Part one of our By The Numbers series took a look at our travel expenses on the road, the biggest being the parks we call our temporary home. They say money can’t buy love, but it can rent a really nice concrete pad with utilities and a pickleball court.
Let’s start with the easy stuff. Here’s the places we’ve slept in the past three years:
Number of states: 25
Number of park stays: 70
Number of one night stops: 15 (These occur when we break a long day of driving into two days)
Length of stays: Generally, we try to stay in each place for a month. Since we work full time, we’ve found that a month gives us enough time to truly get to know a place. To meet our commitments and reach our destinations, we don’t always achieve that goal.
Longest consecutive days at one park:
| Park | Location | # of Days |
|---|---|---|
| Normandy Farms | Boston, MA | 63 |
| The Tides | Tampa, FL | 62 |
| The Tides | Tampa, FL | 57 |
| Boston Minuteman | Boston, MA | 40 |
| Americamps | Richmond, VA | 34 |
Chains: We stay at a lot of KOAs because they allow three dogs and always have a dog park.
Repeat Stays: That being said, there are some “repeat offenders” that we’ve returned to as we re-visit our favorite places.
| Campground | Location | # of Visits |
|---|---|---|
| St. Mary’s / Jacksonville KOA | Jacksonville, FL | 5 |
| Americamps | Richmond, VA | 3 |
| Niagara Falls / Grand Island KOA | Buffalo, NY | 2 |
| Philadelphia South / Clarksboro KOA | Philadelphia, PA | 2 |
| Pine Lake RV Resort | Sturbridge, MA | 2 |
| Swan Bay RV Resort | Alexandria Bay, NY | 2 |
| The Tides | Tampa, FL | 2 |
Time Zones: We’ve changed time zones four times. We work east coast hours regardless of where we are. Here’s the number of distribution of days we’ve spent in each time zone:
Number of National Parks Visited: 8.
Badlands National Park (Interior, SD), Minuteman National Historic Park (Philip, SD), Acadia National Park (Bar Harbor, ME), Manhattan Project National Historical Park (Oak Ridge, TN), Hot Springs National Park (Hot Springs, AR), Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Gatlinburg, TN), Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park (Chattanooga, TN), and Wind Cave National Park (Hot Springs, SD)
Number of times we’ve taken shelter for tornado warnings: 3 (Richmond, Kansas City, and Boston)
Number of hurricane evacuations: 1 (Hurricane Henri in Boston, 2021)
Number of Storrowings: 0 (and let’s keep it that way!)
We hope you’ve enjoyed Part 1 and 2 of this series. We have one more post left, in which we look how we get between the parks, aka Moving Day.