5 Things I Learned On Our Cross Country Trips

From the moment we emerge into this big beautiful world, we are learning. I always try to push myself beyond the comfort zone, into the unknown. Not only do I get the exhilarating feeling of being truly alive but it also allows me to experience things I no nothing about. Because in these moments, while we may not have it all mapped out, we learn so much along the way.

It was no different for me as I pushed myself out of the comforts of a snuggled up life in the suburbs and hit the open road with myself alone as the pilot. While I’m no stranger to executing big plans (there was that 6 month stint living in China) this experience would provide some much needed growth and catapult me into true freedom. So what exactly did ‘life on the road’ teach me……………….

No. 1 There are some good people out there

While there is always an exception to every rule, what I found while traveling from state to state (and Canada) was most people are pretty kind and giving. And trust me, we were in a lot of places and situations. From the camper that showed me how to dump my tanks for the first time to the people in Canada that helped me when we were stranded in a tiny town and I couldn’t start my car, people helped me all along the way.

Here are some examples of the helping hands I encountered on our journeys:

• Pennsylvania – a woman who allowed me to turn my enormous lady around in her front lawn so I didn’t have to unhook my tow vehicle when I got stranded in a cornfield.
• Florida – a kind soul who helped diagnosis an electrical issue in Tampa for free.
• Florida – the same Tampa location, an on-the-spot fix it guy saved my butt when I hit a parked car :-0, oops.
• Florida – somewhere in the panhandle I had two guys help me push in my slide when it was clearly not going to go in on it’s own.
• South Carolina – yeah, it happened again! Another pair of kind neighbors!
• The cyber community that I followed, some who answered my questions and taught me so much that I didn’t know.
• The countless commuters along the way that shouted while driving down the highway at any given location, “your bay door is open”! crap, not again.
• California – the eye doctor who directed me to another eye doctor that could fill my specialty lens prescription after my dog ‘chewed up my lenses’ and had us stranded for a few weeks.
• Oregon – the amazing repair shops that helped me find someone to fix my totaled brakes after I left the parking brake on the entire 5 hour ride from Nevada. ouch!

I could go on and on but you get my point. There are a lot of good people out there willing to help out when you need it. I never forget to pay it forward :-).

No. 2 Don’t plan too far ahead

This is a tough one for me because I’m a planner by nature. And in no way am I advocating that you shouldn’t plan to some extent. In fact, I had a rough draft of our initial trips planned out from start to finish.

What I am trying to say is, while you can plan ahead, understand you will drive yourself crazy if you don’t realize that it should be a loose idea of what you ‘hope’ to do. If you book every single campground 6 months forward and you have some said dog chew your contact lenses up in California and delay you a week or two, you’re pretty screwed. It then becomes a domino affect. Everything from that point forward will go tumbling down.

Sometimes you may simply want to change course for other unforeseen reasons. I had a clear path for our second round trip that quickly got scrapped the closer we came to Utah. I realized that we needed to get in and out of Utah as close to the end of June as possible because it’s pretty darn hot and crowded at that time. So I did some rerouting for efficiency.

It’s always important to plan but I never book campgrounds (unless it’s Florida in winter, etc) too far ahead on a several month journey. I have learned to allow for the possibility that things could change at any given moment. And trust me, as I said earlier, the one thing you can plan on is ‘change’!

No. 3 Be willing to try new things

I think this is a given, right? Not always. A lot of people don’t like to travel off the beaten path. And since we’re talking about RVing here, I don’t mean literally. No way I would have planned to take my girl too far off a paved road. What I’m talking about is try not to stay too set in your ways.

I have never driven a motorboat. But when the opportunity presented itself at Glacier National Park, I was a bit nervous to give it a go. And it was just a little boat with a small engine off the back of it. There were those voices in my head, “How do I steer”, “what if I mess up”, “what if I get us stranded”???? The what if’s almost stopped me.

But I did it anyway. And yes, I messed up, BIG TIME. And yes, we got stranded at Glacier National Park on rocks for a bit. But I persevered and stuck it out. I loved it. The freedom I felt while gliding across the water was worth all of the mishaps. If I’d never taken the chance, I would have never experienced the joy. I will not hesitate to do it again.

So don’t listen to those voices in your head. I mean, within reason. You don’t want to put yourself in obvious danger. But if you’re curious and it’s something you’ve been wanting to try or sounds intriguing to you, go for it. It may not be your cup of tea or it could become a new passion. Perhaps it’s something between the two but you’ll never know until you try, right?

No. 4 Take your time

Life comes at us fast. But if you don’t ‘stop to smell the roses’ you never get to experience the full affect. Sometimes it’s unavoidable but oftentimes, not. Our second cross country trip was a blur. We were moving so fast from place to place that I hardly had time to take it all in. While we got to experience a lot, it was also laced with a lot of stress.

I won’t do that again. I would have only gone halfway across the country and started to turn back east sooner. Or, I would have planned to be gone longer. Because the whole reason why I hurried back home in the first place began to dissolve when I was mere miles from home. It turned out I didn’t need to be home by September because life happened and things changed.

Take your time, you only have one life to live.

No. 5 Always carry a paper map a.k.a, have a back up plan

While I do mean to literally ‘always carry a paper map’ I am using it as a play on the fact that you should always have a back up plan. While life on the road can be a grand adventure, you are living life, albeit in a different form. Things are going to happen, emergencies do occasionally occur and you should be prepared.

While the obvious back up to an emergency is to have a spare tire on board or an extra pin for the tow bar, there are also things that go beyond the obvious. Think about what that may mean for you because we all have different needs. Keep a spare pair of important items on board just in case (I had one contact lens with me when the dog emergency happened).

What if your wallet or purse gets stolen? You need to keep copies of your credit cards, important papers in a fireproof lockable safe. Always have another campground or two in mind just in case the one you planned on isn’t what you expected.

This ties into no. 2 above, have a backup plan if your intended route is thrown off course. When we were heading out of Washington in 2017, wildfires were likely to be right in the middle of our route. I formed a back up plan and put it into action.

And about that paper map, I mean it. I was headed to Yosemite relying on my GPS. Some of those locations are really, really remote. I lost all signal from my GPS and there was no way I was going to get us there or back out again without the use of a paper map. So have one as a back up plan.

Most of the things I learned while traveling cross country were simply a duplicate of things I already knew. But they became especially important and relevant while I was adventuring along all those miles and miles of road. The lessons went well beyond what I listed here. And so did the rewards. So if and when it comes time for you to spread your wings, I hope some of these top 5 will help you along your journeys both on the road and in life.

{HUGS} from the Crew