Freeways, highways, and other roads as we move the coach from one site to another. Plus cat pics.
We drove our coach 139 miles, about 2 hours of driving, from Memphis, Tennessee to Red Bay, Alabama.
Here’s a map showing our route, heading southeast:
An interactive map:
“Welcome to Mississippi” sign (just passing through):
Building transportation:
Our coach at a truck stop for lunch:
Menu:
Breakfast for lunch:
River:
“Welcome to Sweet Home Alabama” sign:
Exit to Red Bay:
Hotel Red Bay:
Our destination, Red Bay Acres RV Resort:
General Store:
Heading to our site:
Our site (#31):
A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 196 miles from Hot Springs, Arkansas to Memphis, Tennessee.
We drove our coach 196 miles, about 3 hours of driving, from Hot Springs, Arkansas to Memphis, Tennessee.
Here’s a map showing our route, heading east:
An interactive map:
Leaving the RV park:
Bubba’s, where we got tasty food during our stay:
An uncomfortably narrow lane due to roadworks:
A break at some truck parking:
I had fun watching traffic cameras to spot us driving by; yes, that’s our coach and truck in the right lane at the bottom:
Another traffic camera showing us:
And another one, showing us from the other direction:
Another snapshot:
Another stop at truck parking:
A snapshot:
A bridge over the Mississippi River into Tennessee; a big milestone for us, crossing this major river for the first time:
Dissapointingly, there was no sign marking the occasion. Probably due to roadworks (with uncomfortably narrow lanes again):
Our destination, Graceland RV Park:
The office:
Our site before parking:
A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 128 miles from Russellville, Arkansas to Hot Springs, Arkansas.
We drove our coach 128 miles, about 2 hours of driving, from Russellville, Arkansas to Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Here’s a map showing our route, heading east then south then west:
An interactive map of our route:
We had planned to take a more direct but curvier highway route, below, but it was raining heavily, so opted for the slightly longer but safer Interstate route, above:
Rain off the slide topper:
A bit flooded next to the wet bay:
After bringing in the slides, there were a bunch of leaves on the topper:
Our truck hooked up to our coach; the tow bar lit up:
Lake:
We saw a new icon on the Mobileye guidance system, which I had to look up; a little yellow eyeball, indicating that the device had low visibility:
Unsurprising, since it was rather rainy and foggy:
The name “Toad Suck” amuses us:
A break at some truck parking:
Breathe in:
Fuel stop:
A stop we regretted, as we didn’t get the advertised fuel discount, and the pump limited us to 35 gallons, so we did three transactions:
I-30:
Overpass:
Our destination:
Our coach about to back in to our site:
A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 248 miles 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:
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.
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!
See a summary of driving our Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome throughout 2023!
This combines all of the motorhome travel timelapses for 2023 into one video, at 20x the speed of the original timelapse videos.