Cross Country Redo – 1 – Barstow (Yet Again!)

The boys are still attending classes 100% remotely, our jobs are still work from home, we still aren’t doing much in the way of seeing friends in person (boo to that!), and there’s a fueled up, provisioned RV just sitting there all lonely like in our backyard.  What does that all mean?  You guessed it, it’s time for another cross country road trip.  Since it is the middle of winter and most of the country is shrouded in a blanket of  RV non-friendly weather, we’re once again heading off to Florida., this time on a more southern route.  Of course it will also be great to see my parents again, which is really the main reason we’re going to Florida again.  

Unlike our last trip out to Florida, which took an adventure filled 3 weeks to get there, this time we’re in full blown Canon Ball Run mode.  Our plan is to drive straight through on the shortest course in about 5 days.  No parks, no fishing, no rv parks, just drive drive drive and overnighting at gas stations.  That’s just on the way out though.  On our way back we are planning for a more leisurely pace, with stops to catch some sites along the way.  In the meantime, we’ll just make sure to enjoy the views through the windshield, and there are some nice ones.  Why are we doing it this way?  Overall we’re trying to limit this trip to about a month, which is half as long as our last one.  We’re also trying to get there to be with my mother for her birthday, which is coming up soon.  There’s also a chance that our area will drop back down from the Covid purple tier to the red tier, which may mean the boys will get called back into school soon.

Another big difference between this trip and our last cross country trip is the planning.  Last time it felt like we spent a solid month planning and provisioning the RV.  This time we came up with the idea a few days before we left and engaged in virtually no planning.  Our strategy is simply to drive about 800 miles a day (or longer if we can) and stop at a safe place to overnight when we don’t feel like driving anymore, then do that again the next day, until we got to Florida.  Not much planning needed for a trip like that.  I’m sure will do a bit more research for the trip back, but that’s a next week problem.

We decided to start our trip after work and school on Thursday afternoon with a goal of driving to the trusty ole Flying J in Barstow.  Despite leaving during the middle of one of our biggest storms of the year, we made it roughly on schedule.  This is now the third time we’ve stayed over night at this particular gas station.  As the saying goes, “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it”. We ended up pulling in at about 1am.  The boys had already been sleeping on the folded out couch for a few hours (still buckled in).

In general, the RV gives and the RV takes.  But on these types of trips, I think it gives much more than it takes.  It’s harder to drive than a car, goes slower than a car, and sucks up way more dinosaur juice than a car, but on the other hand, you never have to use a public restroom (and most of the time you don’t even need to pull over if anyone other than the driver needs to go), you have a full kitchen so you don’t need to stop for food if you don’t want to, and when it comes time to sleep, that can be as easy as finding a safe place that allows overnight parking, pulling over, and comfortably  falling asleep within minutes of pulling over (after brushing your teeth of course).  

Anyways, back to Barstow.  After waking up on Friday morning, the boys logged into their classes while Lana and I worked from our now very familiar RV workstations.  In the afternoon, after work and school, it was time to hit the road again.  Our original plan was to take the 40 cross country, but looking ahead, the storm had passed us during the night and dumped some substantial snow in northern Arizona, the whole area around Flagstaff looked like a mess, so we called an audible and decided to take the more southern route along the 10.  

As I’m typing this we just passed through Phoenix with our goal for the night being a decently rated TA Travel Center (gas station) in Willcox, Arizona.  Our thinking in terms of staying at these gas stations is that it’s not really about keeping costs down, but more that it’s just easier.  No check-ins, no hooking up to utilities.  Just parking, going to sleep, then waking up and hitting the road again early the next morning.  No real time to enjoy what limited emendates that the various RV or state parks typically have.

On a related note for those of you thinking about boondocking at  gas stations or similar spots.  Check out RVparky.com for reviews, and make sure take a look at your planned destination with Google satellite photos to make sure they have parking spots that can accommodate your vehicle, this is mostly if you’re in a larger RV.