Beyond Branson; Pondering Future Travel

This past Tuesday, we moved from Branson to a very nice Corps of Engineer’s Park on Wappapello Lake.  We’re in the Redman Creek CG. This facility is like so many other Corps parks with long asphalt pads, electric, water, and this one even has full sewer hookups as well.  Regular price $24/night.  We get half off, so $12 for a premium FHU site.  I don’t think this is going to last too much longer. What a deal!

With the latest plan, we're here until the 17th… next Friday.

The following was done for my Journal, but I’ll re-post it here for future reference:

Regarding travel in a more expensive future world… I did some math yesterday.  Here’s the setup:  Consider two versions of a one day, 500 mile trip.  One is by small RV pulled by an adequate but still relatively efficient tow vehicle.  Real life data from the Escape forum says that a Ford F-150 with an eco-boost 3.5 motor, pulling a small camper like our E19, will get between 12 and 14 overall mpg.  So let’s use 13mpg. With this setup, a campsite is still needed to complete the full day. The second version is an efficient car - a CRV or similar - that get’s a real world 35mpg overall.  Here, we’ll have to get a motel in order to complete the day. Both vehicles use regular gas at an assumed future price of $5.00/gallon

And the results:  

Fuel consumption:  Truck: 38.5 gallons;   Car: 14.3 gallons

Fuel cost:   Truck: $192.31    Car: $71.43

Lodging:   RVPark:  $35.00     Motel:  $140.00 (a mid-level+ joint, a Hampton Inn or similar)

Total cost:  Truck+RVPark:  $227.31      Car+Motel:  $211.43

Upshot:  The Car+Motel model is $15.88 less costly than RVing.

Sure, there are other considerations.  Some just hate sleeping in motels. But on the other side of the equation, there are always the side-hassles of using the RV model… hitching/unhitching, set-up time and effort, comfort, bathroom size, dumping tanks, reversing the process the next morning.

All in all, however, this example calls into question the use of big RVs for touring.  For example, would I pull the Escape all the way across the country in order to tour New England and the Maritimes?  Really?  Small RV Parks, higher expenses, smaller roads, more people, and maybe even more people.

 

It might be time to fully consider more alternative methods of travel:  B and Bs, AirBnBs, hotels and traveling by small efficient car, or even mix it up by air travel for some trips… or cruises… 

Biding our Time in Branson

Recently, I've heard a couple of people say it was easier to follow our travels and our whereabouts when I kept a current blog.  I've also been looking for something more to fill that creative space, or purpose, that I've missed. Therefore, I think I'll take a shot at reviving the old "Sabbatical Journal" again.

It's going to be a slow start. I'm not planning on extensive posts explaining every detail of every moment we're out on the road.  I'm envisioning something along the lines of a weekly (maybe) post of where we're at and what we're doing... but in general terms.  Brief. Probably better to start slow than to make it complicated from the start.  

So here's our status for this week:  As (some) of you know, we're on our way to the Escapees Travel Clubs' big annual meeting/convention/rally.  It's called Escapade and it will be held in Lebannon, TN. We'd like to be there by June 17th.  

Even at our pace (slow and easy), we're only a 3 day drive from there right now.  And we're in Branson MO.  We've been here for a couple of weeks and will be here until the end of May. Then we'll have 17 days to make 3 drives.  I think we can handle that.