RV Life: Costs and Experiences during 56 Days on the Road
We’ve been home now for 5 days, and although I’m not nearly caught up on a few jobs, I want to give you a global look at the trip.
We travelled 4,992 miles (8,034 kilometers) in the motorhome, another few hundred in the Tracker (I didn’t keep track of the mileage on it).
We spent $2,988.17 for 2,742 liters (603 Imperial gallons) of gas for the RV, which got 8.3 miles per gallon, and another $430.67 for gas in the Tracker. That mpg is a bit less than I planned on for the RV but not much and I’m not unhappy about it. The average price of gas was $1.09 per liter, with the lowest (not counting our commercial cardlocks in Watson Lake and Whitehorse) being Dawson Creek at $0.979, and the highest being Dease Lake at $1.319.
We stayed at rest areas, pullouts, parking lots and free campgrounds for 14 nights – costing a total of $0
We stayed at Provincial Park campgrounds for 17 nights, costing a total of $486.00.
We stayed at a National Park campground for 3 nights, costing a total of $114.80.
We stayed at commercial campgrounds for 21 nights, costing a total of $693.95.
The total cost for 55 nights accommodation was $1,294.75, an average of $23.45 per night.
Attractions: $208.10, most of which was the Jasper Tram and Calgary Zoo.
We spent about $1,300 on restaurant meals, wine, etc.
We had some repairs done:
- the badly-installed RV windshields had to be re-done: cost to us $0
- damage to cabinets, mostly broken hinges and struts from crashing into a deer: ca. $30.
- broken dishes from the deer crash: $75.
- we replaced the windshield in the Tracker, $376, but that’s been broken for years.
- the kitchen faucet had to be replaced when high water pressure blew the cartridge out (I have a pressure reducer to prevent such things but it wasn’t on the hose): $70.
- welding the towbar bracket on the Tracker, which broke on the last nasty day on the Alaska Highway: $50.
I spent about 120 hours writing 40 blog posts with almost 900 photos (of the 5,527 photos in my folders after editing). The first post of the trip was on April 26th.
Cathy and I have discussed what the best experiences were, and can’t even come up with a short list – there were just so many. For me, Tumbler Ridge, Farwell Canyon (seen below), and Bella Coola were the places that I most wished that I had more time. The Ancient Forest gets special note as the place that most impressed me as a show of what volunteers can accomplish in a spiritually powerful place. Our grizzly encounter on the Icefields Parkway was one that neither of us will ever forget (in positive ways except for seeing how stupid people can be).
Three negative experiences have stayed with me – being attacked by the black bear at Tumbler Ridge, killing the deer at Yale, and the jerk who gave us grief about our campsite at Meziadin. The jerk will vanish from my memory, but the other 2 are “lifers”.
After 2 solid months in it, Cathy and I are convinced that the motorhome we chose is perfect for us – the only thing that I plan to add is a hydraulic lift to carry my motorcycle. The motorhome is a 2007 Fleetwood Terra LX 31M, a 31-foot-long Class A with 2 slideouts. It’s powered by an 8.1-liter Chevy Workhorse gas engine, with an Allison automatic transmission with overdrive. You can see a full tour of it as well as a discusion about our lengthy shopping process here. The photo below is from a previous trip to Kluane Lake – I didn’t take the canoe this time.
What did I not bring that I should have? A short list of tools that are now on a “Must-bring” list, and the canoe.
The final comment is about the old Tracker, which Cathy bought new in 2001. She’d like a new car, but I think that I have convinced her that the Tracker is perfect as a motorhome toad/4×4. Crashing through the brush and rock-crawling to get to the abandoned rail line in Gnat Pass was the sort of thing we can only do with a small and old vehicle.
The real summary for us is that the trip was near perfect – averaging only 143 km (89 mi) per day was a nice pace, and we stopped pretty much whenever we wanted for as long as we wanted. Most people think that after 2 months on the road, getting home was great. It was in a way because we love our home, but we both hated for the trip to end.
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