Friends of ours had for a few years been touring around Canada, the USA and Mexico in a bus shaped RV and having read their many blog posts, the idea of this had fascinated us as something we would like to also undertake. As well we had sold our house and acquired a USA visa, so very definitely had planned to vacation for several years.
Best thing to do we thought was to go do some research by travelling to the USA for 2 weeks, so in October we found ourselves flying directly from Brisbane to Dallas Fort Worth Airport in Texas, hiring a car before driving down to Houston, one location in the USA filled with RV sale yards.
We also intended to rent a Class B RV in Denver, Colorado to see first hand what we thought of RV travelling, but more on that later.
So below is the route we took during this visit, the red being the road component and the cyan being our flights within the USA.
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| 2013 route within the USA |
Over the next few days we drove to multiple RV yards and started looking and learning about the variety of second hand RVs for sale and boy, there was a lot to learn, despite our friends having tried to progressively teach us before we took off for our research.
We were most interested in the Class A RVs, the bus type ones, the reason being, if we were going to be in it for a few years, a bit of room and comfort would be useful.
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| Rob in front of second hand Class A RVs in Houston |
There was certainly a LOT to learn and consider, things like diesel or petrol, length, self levelling or not, maintenance history, layout, ability to handle freezing weather, insurance costs etc etc, quite mind numbing actually.
It wasn't all RV research, so to clear and relax our minds, we took a day trip down to Galveston, located on the Gulf of Mexico and a favourite holiday destination for Texans.
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| Nice warm water at shore of Galveston |
There are many holiday and resort style locations along the coast, plus lots of interesting pubs, bars and restaurants, one of which we enjoyed for a robust lunch before driving back to Houston.
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| The slightly quirky restaurant for lunch |
After even more RV research around Houston, we flew to Denver, Colorado to collect a small RV to spend 10 days in wandering within this State to see what we thought.
Even finding a RV park to stay in for our first night was interesting, simply because some are designed to accomodate children with their own little fun parks on premise and not something we were keen to stay in.
Our first night was spent with us staying in our Class B RV parked next to quite a large 5th Wheeler style RV about the same length as a normal semi, the size difference being very stark.
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| Our RV is on the left parked next to a massive 5th wheeler |
It was here we also had our first practice run of letting out the black water (toilet stuff) from its holding tank and with fingers crossed and other campers watching... success!
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| Thankfully no leaks or splashes anywhere |
From then on we got into the groove of enjoying what a fully self contained has to offer, the only major issue being to remember how long and high it is when pondering visiting sites and looking for places to park or avoiding low overhanging things like trees or building verandahs.
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Colorado is famous for its mountains and striking
red structures in its parks |
We didn't always stay in RV parks but had a go at a variety of free campsites in some of their State parks or next to lakes.
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| Variety of camping locations and facilities we tried. |
During one of our nights camping in the wild, two momentous things occur. During the night, Rob had a very restless sleep pondering our potential future RV adventure and had an overnight epiphany.
Over breakfast next morning she asked, "if you only had one last destination to visit, would it be wandering around North America for a few years?". Boy... where had this come from I thought and it certainly made me think hard for awhile. "No" was the answer, with a sigh of relief immediately erupting from Rob.
With that, all our plans or dreams of long term RVing had come to an abrupt end!
The other momentous event the very same night was that it had snowed, not something we had been expecting at all.
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| Still snowing in the morning |
From then on we relaxed and went about enjoying the rest of our time in the RV climbing through a mountain pass reaching 10,000 feet, stopping next to a lake for lunch with snow on the ground, enjoying the wide open spaces, old timber sheds and a strange building we found in the middle of nowhere.
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| Crossing over a pass through the mountains |
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| Lunch next to a lake |
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| Old log shed |
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| Weird castle like building in middle of nowhere |
With time getting away from us we came down out of the more mountainous areas after enjoying some stunning scenery, before re-joining the more open spaces as were worked our way back towards Denver.
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| Mountain lake with snow |
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| Back on flatter roads even though there are mountains in the distance |
As we got closer to Denver we stayed overnight in an area where the red rock and mountain formations were visible once again, along with some of the areas native animals which we couldn't resist photographing.
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| Posing for a photo |
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| More red rock formations not far from Denver |
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| View from the door of the RV |
It was a very simple task to return the RV and find our way to the airport over the Rocky Mountains for our trip back home via Los Angles.
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| Crossing the Rocky Mountains at 10,000 metres on the way to Los Angeles |
We had left home with dreams of a long term adventure in a RV throughout Canada, the USA and Mexico and returned home after learning a lot about RVs and ourselves with an ongoing commitment of exploring other parts of the planet.
Was it all worthwhile... of course it was so go well!
