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.
