Final Stretch

Travel Day - Amarillo, TX

On Saturday I made the 300 mile, five hour drive to Amarillo, Texas for the night. I stayed at another Harvest Host, this time a winery called Bar Z. It turned out they were having their 7th Annual Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River Festival that night, so they had live music, a food truck, and you paid one cover fee and got to taste wine from three different wineries, mixed drinks from a local vodka distillery, a gift bag, plus a soft sided wine glass: It was a cool evening, but it was still nice to sit on their patio, especially since I got there towards the end of the festival and the rep from the distillery wanted to get rid of the rest of the vodka so I got a very healthy pour.

Frisco, TX

Sunday I made the six hour, 350 mile drive to Frisco, Texas. The campground I stayed at had a marina too, and had camp sites that were closer to state park size than most of the ones I had been staying at recently: I spent very little time there though, as my cousin Amanda and her family live in nearby McKinney, Texas, so I spent just about all my waking hours with them. They did come by for a visit to check out the trailer though, and we spent a surprisingly long time playing hide and go seek. It’s a good size trailer, but there are just not that many hiding spots inside: I really enjoyed visiting with them outside of our normal, larger family gatherings.

Travel Day - Little Rock, AR

On Thursday I drove up to a Harvest Host just north of Little Rock, Arkansas. I thought I-65 between Indianapolis and Chicago was a bad drive because the number of semis on the road, but I-30 between Dallas and Little Rock seemed to be much worse. It could just be heavier traffic, but it also seemed like many of the semis were slower than most of the ones I saw out west, as I had very rarely passed any until this stretch of road. The rolling hills didn’t help any, as the trucks would regularly have 10+ MPH swings of speed depending on if they were going up or down hill. Add in some construction plus I had left a little later than I should have, made this my worst drive day that I could remember, turning what should have been a 345 mile, five hour drive into a seven hour drive. I ended up not arriving at the Harvest Host, a Baptist church, until after dark:

Nashville, TN

On Friday I drove another six hours and 350 miles to Nashville, Tennessee to meet my friends Scott and Katie and their two kids for the weekend. The campground I stayed at was pretty cramped, but it was only about five minutes from the Opryland Resort, and Scott and Katie were able to get a hotel close by too: Scott and Katie left after they finished work on Friday, so they didn’t get down to Nashville until it was bed time for their kids, so we just hung out at their hotel Friday night.

We started Saturday with a large breakfast at Puckett’s, which I would recommend. Then we went to Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage museum/house/plantation. Some of his history is impressive, he fought in the Revolutionary War at only 13 years old, then worked his way up to Major General of the US Army, and eventually President of the United States. He also grew his plantation to over 1000 acres, making it one of the largest cotton farms in Tennessee. Of course, that wouldn’t have been possible without him also growing his slave labor force from nine in 1804 when he bought The Hermitage, to over 100 by the time he died in 1845. A large part of the grounds is open for self guided tours, and they even have a few small rows of cotton that you can pick from to see what raw cotton looks like.

After a stop for some drinks, snacks, and bocce, we went to the Opryland Resort. It is kind of hard to explain, but it basically is a large hotel that has a few different greenhouse-like areas, with a bunch of different walkways to go through the gardens: After we ended up just going back to the hotel so the kids could swim and hanging out there for the night.

Travel Day - Independence, KY

Sunday I made the final drive of my trip, 264 miles that ended up taking about five hours. I didn’t have full hookups at the campground I stayed at in Nashville, and there was a line at the dump station. I felt bad taking too long, so I stopped at some Love’s truck stops on the way home to do a thorough dump, since it would be my last of the year before winterizing, so I wanted to make sure the tanks were as empty as I could get. The first one I stopped at wasn’t anywhere close to level, and it was sloped in the wrong direction to help with draining the tanks. The second one though was level enough to get the job done. It was tough to be patient and let the tanks drain while I was so anxious to get home! Eventually I made it back home:

By the numbers

Before the last gas update below, I thought I would put some other numbers out: I was away for 148 nights total. I spent six nights at Harvest Hosts, three nights in hotels, and one night at my aunt’s house (but still had my trailer at campgrounds during the hotel and aunt’s house nights), so I had 142 nights of campground reservations for a total of $7,684.46. Knowing what I know now about my trailer and how I use it, I could cut this cost pretty significantly by spending 3-4 nights at a time on public lands without sacrificing any comfort and probably increasing the views, at least until I got far enough south to require air conditioning through the night. I took 2,627 pictures, way lower than I would have guessed going in. I read 37 books. I hiked 170.7 miles on 47 trails. I only used a little more than one tank of propane. I went to 31 National Parks, Monuments, and Historical Parks. I drove 18,396 miles across 15 states. I tried 66 new beers. The longest I went without seeing anybody I knew in person was three weeks, in between Denver and Bryce Canyon.

Overall, an absolutely amazing trip that I was very fortunate to be able to take. I am also very glad to be home though to see all my friends and family that I haven’t seen over the last five months.

Gas Update

It has been a while since I’ve done a gas update, I was happy to finally see gas at under $4/gallon again. I ended up getting gas 74 times, at an average price of $4.59/gallon. I used a little over 1399 gallons, for a total cost of $6411.94. My overall average MPG was 13.3.

Total: