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