A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 248 miles from Choctaw, Oklahoma to Russellville, Arkansas.
Author: David
Travel from Choctaw, Oklahoma to Russellville, Arkansas
Back to our regularly scheduled blog posts, catching up with travel from October last year. Where we left off, we were in Oklahoma.
We drove our coach 248 miles, about 4 hours of driving, from Choctaw, Oklahoma to Russellville, Arkansas.
Here’s a map showing our route, heading east:

An interactive map:
I-40:

“Speed limit 75, no tolerance”:


A stop at a rest area:

Paladin:

Crossing the Arkansas River:

A VW microbus:

“Welcome to Arkansas”:

Another rest area:

Crane:

Fall foliage:

A motorhome and vanlifer:

It’s that VW microbus again!

Fun with zoom:

Causeway:

Lake Dardanelle State Park entrance:

Checking in:



2024 travel plans
I hope you enjoyed the posts reviewing 2023. So what’s in store for ’24? Sights galore, and more!
We spent the holidays in the panhandle of Florida, in Carrabelle. We are now heading south in Florida, with several days at Universal and Disney theme parks, dry camping in the Everglades National Park, and a sea plane trip to the remote Dry Tortugas National Park for Jenn’s birthday. And that’s just the first couple of months!
After that, we’ll be heading inland, visiting Georgia for the first time, and revisiting Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas, ending up in Paris, Texas for an Escapees gathering for the big solar eclipse in April.
We’ll stop in Red Bay, Alabama on the way back east to get a new custom desk installed for Jenn (hopefully), and other maintenance. Then reach the east coast at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in May. We’ll then head up the coast through North Carolina and Virginia, with a stop at NIRVC in DC for annual maintenance, and to visit friends there.
Then we’ll head west, picking up additional new states, Maryland and West Virginia, revisiting Tennessee, then a bunch more new states: Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minneapolis. Then sprinting through South Dakota and Montana to Washington for our annual health checkups and family time in August.
After that, we’ll go south through Oregon and California, with our annual visit to Disneyland in October. We might fly to Hawaii after Disneyland, or might defer that to 2025; to be determined. Another notable thing in October will be staying at a 55+ RV park in Arizona; I’ll be turning 55 years old in May, so we’ll finally be able to stay at age-qualified parks.
Continuing east, we’ll close the loop around the country through New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana, ending the year where we started in Florida.
A big circuit of much of the country, visiting 12 new states, plus 13 we’ve visited before, for a total of 25 states. Which will bring the total number of states we’ve visited to 35. Just 15 to go! (Or 14 if we do make it to Hawaii.)
This route will be our longest yet, at 11,858 miles, if we stick with the plan. For reference, we travelled 9,945 miles in 2023, 8,772 miles in 2022, and just 2,300 miles in 2021 (starting in September that year).
We’ve currently made campsite reservations up to the end of July, with a few gaps and a few beyond that, since some places allow booking up to a year out, some six months, and some only three months. And sometimes circumstances force us to re-route. So all this is very much subject to change, but that’s the plan for the year.
What’s more, we already have a tentative plan for 2025, too, again circumnavigating the country, picking up most of the remaining 15 states. And an even more tentative plan to visit Alaska in 2026, which will probably be the last state (as mentioned, we’ll probably fly to Hawaii sometime in 2024 or 2025). But more on those next year!
Here’s a map that shows the state outlines, colored time zones, our travel route, and pins for stops. Our route begins in the panhandle of Florida, and goes generally anti-clockwise around the country, ending up where we started:

Another variation of the map, that shows more detail, but the states are less visible:

It’s going to be another busy year. I hope you’ll follow along via this blog and the YouTube channel.
Video: 2021-2023 motorhome travel timelapses in 10 minutes!
Was the 2023 timelapses video not fast enough for you? Hey, I understand; 40 minutes is quite long, even at 20x the original timelapses speed. This video combines the 2021, 2022, and 2023 timelapse videos, and makes them eight times faster (i.e. 160 times faster than original timelapses), so you can see about 20k miles of motorhome travel in about 10 minutes!
2023 stickers
On the passenger-side slide-out, we have a large sticker with the Sinclair Trails logo, a map of the US showing the states we’re visited, and stickers with the SinclairTrails.com domain name and @SinclairTrails social handle:

The states sticker consists of separate stickers for each state, applied to a base sticker. Our rule used to be that we have to spend a night in a state for it to count (and only since purchasing our coach), though we’ve recently relaxed that a bit to just having done something in the state, e.g. camp, eat in a restaurant, or explore something. Not just driving through. Though we still do plan to stay in each state. Once we have done something in a new state, we add its sticker. So far, we’ve visited 23 of the 50 states:

We’ll probably have to replace these stickers at some point; the earlier ones are looking very faded.
Visiting Alaska is going to be a major project. And of course we can’t take our motorhome to Hawaii, but we’ll count that when we next visit there.
On the driver-side slide-out of the coach, we have stickers for each of the National Parks we have visited, that being another of the goals in our travels. We visited 8 more parks in 2023 (plus revisited several), so have visited 35 of the 63 parks; still lots to go:

Of course, we’ve also visited numerous National Monuments, National Historic Sites, and other classifications. With 428 parks of various types in the National Park System, not to mention parks administered by states, forest services, etc, we had to cap the memorializing of them somewhere! National Parks are the goal; others are gravy.
However, inside our coach we have a framed board with a wooden map of the US, around which we add stickers and pins for any kind of attraction we visit. It’s populated a bit more since last year, though still lots of space for future attractions:

The wooden map has pins for states we’ve visited; the pins feature the state flags:

2023 selfies
I thought it’d be fun to create an animated GIF of selfies and other pictures of Jenn and me from 2023. We’ve been to some interesting places!
2023 special posts
While most of the posts on this blog are about modifications, travel, campgrounds, and attractions, I sometimes post about other topics. This is a summary of those posts from 2023. (See also those from 2022.)
As with previous summaries, for each I include a link to the corresponding blog post, and a sample picture; see the post for details.
The two most frequently asked questions:
How we work full-time in our coach:
Open Roads fuel discount card:
Open Roads Freedom Pass toll transponders:
Second anniversary of buying our motorhome:
2023 attractions, part 4
Concluding the summary of some of the attractions we visited in 2023. With some sneak peeks of places we visited recently that haven’t been posted about yet!
This is part four of four, covering October through December, inclusive. Start with part one, or check out part two or part three, if you haven’t already.
October 2023
Yellowstone Old Faithful area:
Yellowstone Tower-Roosevelt area:
Yellowstone old west cookout and wagon ride:
Buffalo Bill Center of the West:
Devils Tower National Monument:
November 2023
Theodore Roosevelt National Park North Unit:
Theodore Roosevelt National Park South Unit:
Pitchfork Steak Fondue and Medora Musical:
Mount Rushmore National Memorial:
Minuteman Missile National Historic Site:
December 2023
Route 66 in Tucumcari, New Mexico:
Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta morning sessions:
Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta evening sessions:
Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta flight:
Hot Springs National Park (blog post coming in January):

Garvan Woodland Gardens (post coming in January):

Graceland (post coming in January):

Natchez Trace Parkway (post coming in February):

New Orleans (post coming in February):

New Orleans airboat swamp tour (post coming in February):

New Orleans Oak Alley Plantation (post coming in February):

New Orleans Steamboat Natchez Sunday Brunch Jazz Cruise (post coming in February):

The National WWII Museum (post coming in February):

Jean Lafitte National Historical Park & Preserve (post coming in February):

New Orleans St Louis Cemetery Number 1 (post coming in February):

New Orleans Celebration in the Oaks:
Lambert’s Cafe (post coming in February):

Fort Morgan State Historic Site (post coming in February):

USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park (post coming in February):

Lots of fun activities!
2023 attractions, part 3
Continuing from yesterday, a summary of some of the attractions we visited in 2023.
This is part three of four, covering July through September, inclusive. Start with part one, or check out part two, if you haven’t already.
July 2023

Bruce Munro: Light at Sensorio:
Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center:
Napa and Sonoma wineries: Domaine Carneros, Iron Horse, Korbel:
Mariners at Athletics baseball game:
Avenue of the Giants, Humboldt Redwoods State Park:
August 2023
Redwood State and National Parks:
Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area:
September 2023
Olympic National Park beaches and rainforests:
Seattle Mariners vs Chicago White Sox baseball game:
Ferry to Seattle, Mariners team store:
Craters of the Moon National Monument:
Snake River whitewater rafting:
Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion, tomorrow.
2023 attractions, part 2
Continuing from yesterday, a summary of some of the attractions we visited in 2023.
This is part two of four, covering April through June, inclusive. Check out part one, if you haven’t already.
April 2023
May 2023
The Beatles Love Cirque du Soleil:
Death Valley Furnace Creek Visitor Center and The Ranch:
Death Valley Star Wars locations driving tour:
Death Valley Badwater Basin hike:
June 2023
Death Valley Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes and Stovepipe Wells:
Joshua Tree National Park day 1:
Joshua Tree National Park day 2:
Joshua Tree National Park day 3:
Japanese Friendship Garden of San Diego:
Stay tuned for part three, tomorrow.




























































































