When I wrote in yesterday’s blog that that just like swallows returning to Capistrano every year, fuel prices are going up right on schedule, I should have added that also right on schedule, people are starting to freak out and say this may be the year they have to hang up the keys. I heard from three different blog readers asking how we can afford to live and travel in an RV much longer the way things are going.
Okay folks, let’s put things into perspective. Yes, fuel is going up. Just like postage, groceries, and the price of just about everything. It’s a fact of life, prices go up a lot more frequently than they go down. But how much is a spike in prices really going to cost you?
I just looked at my blog for this time last year. We were in Yuma, Arizona where diesel was $4.05 a gallon, which isn’t that much less that what my friends in Yuma say it is today. When we left Florida headed to Arizona in late January, we filled up with diesel at the truck stop here in Wildwood at $4.19/gallon. Today it is $4.39/gallon, a difference of 20 cents a gallon.
It’s roughly 2,000 miles from here to Tucson, and we average about 7 miles per gallon in our Winnebago motorhome. So last year we used 286 gallons of fuel to make our trip west. Prices were lower the further west we traveled, but to make thing simple let’s use that $4.19 price all the way. That means we paid $1198.34 for fuel from Wildwood to Tucson.
Making the same trip this year, paying $4.39 a gallon, it will cost $1255.54. That’s an increase of $57.20 according to my calculator. That’s not going to make us hang up the keys. And it’s not like we’re going to turn around the next day and head all the way back across the country again!
Now, factor in that the last time we filled our motorhome’s tank was back was in November, and that we still have nearly a half tank left. Than consider that, using our Thousand Trails membership our camping cost for the last fourteen weeks has been $5/night for a 50 amp full hookup site. That’s $490 in campground fees between November 21 and when we leave here next Wednesday. How we can afford to live and travel in an RV? How can we afford not to live and travel in an RV?
Besides, the friends we have met in the RV community are the best in the world. In yesterday’s blog I wrote about visiting with our friend Al Hesselbart, and yesterday we had dinner with other good friends, John and Kathy Huggins, who produce the excellent Living The RV Dream podcasts. We chose Sonny’s Barbecue and it was excellent, as always. The restaurant wasn’t too busy, so after we finished eating we sat around talking for a couple of hours. In the next day or two Kathy is going to be talking to Miss Terry about cooking in an RV and how she incorporates her spinning, weaving and crocheting while living in an RV, and then sharing all of that in a future podcast.
Thought For The Day – How can the sky be falling? Didn’t it fall yesterday? And last week? And last year? And…
