Driving Ms. Daphne

We are at our home in Central Texas and have pretty much unloaded the truck and trailer. I thought I would give my take on the overall adventure and mention the pluses and minuses of our six months on the road.


We left June 6 and returned on December 2, 2010. We traveled 11,537 miles, burned 1017 gallons of diesel and averaged 11.3 mpg on the trip. We camped in primarily state and county parks in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Oregon. We spent a few nights in federal parks, private parks and Elks Clubs in our travels. We were fortunate to be able to spend some nights with friends parking on their property. We averaged $490 per month for camping or $17.00 a night. We spent an estimated $3500 for fuel.


Camping fee's were varied and seemed to get more expensive as we went west. The lowest state park fee was $14.00 a night and the highest was $28.00 which was charged in both Idaho and Washington. These were full hook up sites. We paid a low of $8.00 in a BLM campgroud in Oregon. Overall, most state parks were nice but Oregon had the best parks on the trip. We did not stay in a California state park on the trip so can't comment on that system. One of our favorite parks was Armitage Park in Eugene, OR. We stayed there several times this while attending National-Championship-Bound Oregon Duck football games early in the season.


We had no problems with the truck ( a 2003 Chev. Silverado Duramax Diesel.) It pulled our 2003 Arctic Fox 30 U well. I had to replace the toilet in the trailer as the flush cables broke. The front jack shear pin broke and I repaired that. Everything else worked with no problem.


In accessing the equipment used on this trip we found that having AC was nice while in the South West, the Olympia Wave gas heater coupled with an electric oil heater worked well for those chilly nights without and with hookups. The Vu Qube 1000 Sat. antenna performed flawlessly and the Dometic 3 way cooler worked well after we got used to it (I figure we saved about $600.00 for ice purchases since we acquired the unit in July.) The unit was around $400.00. The Dometic/Sea Land residential type bathroom throne is a nice upgrade. I used a Delorme Topo navigation system with a small Dell laptop and maintained communications with a Verizon Cell phones and Broadband Card with Cradlepoint 1000 router and Cyfre amplifier. One of the biggest problems was a switch from Dish Sat. to Direct TV. It is a very long story but has turned out OK in the end. When I compare the two services there isn't much different.


My power system consists of a Progressive Dynamics converter w/ charge wizard when hooked up. I have a 100 watt solar panel and a 2400watt Yamaha Generator for off-grid camping. We currently have 4 Group 27 12v batteries monitored by a TriMetric 2020 and have a 1500 watt inverter. We are definitely going to upgrade the solar system this winter and access our battery condition. I will build a 180 watt portable panel system and replace the batteries with 6 volt batteries.


It was a great trip where we maintained connections with family and friends and reconnected with other friends we haven't seen since junior high school.

"Driving Ms. Daphne, the 2010 Edition" was great start to "living the dream".