INTRODUCTION

Written in the fall of 2014

Welcome to (another) photo-journal...!

I feel I have been extremely fortunate to have done some extensive cruising on boats of various kinds (monohull and catamaran sailboats and power catamarans) up and down the east coast of the USA and throughout The Bahamas, with one memorable trip over the winter of 1998/9 deep into the Caribbean.

The passage of time inevitably casts a warm hazy glow over my memories of those days and with my last such adventure now 10 years ago I have for some time been itching to do some more cruising.

Re-reading my journals from those days, however, I am reminded not only of the pleasures of cruising - my home on my back, no packing and unpacking, avoiding the vagaries of air travel, staying or picking up and moving on as the mood takes me - but also of the hard work, and some of the dangers, involved in running a sailboat single-handed, particularly offshore.

And although there is always more to discover, I feel I have "done" the east coast of the USA, the Florida Keys and The Bahamas, and I have a suspicion that re-visiting these places won't be quite the same 10-15 years on.

So the thought of an RV trip across the USA has been in my mind... hopefully offering many of the same rewards as cruising but with less work and risk involved and new places to see that a boat couldn't take me to - despite living in the US for 18 years, I've not really seen much of the country other than the east coast - flying in and out of a city to attend meetings at yet another chain hotel in my corporate days doesn't really count.

I had been contemplating the attractions of a new adventure for some time, but the comforts of semi-retirement in rural Norfolk had led to a certain inertia

So in the spring of 2014 I gave myself a kick up the rear end and started my RV research in earnest with the objective of finding a suitable RV by the summer, getting familiar with it by taking some local trips around Connecticut, and then heading south and west for the winter of 2014/15.

I'll skip over the RV research and purchase process, and my short local shakedown trips after collecting the new RV from the dealership in Rhode Island, but please join me as I head south from Connecticut at the beginning of October 2014...

For anyone who is interested, details of my first modest RV (and the evolution of my set-up thereafter - "upgrade" to an RV with a slightly different floor plan in January 2016, addition of a Jeep Wrangler in tow mid-2016, switch in the fall of 2016 to a Jeep Grand Cherokee pulling an Airstream, then a Ford F-150 truck pulling the Airstream, and finally a small Class A motorhome in February 2021) are here.

Or to head straight into the first leg of the trip, Connecticut to Maryland, click here.

PS: If you feel so inclined, please feel free to e-mail me  

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