic district has some great architecture, old bars, and a kind of lame "cattle drive" the herds a dozen or so longhorns through the streets.

There are unique shops (need some habenero sugar?  You'll find it here) and a lot of history in a easily walkable section of town. And if you get tired of strolling the pavement, find one of those old bars and have a beer surrounded by atmosphere.  You might even find a buffalo butt stuck to the wall or these cool old fans driven by a single belt.

This year's plan for winter is to check out the deserts of Arizona where apparently thousands of RVers go to escape the frigid air.  There are many miles between here and the desert so I didn't stick around for very long. 

Trekking to Texas

Nov 8-18, 2017

The tow truck driver suggested that I really needed to get out in the field and pick some cotton to get the full Alabama experience but it seems that they all use machines so, bummer, no back-breaking, character-building experience for me.  Fields are pretty though, before they get picked.

After, not so much.

Thanksgiving was approaching and I kind of charged across Mississippi and Arkansas without paying much attention to things.  I stopped in towns that were really tiny; not much more than a pausing place for travelers.

When I made it to Texarkana, the first place big enough to have a laundromat, I discovered that the top panel of my fiberglass was on its way to becoming litter. 

Dunno how that came about but driving that way seems like a bad plan so I did some emergency bandaging to get me a little farther into Texas where I can borrow a ladder from my brother to glue that back down.

I also decided I needed a new truck battery after driving with the headlights left my old battery dead.  Got a jump from a lovely lady living in her van and got the Walmart five-year battery.  Walmart has a lot of ethical issues but they are nationwide and they will replace a battery purchased at another Walmart.

Of course I had to stop in Paris, TX because....it's Paris, TX.  They used to boast the second-tallest Eiffel tower in the world (a cowboy hat taller than the one in Paris, TN) but Las Vegas built some monstrosity and now they are third, and who wants to boast about that?

They can, however, boast about having the only Jesus wearing cowboy boots.  Even the Lord knows better than to mess with sandals and fire ants.