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Where are Steve and Mona Liza now?
Mount Rainier National Park
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In the U.S., we’ve explored all 49 states. In Canada, we’ve wandered through 8 provinces and one territory. And in Mexico we headed across Sonora for an extended beach party. We’ve crossed 5 time zones, and the borders between the U.S, Canada and Mexico 26 times.
Click here to access individual maps for each year of our travels.
Click here to see our current 2016 route.
The image below shows our travels from the beginning in March, 2012 through September, 2016. Click on it to access an interactive map with Steve’s campground reviews and other links.
Betsy (our RV) has been a busy girl!
Yo Steve . . .
Read with interest your encounter with installing the new fridge. Nice job! What caught my attention, however, was Bonita Springs and Imperial Bonita Estates. We “wintered” there last year, then cruised the Gulf coast ending up (unfortunately) in the Rio Grande valley – Mission and Harlingen. 30 days into Texas, I had determined that Bonita Springs is indeed the Center of the Universe! I was 85 steps from that beautiful, classic tropical Imperial River, a Bluegill ghetto. I became so entranced with this river, I bought a Porta-Bote (it folds up), so we can cruise down to the gulf, and bay areas. The other attractions, a few miles away is the off-leash dog beach for Diva our yellow lab, my niece down the road in Naples, and good friends in Ft. Meyers. We are returning this November and will do at least 5 months (or at least until Spring returns to Topeka,KS. Until we found Bonita Springs, we were still park hopping – lookin’ for THAT place. Still not ready to full-time yet, but now getting real close. Don’t want to get obligated to having to go back to the same place every year (like when you buy into an RV park) but for now Bonita is THAT place. This has been much longer and rambling than intended, but I may have to check with you guys now and then and compare notes ‘n’ stuff.
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Greetings!
I certainly won’t argue with anything you said about Bonita Springs or IBE, I love the place! Just don’t tell too many people about it! You forgot to mention all of the great seafood folks can buy right up the street, wow do we miss that! If we winter in Florida again that will be the place. Southern Texas didn’t cut it for us, so we mostly stick to Arizona now.
Take care!
~Steve
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Hello, just found your blog through Oh the Places We go and have enjoyed reading. We are currently planning to hit the road shortly and know which motorhome we want but keep reading about how people say a 40 foot has trouble getting alot of places. Have you had much trouble getting anywhere you have wanted to go? Also, have not searched your entire site, but have you taken the trip to alaska with your motorhome? Thanks so much
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Hello Kimberly, glad you enjoyed your ride. Well, we chose 40 ft because we are living in it full time. So far we have not felt limited in getting in some places even at the East Coast or Alaska with our size. What I can say though is Steve will never pull over in case there is a good shot to be had along the way.
And yes we did Alaska on our first year of full timing and we did not have a single dent or any trouble with the coach after being there for 77 days.
My blog is organize by state, so it will be easy for you to check out any state you wished to travel.
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Hello Steve and Mona Liza:
A while back, you posted on your travel planning for 2016. I urged you to include Stanley, ID in your travels. Since then, I have launched a website http://www.placesoffthemap.com. My first blog post is about Stanley, ID
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This is Mary from Cave winery, met you last week in Mexico. Hope you are having fun travels!
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Hello Mary, yes we are having so far. Since you are still there in Puerto Penasco, you must have met the new group that arrived today.
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We are new to the rv world and will be mostly part-time rv’ers, spending 5-6 months on the road a year. We decided to start big and are the proud owners of a 2006 Newmar Essex. We are in the learning stages and have only been taking some short trips around Arizona to get to know our coach but we love it. It is a 10 year project and we enjoy all the valuable information from fellow bloggers of their travels. I enjoy reading your blog and have started a travel log/blog of our adventures. I really like your ‘Where have we been map’ and would love to know where to access that. We are currently in Utah for the winter to enjoy some skiing and will begin creating our adventures in April. Maybe we will cross paths while you are touring the western states.
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Greetings!
I looked at your blog, and it certainly seems like you are super-skiers! You seem to be having a great time, and that’s what counts.
I manage our maps with Umap now: http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/
It is fairly technical to make these maps, because the only way I know to do it is to create each segment in Google Maps and then import it into Umap. But once you get the procedure down it isn’t too bad. Try it out, and if we meet up sometime we can do a crash course in mapping during a happy hour.
Cheers!
~Steve
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Thanks Steve, I will check out Umaps. I like a challenge. -Charnee
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Hi Steve/Mona,
I had a question since you installed the residential refrigerator.
Everyone’s preference of staying at either private campgrounds, state parks, boon-docking is all different. I noticed from your stays you prefer to stay at private campgrounds or places that has hookups.
Is this because of the residential refrigerator? I’m trying to decide on a residential or rv fridge and I prefer to be able to boondock and maybe use the generator once a day and even a portable solar to charge the batteries. My main concern is the fridge.
thank you and LOVE the freshwater manifold install, what a great idea!!!
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Hello Don,
For stays of a few days we really only need an electrical hookup, and yes it’s mostly for the fridge – although it draws less than 3 amps and even the furnace fan pulls more than that. Also, we’ve budgeted for RV parks and just haven’t really been in “boondocking mode” in our recent travels. We intend to do a bit more of it this year though, since we’re in the western states with many opportunities.
We replaced our propane fridge because it was failing and we had to make a choice. I will say we love the new one and don’t regret the change. We have tested it and discovered we can boondock running the genset twice a day to charge up the batteries, so without other power draws we’re OK.
Hope that helps!
~Steve
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