Back on the Road.. And it Feels Great!

Ahh… the freedom of the open road! Sounds other than trains squealing, vile rap music, forklifts, welding, grinding and the other regular shop sounds we had grown so accustomed to.

Views other than of a gravel industrial lot.

Healthier meals cooked at home, instead of constant convenience food.

Miles under our tires being made. Washing squished bugs off the windshield (oh wait, maybe that part isn’t so great.. but we’ll take it!)

Living at our pace, our schedule and most importantly – in our own space!

As the miles and days grow in distance from our Master Tech experience, we grow more and more thankful for the improvements made to our bus, and forget the frustrating bits.

That’s the way major life experiences tend to go. They fade from being your focus, to being a mere memory in the rear view mirror.  It’s that very perspective that helps us get through any experience we’re in, knowing that one day – today will be just a sentence in our story. We will get through it, this too shall pass and all other other cliche statements that are actually quite true.

Since we left Elkhart on the 15th of September, we’ve now traversed over half way to Albuquerque.

Here’s a bit of a travelogue of our trip so far:

Middle Fork Forest Preserve – Penfield, IL

We debated about just going to the very closest campground to Elkhart, and doing a full systems test. However, considering our delays allowed us to do a lot onsite testing & tweaks – we felt compelled to get in some miles.

On our way to Elkhart in May, we fell in love with Middle Fork Forest Preserve (our review) – just north of Champaign, Illinois. A lovely campground with huge wooded sites, hiking trails and during the week, pretty much empty. Plus, at just $14/night with electric & water hook-ups, it’s a bargain.

We also knew the cell signal was marginal, which for us right now, is a bonus.

We’re just starting some intensive head-to-head testing of all of the mobile 4G cellular boosters on the market (we have the weBoost 4G-X, Wilson Mobile 4G, TopSignal Solid RF, weBoost RV 4G, Wilson Sleek 4G and soon the MaxAMP RV – click for our comparative guide to each of these). At each location we stop, we’re spending a couple hours to take several readings on multiple carriers and devices, to see which are best in what conditions.

If you’d like to follow along with the testing, our Mobile Internet Aficionados have live access to the testing results and notes. Later this fall, we hope to have enough data samples to make some firm recommendations.

It was just a short stop, but a much needed one to breath some fresh air. It seemed so surreal to be out in nature and hear the sounds of birds, geese and crickets.

St. Louis

St. Louis is a natural stop on our way to Albuquerque, plus it would allow us to get some quality family time.

We ended up staying 5-nights in the area, which gave us the opportunity to really start getting our ‘new’ to us RV in order. The renovation project allowed us to purge a lot of stuff from our lives, stuff that we hadn’t touched in years. Getting everything setup and organized felt great.

The side awning is a huge improvement in looks and functionality!

Helping crew for a hot air balloon

The new living room with coffee table is great for happy hour!

Wicked Balloon lands at the Elks Lodge

We stayed at the Elks Lodge ($15 donation per night), which is a perfect location for us – it’s close to all of Chris’ family, which made it super convenient to get together for spur of the moment shared meals, and even host happy hour in our new living room.

It’s amazing what replacing the sofa, adding in a folding coffee table and putting in a little bookcase can do to make the area feel more sociable.

Our visit was well timed with the Forest Park Hot Air Balloon race, and we had a surprise fly over by a dozen balloons!  One even landed just a few steps from our bus, and we jumped in to volunteer crew to help bring it down. Super exciting, and prelude of what is to come in Albuquerque!

Miles and Miles – Casino Parking

St. Louis left us with just over a 1000 miles to go to get to Albuquerque in 12 days. Certainly doable, while squeezing in some much needed downtime in scenic locations to get caught up on work and naps.

Our first day back on the road, we ended up making 300 miles to the MO/KS/OK border. We had bypassed a couple of free overnight parking opportunities on the way, just not feeling the call or being quite ready to stop. When I looked ahead on our AllStays app, I noticed a casino right at the tri-state border that offered free parking.

Downriver Casino Resort is located in Oklahoma, has their parking lot in Kansas and their RV park in Missouri. They offer one free night in their electric/water spots if you sign up for their player’s club (called Q-Club). On the free shuttle over to the casino, our driver let us know they’d also be giving us each a $10 food voucher, and $10 in match play.

After signing up and getting checked in, we headed to their buffet to discover Monday night is also buy-one-get-one free night. With our meal vouchers, we ended paying $1.35 for two of us to dine. After dinner, we spent our $10 match play in slot machines, each leaving behind a few dollars in appreciation for the free food and parking. The casino was beautiful (and non-smokey.. definite perk) and the stop easy right off I-44.

And hey, they basically paid us to stay.. that’s better than free camping. Casino camping can definitely be a nice diversion from typical overnight stops in Walmart parking lots and rest stops.

What’s Next:

We’re currently somewhere in the middle of Oklahoma, taking a much needed rest break. Our first time in months just ‘being at home’. We’ll integrate in another stop of two like this one, while making miles on our way to Balloon Fiesta and the first ever Xscapers Convergence.

By the way, we’ve posted some of the events we’ll be participating in at Balloon Fiesta  in Albuquerque where you are welcome to catch us. Including one official ‘bus tour’ we’ll be giving in person.

We do respectfully ask that folks don’t just drop by expecting tours (we’ll be getting a video tour up real soon!) – we will be quite busy and would also really like to some time at home. If you can’t make any of the scheduled events and would like to meet up – let us know. We’ll do our best, or hopefully serendipitously run into you (do say hi if you see us out and about!).

Live Video Invitation

Topic: Renovating an Older RV vs Buying a Newer RV

When: Tuesday, September 29 – 8pm CDT / 6pm PDT
Where: Our Livestream Channel 

One of the most frequent questions we got during our summer bus renovations was Why not just buy a newer RV with all the features you wanted — is renovating an old bus really worth it?’. So in this month’s live video cast, we’ll address this head on.

We’ll cover a little history recap of how we became vintage bus owners, why older higher end coaches can be a great deal, our general overall costs so far in making Zephyr our own, what we could buy newer for that same amount of money, and considerations for renovating an older RV.

As always, we’ll follow up with a live Q&A and invite questions from our viewers. They can be about the renovations or anything nomadic related.

To join the chat, just tune in at http://new.livestream.com/accounts/10991713/oldnewrv – either via your browser, or using the Livestream mobile app. You will need to preregister with a free account with Livestream to participate. You can also RSVP on Facebook Here, or join our e-mail list to get reminders of all of our live video chats. 

If you can’t make it, we do archive our live video casts to our YouTube Channel.

This particular video cast will also become part of a dedicated blog post next week on this topic for those who prefer the written form.