50 States

The Stats

🗺️ 50 States	Completed 2024
🚐 2 RVs	1 rust bucket (Bounder), 1 bad ass (Outlaw)
📍 53,000+ Miles	On the RV odometer (the car – we won’t talk about that one!)
🏕️ 8+ Years	Can’t stop, won’t stop (I’m looking at you Camping World)
💥 1 Tire Blowout	Not recommended
🌎 2 Countries	(3rd coming 2027ish)

How it Happened

Once I made the decision to actually move the RV (instead of just staying ‘permanently’ at the one close campground), I was hooked. I immediately said I’m going to ALL the states :). And all the places. And then I had to keep questioning myself, how many states are there? 48? 51? 50? 50 is it, 50 was my final (Google) answer. Ok – sounds hard at first, but by the first three or four months – I was thinking this is easy.

Campground Booking Rules

As you may recall, I’ve been camping my whole life with my family. My parents bought a membership to Thousand Trails many, many years ago – in fact, just before I was born. And fortunately for me, they’ve kept it for all these years (by just paying the yearly maintenance) and that allows me to use it as well.

So, here’s the rules of my campground. And remember, I was kind of “forced” to go to campgrounds – in order to keep it affordable, and my RV at the time (the Bounder) struggled to keep the interior 12 volt lights on for more than a few hours. I can’t even begin to tell you how much money I put into house batteries – but that’s a story for another post. Back to the rules:

21 day maximum stay reservation period
Park to Park – means you can leave the current park and go to another park the same day to restart your reservation period
90 day booking window – means you can book 90 days in advanced
1 holiday reservation on file – means you can only book one of the ~6 holidays at any time (so you can’t have Memorial Day + Independence Day booked – you have to wait to check in on the Memorial Day before you can book that Independence Day booking

Given these rules, in my mind – I thought hell – I’d have all the states checked off in a year or so. Or so I thought.

Turns out, planning – getting a reservation ahead of others for the campground you want, is tough. Fast forward to Winter – those reservations in Florida are tough – I only had 2 campgrounds to choose from, which meant the campground shuffle that everyone else was doing meant closely watching reservations.

Expanding Campgrounds

Well, after that first year (2017) – I did the shuffle a bit before realizing this was going to be hard – and because I need to work, I need shore power, I need good internet, and I need to have a reservation for at least Sunday – Friday or Saturday.

I looked at a few Florida campgrounds that weren’t part of my membership and forget the pricing – the availability was impossible. I was over a weekend planning into January and February and struggling – so I zoomed out on the map of my membership and said to myself, what if I take a bit of a risk. I’ll risk it and leave Florida and go to Texas (the next closest pocket of membership campgrounds I had access to). I started looking at availability and was surprised, there was a lot of campgrounds I had access to and the reservations seemed wide open. I went ahead and booked a few to get me through the winter, and then took a few days and drove quickly to Texas.

I. Was. Hooked! The first bit of driving around in the RV from NC to Florida was cool – but roads I’ve been on many of times. Having just on a whim deciding to go out to Texas with my whole house with me, this was crazy, this was awesome. This was meant to be!

Rules of the Map

When I first bought the RV, I bought one of those cheeky vinyl maps that goes on the side of the RV. You put a sticker of the state on each of the states as you check them off. There are no rules – so I made it up. I decided that I would not, could not “check off” a state unless I had made a purchase of something there AND I had spent at LEAST two nights IN THE RV in the state – this way rest areas didn’t count – just passing through it didn’t count. On the way to Texas, I realized this could be a bit harder, but I made it work.

Harder than I thought

By the middle of the next two years I would always sit down and plan my trips. I would think of where I wanted to visit or go – who I wanted to see – but mostly, my inspiration was around pockets of “what states can I check off”. Reservations, events, meet ups, work travel, airports, all of these got in the way of where I wanted to go. I would end up going over the next few years back to familiar places, back to where the internet was good, or where I had access to life (restaurants, shopping, things that I still chased to not go insane)

Opening New Possibilities

When I finally decided to upgrade the RV, I thought after taking a trip from Dallas to Charlotte in one quick trip without stopping – I thought I’d be checking off all these states in no time. But again, work, reservations, and now heights (this RV is significantly taller and larger than my last), some bit of fear came in, but honestly – new places came in – I had more battery power, I had an inverter, I had places to go! I could shower on the go, I could power my fridge on electric, I had a working generator. This was game changer! But then….. I discovered the desert (and a whole other post someday about how amazing that is) but that meant my winters were now summoned to sitting in the desert with large groups of other fun people doing the same thing, and of course, not checking off that map. I was getting closer year by year, and I thankfully didn’t make the same mistake many others make – they leave one state open and the surrounding states get checked off – that makes it sad, empty and hard to get back to that lonely state!

The Grand Finale

After the bullshit that happened with Camping World, I was convinced – I am NOT stopping RVing because of these bastards – and I’m NOT going to complete my map. That was a minimum. So, I set out with the theme “The Grand Finale” – was it the last RV trip I was going to take? Was it the final states to check off my list? The mystery lingered, and then once you see the final map, it was strategically put together to get a second country (Canada – 2023) and the remaining 9 states. And, I DID IT! Thankfully. And, no – it’s not the end of RVing – it was the end of chasing the map, and now you’ll see more purposeful connections, more purposeful and memorable stops, longer stops in more places hopefully.

Map Memories

So, along the way, I upgraded the RV, and that means I needed a new map – so I replaced the single colors map with one vinyl upgrade on the new RV that gives me a bit more excitement. And while those were nice, I also found some inspiration to get a large 24×36″ matted USA map that I can put my own pictures – so I ventured out to find a great new way to showcase (mostly for me, but more as a conversation starter) ONE picture per state. Now, that’s freaking hard, as I take way too many pictures. Here’s how the various maps ended up filling out.