Epilogue

Thirty days and 5,000 miles later we're back in Dayton, OH. All things considered we were very fortunate on this trip. The van didn't break down, it didn't rain too hard or too long, we had AC when to heat got too high, and the only injury was after we had seen and done everything we wanted to do.

Lessons Learned

For a lot of this trip I was waiting for some calamity to set us back or cost us lots of money, but that never happened. I've learned that some things do go according to plan, and after you've planned for everything that can go wrong there's no sense in worrying until it does.

Rainey and I saw so many beautiful places this month, some we'd even like to live in, but we also learned that the beautiful parts of this country are not without their own unique problems. I'll miss the views and the dry air, but I'm thankful to live somewhere with more affordable housing and less extreme weather.

What surprised me the most was the lack of community we saw amongst other travelers. We had heard of caravans of RVs posting up together and interacting with each other, but the people at our campgrounds, while all friendly, mostly kept to themselves. I think part of this is to do with where we stayed. If we had spent more time boondocking on BLM land I think we would have found more community.

An unpleasant surprise was how selfish people can be. Leaving their aggressive dogs off the leash, getting too close to wildlife, and aggressive driving all could have ruined the trip (and worse, badly hurt someone) in an instant. It's scary to know that all your careful planning can be undone by one careless person.

Future Trips

This is something Rainey and I have discussed at length, both what we'd bring and do differently on future trips. We'd both like to stay longer in places and go during a time of year when we don't need to rely on shore power or air conditioning.

We would also look into boarding Junie for short periods of time so we could do things you can't normally do with an anxious dog, like eat inside a restaurant or take a tour, or hike at a national park.

Rainey and I usually use about 1TB of data during a month, so I made sure we had about as much pre-paid data for cellular internet on top of the 1TB data cap for Starlink. Although we mostly used cellular internet we only used ~30GB of data, so we would probably buy less data up front.

Finally, we would optimize our storage space to reduce how much gear you have to shuffle around to make or break camp. This is as easy as finding the right sized containers for things, and doing a dry run before your trip.

Thank You

I would like to thank

• Natalie, Nate, Steph, and Chris, for their generosity and hospitality
• My parents, for watering our plants and mowing the lawn
• Jamel and Gordon, for their trust and flexibility
• Ed and Joe, for their knowledge and advice
• Rainey, for everything
• You, for reading this blog!

See you down the road.