How many miles do you travel each year? - RV-Dreams Community Forum

Ckerr · RV-Dreams Family Member

How many miles do you travel each year?

Luvglass · RV-Dreams Family Member

We've just celebrated our fifth anniversary of life on the road, so here is what I posted on Jo's blog.

Would you believe that last Saturday was our 5 year anniversary of this wonderful wandering lifestyle we so recklessly jumped into? In many ways it seems like yesterday and in others it seems like we've never known another way of living. It sure has been interesting.

As you know from my infrequent posts, I supply the data and Jo the personality :) So here's some numbers we've accumulated in 5 years.

We've visited 47 of the 48 mainland states. For the life of me I don't know how we missed Rhode Island.

Also been to Mexico, Canada and that wonderful summer we spent in Alaska. BTW, we are planning on doing that again one of these days.

We've put 107,000 miles on the truck, 47,000 of them towing our home on wheels to 314 campgrounds. The stats indicate that we really are the Wandering Wishnies, because that averages moving every 6 days and driving 411 miles a week. Whew, I'm getting tired just reading this – I think we're nuts. :) In reality it's not that bad. The numbers get skewed because we sometimes travel long distances to get to a place, but then we stay for a long time.

For those of you that are thinking of getting into this lifestyle, or wondering what it costs, the 2 main expenses, different from living where you are now, are campground rent and fuel. The rest of your expenses will be the same no matter where you live. Our 5 year average monthly costs were $718 for campgrounds and $493 for diesel fuel. Our current reality is somewhat lower as we have been staying longer in places this last year and doing some volunteer camphosting. Last years actual monthly averages were $590 for campgrounds and $353 for fuel.

We are finding that we are looking to stay in places longer and travel somewhat less. We really enjoy volunteer camphosting and are expecting to do a lot more of that in the future, starting with a 2 month stay this May & June at Kodachrome Basin State Park in Utah.

LIG – RVLIB ( Life Is Good & RV Life Is Better ) I can't wait to write our 10th anniversary update.

mcw50 · RV-Dreams Family Member

Our motor home is 7 1/2 years old and we have 66,000 miles on it and another 75,000 on our tow car (which is older but had only 200 miles on it when we started towing it as it had belonged to invalid mother). We had 2 intense travel summers...one to the Canadian Maritimes and the other to Western Canada and the west coast...otherwise leisurely paced travel with long winter stays.

Mary

Ckerr · RV-Dreams Family Member

We've been guessing somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 miles a year. So far that looks like it falls in the range. Will be interesting to see if the trend holds.

Thanks Fred and Mary for sharing your experiences. We truly appreciate it.

ahoweth · RV-Dreams Family Member

We have been RVing since 1971 in various types of RV's. ON average, we travel at the rate of 15,000 miles per year and that has been pretty steady. We thought that when we retired and hit the road full time that our mileage would go up, but surprise, no. It has remained just about the same.

So there it is for what it is worth.

Jack Mayer · RV-Dreams Family Member

Fulltiming for 11 years.

We average between 7,000-9,000 miles a year. More when we first started out. Less last year at only 5,000.

Our average campground cost is under $5/night for all those years (not counting staying on RV lots we own). We stay a lot of free places, or workamp.