OUR RETURN TRIP BY THE NUMBERS

We headed back to Florida on the Tuesday after Labor Day. While Ann worked half a day, Paul made the last minute preparations to leave after lunch.

We took a different route home to avoid the higher elevations down by Rattan Pass near the Colorado / New Mexico border, as our gas motorhome struggled coming into Colorado along that route in late April. This time we headed east to Limon, Colorado where we picked up I-70 to head east into Kansas. We turned south on I-35 past Wichita and into Oklahoma. After a short visit with daughter Laura and her family in Norman, Oklahoma where they now reside, we headed to the Dallas area to visit daughter Wendy and her family.

After the weekend, we continued east to Vicksburg, MS, Defuniak Springs, FL and then on to Williston, FL where we store the motorhome. Everything has been unloaded and we are in the process of getting familiar with our house in Gainesville. Since New Year's Day, we have been home only 2 weeks in the past 8 1/2 months, between spring training in Sarasota and our job in Colorado.

We are in the process of trimming shrubbery and weeding our yard. We didn't have nearly as many weeds because of the improvements we made to our yard last fall. 

Paul did have a interested supervisor while he trimmed the bushes (top right of photo above) on the side of the house. You can see that these bushes were trimmed and this four foot black snake took his perch near the top to watch Paul finish his yard work. Wonder where the snake was while Paul was trimming this part?  

Our return trip was 1940 miles, door to door. We averaged a 7.98 MPG even with the generator running most of the way because of the hot September weather. Gas prices were an all-time low for the six years we have been going away in the summer, ranging from a high of $2.60 per gallon (Limon, CO) to a low of $1.84 (Jackson, MS) per gallon.

We stayed at 7 different campgrounds along our route with an average per night cost of $37.64. Rates for campsites ranged between $27 (Vicksburg, MS) to a high of $49.45 (Williston, Florida).

ADDED BONUS TO THIS BLOG: We are taking a river cruise along the Danube River in late October. We will publish several additional blog posts in November once we are back to the U.S. and get the photos edited and the text written. Check back in November to share our adventure.  

Where will we be next summer is always the big question. We have been invited back to Larkspur, Colorado, but we will make no commitments until at least November.