Coffee!

My first week into retirement I decided to go through our camping equipment and start sorting some of the items we will bring on this trip and items we will need for Canada, when we stay in one place for two weeks or longer. This trip I want to pack compact, necessary items that will take up little room and be easy to use for the one night stay in campgrounds. I ordered a small, compact grill. When it comes in, I’ll let you know how it works.

*Update on the grill we ordered: Stansport Outfitter Series 2-Burner Propane Stove....
We set it up in about 5 minutes, hooked up a little propane cylinder and started it up with no issues. Really love this!

One of the items I bought was a collapsible, electric hot water pot. Most of the sites we stay at will have electric hookups. I decided to make our morning coffee to see how efficient it is and I can tell you it was awesome! (Being coffee drinkers!)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MG89K5W/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s03?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I filled it with cold water, plugged it in and in 5 minuets it was boiling. I used another cute little item I bought to put coffee in to drip into a mug, and we got two full, hot cups of delicious coffee with enough hot water left to rinse out the coffee filter. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0087SPTLC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s04?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Some things just deserve 5☆☆☆☆☆

In sites where there is no electricity I bought this little item to use with the 12 volt in the car to heat water for coffee. 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M63MZ71/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Places To Stay

Planning this trip has been such fun! I started probably in September searching sites for ideas where to camp inexpensively. Most of our stops will be in the National Parks which have received wonderful reviews. Many people I’ve talked with also recommended them. Some of them either aren’t opened when we are planning on arriving or require a hard side camper because of grizzlies so we will be staying in nearby campsites or in motels. If something happens and we can’t make it to a campground we won’t loose much money because most of our reservations are minimal due to the senior discount we have. The most expensive campground we are staying in is $37.00 unless it’s a motel.
I have printed out details of each stop with maps, copies of reservations and any other pertinent information on the area. I keep them in a binder with pockets for paper maps that I will be bringing. I found a great little case to hold my AAA books and maps from Butler for $10.00. http://www.butlermaps.com/motorcycle-road-maps/merchandise/

Our Drive

I tried different sites to locate one that I could add my stops along the way and be able to add activities, etc. I decided on myscenicdrives.com  The downside to this site is as I was adding stops for our trip in May, every time I wanted to update directions I got a message that some of the roads may not be accessible, which they wouldn't be near the Grand Canyon in January! I was unable to get the total driving time or route to show up on the map. So that was a little frustrating. 

So here I am in mid January and I have our places booked along the route and some idea as to the places of interest we will be visiting. Both Tom and myself have the National Parks & Federal Recreational Lands Lifetime Senior Pass 

which gets us half off the camping fees in the National Parks and free entrance to into national parks and national wildlife refuges, in addition to standard amenity fees at national forests and grasslands, and lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Reclamation. If you are 62 or older you can get this at https://support.recreation.gov/articles/en_US/Article/Create-a-Recreation-gov-Account .
I booked almost all our campgrounds, or as many as I could though their site. We did make a few reservations along the way at motels so we could do laundry, get a decent breakfast and most of all sleep in a real bed!

Retired!

My husband Tom has been retired for a few years and now that I've just retired, we decided to take a trip across our country to visit all the beautiful places we have here. So for the last few months I have been searching the internet for sites on traveling across the country in a camper. Most of the sites I've visited have been wonderful but not much that I have been able to find with a small pop up like ours. So I've decided to blog about this trip that will happen in a few short months taking us through approximately 26 states in about 41 days.
The last few years we have taken our pop up to Cape Breton, Canada for family vacations and found lots of nice amenities that have made our time there comfortable. Tom tells me I'm "nesting". But if I'm going to spend two weeks outside, I want it to be as much like home as I can make it. OK, so not really like being home but not that bad either! I love cooking, so having cooking utensils that allow me to make tasty meals is important.
I should mention our pop up is a 2015 QuickSilver 8.0 Livin Lite. Only weighs 865 pounds. We pull it with our Subaru outback. We just upgraded our Subaru this year to a 6 cylinder model because pulling it loaded for two weeks with 3 adults was a little bit of a strain on our 4 cylinder.
Going across the country this May we won't be bringing much weight with us but will be nice having the heavier car going up mountains.