Starling Travel

Our third day traveling was through the last half of Kansas and into Oklahoma. Since the Salina KOA sounded like road noise all night, we decided that we wanted a more rustic campsite. We decided on Gore Landing.

We found it on the Camp Where app by Big Nerd Ranch, Inc. [iTunes link]. I looked through comments about the site and one of them mentioned that there was no sign for the campground on the main road. They weren’t kidding.

We drove off the main road, following the GPS coordinates and all we could see for miles was corn fields and trees.

We were certain that all we were going to find at the end of that road was an angry farmer with a shotgun. (Continue Reading…)

Our drive from Limon, CO to Salinas, KS was VERY windy. There were gusts up to 35 mph, but the wind didn’t try to push us off the road. That was something I was very scared of when driving a trailer, but we had no problems with that. Our gas mileage never got over 25 mpg because of that wind, however, bringing our average down to 29 mpg.

We had an easy day of driving and ended up at the Salina, Kansas KOA Campground.

It was our first stay at a KOA Campground and it was a pleasant surprise. (Continue Reading…)

Our first night on our Epic Journey, we stayed at Holiday Inn Express. Mike needed to work that night and Holiday Inn always has good wi-fi. The next morning, we left early and ate their complimentary breakfast. We had a fun surprise with the Pancakes In A Minute machine in their breakfast room.

This was our only stay in a hotel on the entire epic journey. In retrospect, we should have left one day later and just stayed at a campsite. Mike would have been more rested and the drive wasn’t nearly as difficult as we worried it would be.

But then we wouldn’t have been able to try the Pancakes In A Minute.

More info:

• Holiday Inn Express: Limon, CO
• Google Maps – Holiday Inn Express: Limon, CO

As a child, my parents drove every other year from Utah to Wisconsin to visit my mother’s family. The disembodied head of Abraham Lincoln played a key character in many of my childhood nightmares because it was something we passed every other year on that trip. Part of me didn’t even believe it really existed until we drove home from a convention in Denver a couple of years ago.

Exist, it does, nestled between Laramie and Cheyenne, Wyoming.

As a child, my nightmares featuring this roadside attraction involved (Continue Reading…)

Mike and I have just returned from an epic journey that I really can’t believe we achieved with such ease. We drove from Utah to Arkansas for a class for Mike and his father.

The trip was originally planned as a camping trip with the Springbar tent, but after the disastrous wind, rain and cold incidents of the Disneyland trip in March, we decided that we needed a trailer.

We took the newly restored Teardrop American Outbacker trailer. I am still amazed that it worked so well. Both Mike and I slept like logs in the teardrop, despite humid heat in Memphis and bitingly cold wind in Cheyenne. Of the twelve days on the road, we spent eleven in the trailer.

When we planned this trip, we fully expected to spend some days camping and some days in hotels. Mike had looked for hotels and motels along the way, especially in Little Rock, Arkansas, because he was worried about sleeping well for his class. After the first night in a hotel just east of Denver, we never needed a hotel again. In fact, we only stayed in a hotel that first night because Mike had to work and needed a guaranteed Internet connection and a nice desk to sit at all night.

Every other night was a cozy dream in the teardrop together. By the end of the trip, when we were freezing our buns off in the Cheyenne, I had no problem just huddling in the tiny trailer all night. It had become my haven and den, keeping out the cold wind.

The best benefit to the teardrop is that we got such good gas mileage when driving it. The first day, we almost hit 34 mpg.

When we hit the massive headwinds in Kansas (and then again in Nebraska), our gas mileage got as low as 29 mpg, but that still was a phenomenal rate. At the worst mileage of 29 mpg, our cost for gasoline was approximately $365. If we had done the same journey in a motorhome or a big truck pulling a fifth-wheel trailer at 12 mph (which is generous), we would have paid approximately $957 in gas.

Ever since I was a little girl, playing with my Barbie Star Traveler, I wanted to take a cross-country trip in a trailer or motorhome. The practical side of me never allowed that to happen because of the cost of owning a big motorhome and, even worse, the high price of gasoline to drive one. Our little teardrop trailer made this journey possible for both the childhood dreamer and the practical accountant sides of me.

I can’t wait to tell you all about it!

Long ago, Topolla made a camper that replaced the back hatch of a Saab 9-3. It looked like this.

It was obviously the inspiration for the Japanese company, Campinn, for this Prius Camper Conversion. AutoBlog did a piece on it last year.

After seeing Zadi’s favorite traveling apps yesterday, I was surprised that NONE of my favorites were in the list. After looking through my archives, I’ve talked about these apps a couple of times, but never really featured them. Here are my absolute FAVORITE apps for camping and travel.

Coverage?

The Coverage? app [iTunes link] easily tells you whether you will have cell phone coverage where you’re going. I talked about Coverage? before here:

• Starling Travel » Do You Have Cell Coverage? Find Out With Coverage?

Back then, I said:

If you look at the map on the right, you can CLEARLY see that there is a big white hole in the middle of Valley of Fire State Park. This is the beauty of the Coverage? app. You can see immediately how likely it is that you’ll have coverage on your travels.

Connectivity is really important to me, so I use this app every time we travel someplace new.

Allstays

The Allstays iPhone App [iTunes link] shows you what camping sites are near you. This app really bailed us out when we were at a loss for a campsite in Missouri. I talked about it here:

• Starling Travel » Moncur Epic Journey May 2012: Beacon RV Park in St. Joseph, Missouri

The beauty of leaving our travel schedule open was that Mike and I could drive as far as we wanted and when we were tired we could find a campsite to stop at and sleep. The irresponsibility of leaving our travel schedule open was that we were driving home during Memorial Day weekend.

Fortunately, using Allstays, we were able to find a beautiful campground in a spot we would have never imagined.

Allstays ALSO has listings for gas stations, RV repair facilities and all the Walmart stores that allow (and don’t allow) overnight stays. I talked about that here:

• Starling Travel » How To RV at a Walmart

Camp Where

As good as Allstays is, it’s not perfect. The holes in its list of RV campsites are filled nicely by Camp Where [iTunes link] We used it to find the beautiful campground at Gore Landing in Oklahoma. I talked about it here:

• Starling Travel » Moncur Epic Journey May 2012: Gore Landing, Oklahoma

We found [the campground] on the Camp Where app. I looked through comments about the site and one of them mentioned that there was no sign for the campground on the main road. They weren’t kidding.

If the app hadn’t been so thorough, we wouldn’t have ever found that campground. We’ve come to depend on Camp Where when we plan a trip and when we are out on the road, dead tired and in need of a break.

Cost2Drive

When planning a trip, it really helps to know how much it’s going to cost in gas to get there. Cost2Drive [iTunes link] has been really helpful in that matter. In fact, it was the deciding factor when I was doing research on our next epic road trip. I wrote about it here:

• Starling Travel » Disney World Cost Analysis: Driving the Teardrop VS. Flying

I want to go to Disney World. I’ve never been there and I really want to experience all Disney World has to offer. We live in Salt Lake City, Utah, however, so every time I bring it up, everyone in the family says that we should just go to Disneyland instead. It’s almost the same and it’s so much closer.

In order to convince them, I have to do RESEARCH. How inexpensively can we do this trip? Today, I did that research for a trip in February and what I found, surprised me.

Without these few apps, many of our trips wouldn’t have even come to fruition because we wouldn’t have had the information to leave our house without them. They’ve been my faithful friends for months now and I am so grateful I can turn to them when we get the bug to travel.

The negative of having a teardrop trailer (and most tent trailers) is that you have to use the bathrooms and showers at the campground. The cold and windy trek in the middle of the night to empty a nagging bladder is a far different experience than just stumbling out of bed and using the bathroom in a behemoth trailer. I’ve even been known to hold my water until I’m nearly bursting just to avoid that freezing walk.

Then again, a benefit of having a teardrop trailer is that you have to use the bathrooms at the campground. Take, for example, my encounter with Sherri Parsons. I was getting ready in the bathroom when she walked in and the awkwardness of the situation made my mouth take over.

“Were you guys cold last night?” I asked uncomfortably. The wind in Cheyenne was over 30 mph and was bone-chillingly cold.

“No. We stayed in one of the cabins. It was warm.” She answered with friendly voice.

“We have a heater in our teardrop, so we weren’t cold at all. I was surprised this morning when I opened the door. I kind of thought it had warmed up.” I laughed.

“I’m glad I didn’t have to do my midnight potty run. I slept all the way through ’til six this morning.” She replied.

I knew how she felt. I am always so grateful when I don’t have to leave the security and warmth of my trailer (or tent) to use the facilities in the middle of the night. Her first sentence finally hit me. She was sleeping in that cabin near us with the cool motorcycle. I asked, “You’re in the cabin? Are you the 50 States in 50 Weeks guys?”

She smiled. “Yeah, but the wind was so bad last night that I couldn’t deal with the tent flapping, so we got a cabin. Both of us are so cheap that we didn’t really want to do it, but I’m sick of being cold. It snowed on us in Denver.”

I replied, “I totally understand. That’s the whole reason we got the teardrop. We’re from Utah and those mountain nights get cold.” We both laughed and I asked, “So, did you get sponsors for this trip?”

She shook her head, “No. We’re just doing this on our own and he’s blogging every day.”

I shrugged. “That’s cool. You can earn money from advertising on your site as long as you keep blogging.”

She smiled wickedly. “Yeah, we’ve earned TWENTY dollars so far.”

We both laughed and lamented the slow burn of blogging for a living. I finished with my makeup and we separated.

Before we left, I knocked on their cabin door and asked to take their picture and link to them on my own blog. Both Kevin and Sherri came out and talked to Mike and me. I realized later that Kevin and Mike had already talked together about the teardrop trailer, comparing weights. They are hauling a tiny tent trailer.

Kevin and Sherri are from Las Vegas and are doing this for their mid-life hurrah. We talked about how hard it is to do an epic trip like this and he showed us the route they’ve taken so far.

After looking at their website for this journey (50 States in 50 Weeks), I’ve been entertained and even a little jealous. When Mike and I traveled through Nebraska, we really wanted to see Carhendge in Alliance, but it would have added three hours to our already long day of driving. Kevin and Sherri were more adventurous and saw it in all its glory: 50 States Day 27: Minden to Alliance, NE.

Meeting Kevin and Sherri was a wonderful highlight of our epic journey (more on that later).

And just think. We never would have met them if either of us had a bathroom in our respective trailers.