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Jan 22

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Virtual RVing (or What-To-Do-In-Winter-Before-You-Start-Fulltiming)

virtual_rving9_artsy

Though the allure of the open road ever beckons part-time RVers like Jan & I,  it’s one thing to drive around Wisconsin in the summers and quite another to drive around North America.

We’ve been part-time RVing for 10 years and have driven our motorhome down many roads, but I think full-time RVing will be a different animal — at least in scale.

With the prospect of living on the road 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year . . . how much driving is enough? Too much? How long should we stay at a campsite? What will it cost? Where do we go?

There’s no way of knowing for sure, but I think there’s a way of preparing for this transition . . . Virtual RV Trips !

I can’t imagine that I made this term up, but here’s what I’ve been doing over long Wisconsin Winters. Armed with an Excel spreadsheet, I started with a start and final destination and then planned a trip using actual campgrounds along the way.

After creating about a dozen of these Virtual RV Trips, I learned a few things:

  • I’d rather be taking real trips instead of virtual ones.
  • With each new Virtual RV Trip, the amount of daily driving I did kept dropping. I tended to stay longer and longer at campsites.
  • When I added the average temperature for each destination, this seemed like a good guide for both the Winter and Summer months.
  • I started to get ballpark figures for campground costs.
  • I learned a lot about campgrounds themselves . . . amenities, cost, locations, . . .

We’ll see.

Here’s a sample Virtual RV Trip . . . virtual_rving9