Just three days ago we were a month behind, but after a flurry of posts we have cut that down to two weeks.  Progress!

The Distance: 1,060 miles as we meandered our way from Key West to Pensacola, pretty much the entire length and breadth of the state.  Since we barely moved in January and February, our 2017 total is only 1,062 miles.

There were several side trips, route alterations, gas fill ups, and a bit of backtracking that resulted in about 50 more miles than this route map shows.

The Places:  For the first eleven days of the month we continued our lengthy winter stayover at Sigsbee Park, Naval Air Station, Key West, before finally leaving after the March yard and craft sale.  From there we made our way through southeast Florida with a run up to Cutler Bay to visit friends and then on to Coral Springs to see Xavier and Joy.  A few days later we crossed over to the Gulf Coast to see Bill and Gloria in Venice before moving back northeast to Mount Dora and Trimble Park.  We finally began to truly work our Western Route Plan by shooting though Gaineseville into the panhandle, stopping for one night at Beaver Lake RV Campground in Quincy before pushing on to Oak Grave and then Anchor Cove campgrounds in Pensacola.

Family gathering in Venice for St Patrick’s Day

We spent 19 days in military campgrounds, 7 in parking lots, driveways, or storage areas, 3 in public campgrounds (county), and a grand total of a single night at a private park.  We dry camped for 3 days, had at least partial hook ups for 22, and stayed with family for 6.   The one night we had in a private park was on the Passport-America discounted rate.

The Budget:  Oh man, we completely blew the budget this month, almost entirely because we needed to take care of some issues with Serenity before beginning our big western adventure.  That meant over a grand poured into the rig to make us safe and fully functional for the coming Spring and Summer travel season.  This left us 40% over budget for the month!  And that is despite making some minor market sales and keeping things tight in other areas, e.g., our campground fees averaged only $16 a day this month.

At The Neives’ house: wine for us, grapes for Lisa

Fortunately we were way under budget in January and February, so the year is not looking to bad, only 2% over for the quarter.  The problem is that April is tax time, we will really bump up the gas expenditures from now until the fall, and we plan to get significant dental work done in Mexico, which may be cheap but will add up.  Gonna have to tighten those belts in the coming months!

The Drama and the Improvements:  As alluded to above, we completed our phased replacement of the old motorhome tires with the purchase of three new ones.  These aren’t little car tires you can get for $70, these are big ole honking truck/rv tires that cost over $200 each plus installation and disposal fees.  At least they aren’t as bad as the even larger bus tires we had to buy for The Big Kahuna. In addition, we had a small mechanics bill to help sort out our last electrical issue, and we purchased two new deep cycle house batteries since the old ones were done.

Here are our monthly reports for the year so far:

• February
• January

And here are our 2016 and 2015 annual summaries, each of which have embedded links to the individual monthly reports from those years.