Our 2022 Travel Map and Yearly Summary

In 2022, we wrapped up our eighth year of traveling in our motor home, and it has been a memorable one. Our biggest accomplishment was that we finally visited a few of the states that the motor home hadn't seen before. We can now say that we have camped in all of the 48 contiguous states. We spent at least a week in each state, with multiple camping spots before we considered it properly "visited."

At the end of every year, Mark puts together a map that shows our route. Each dot represents a spot where we spent at least one night in the motor home. You can see that the dots are pretty close together in the far northeast corridor. Some of those moves were less than 30 miles in order to stay multiple nights in those tiny states.

Mark has a spreadsheet that includes each one of our camping spots. We have included a list of those places below. We know it is tiny, but you can click on the picture below to make it easier to read. That's a lot of places to find and research!

We started 2022 in Oklahoma, finishing up holiday time with friends and family. After a ski trip to the beautifully white mountains of Colorado, we headed south for warmer weather. It's a long ways to the tip of Texas, and we've been through this area so many times that we are having some problems finding new routes. We arrived at the resort where Denisa's Mother has wintered for 37 years to find that Betty had broken her front tooth that morning. We ended up staying longer than we planned in south Texas, to finish up her dental work in 2022. We headed back north in the spring, ready to start new travel adventures. Then we got the phone call that Betty's house in the panhandle of Oklahoma had burned to the ground in a wild fire. You might say that Denisa's Mother had a pretty lousy 2022! Our leisurely drive north turned into a one-day marathon. We drove on the shortest route to get back to help her with finding a new home, and filing all the fire insurance claims. We finally got back on the road a couple months later, ready to check off all those little states in the northeast.

We drove across the southern edge of Missouri, and through Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia. Then we pieced together a loop route that crossed bridges and ferries to purposefully spend time in the following new states. We'll include a picture from each: 

Maryland - While most of the population lives on the western side of state, our route took us through the Eastern Shore. Our hosts here taught us about Smith Island cake, Thrasher French Fries, and a breakfast meat called scrapple. One of the highlights of our time in Maryland was seeing the wild ponies on the beach on Assateague Island. 

Delaware - In a state that only has three counties, we didn't have to drive far to explore many of the state highlights. We loved our time on the Atlantic coast, even though we learned about beaches that charge admission and big parking fees. Besides walking the beach, we were also hiking the board walks. The bike trail pictured below is the same trail that the President often enjoys. 

In our mission of visiting each state, we took a short cut. We put the motor home on a ferry in Delaware for the ride into New Jersey.

New Jersey - We drove the entire length of this new-to-us state, and over and over we got the feeling that New Jersey has a self-esteem problem. We enjoyed miles of beaches, and took a trip across the state border for a historical day in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We exited very close to New York City. We could see this biggest city from the national sea shore at Sandy Hook, New Jersey. That's as close as we wanted to be to that snarled New York City traffic on this motor home trip. Maybe we can understand New Jersey's self-esteem problem when we just realized that our New Jersey highlights include things in Pennsylvania and New York.

We made one camping stop in New York's Hudson Valley, where we found an amazing number of things to do. Besides visiting the Vanderbilt and the Roosevelt residences in Hyde Park, we got a private boat ride to see the Hudson River Lighthouses.

Connecticut - We found that this state doesn't share well with others. They charge out-of-staters extra to go to their beaches and parks. But we found plenty of places to explore in spite of how unwelcoming they are to guests. We enjoyed the city of New Haven, Connecticut, the home of Yale University and the city that claims to be the pizza capitol of the world. We toured the university, and ate pizza on Wooster Street.

Rhode Island - The smallest state, we had to work to keep busy for a week in such a small space. We biked all around Block Island, went to a county fair, enjoyed a Fire and Water Festival in the capitol city, and hiked the Cliff Walk among the Newport mansions. That's some big highlights in the smallest state.

Massachusetts - We had the hardest time finding an affordable campground in this state that charges out-of-staters more than double the normal price. We were blessed to find locals that had lived here all their lives, and were happy to share their knowledge and property with us. Two different hosts took us for boat rides to places that we would have never gotten to experience on our own. They turned Massachusetts from an expensive state that didn't seem welcoming, to one of our favorites!

Maine - While we were on a quest to see many states, Maine always seemed like our destination for the summer. We spent three weeks here, driving the entire length of the Maine coastline with its string of beautiful lighthouses. Denisa has a weakness for lighthouses, and it was fun finding some of the more remote lights. Our blog in 2022 includes pictures of 52 different lighthouses. That's a shocking number!

The Maine coastline includes one of the most-visited National Parks--Acadia. We took some great hikes while visiting this crowded park. But we have to say that our favorite part of this coastline was north of Acadia. The crowds decreased as we moved closer to the Canadian border.

After exploring the entire coastline, we spent time in the mountainous interior of Maine. We were joined by our son, Blake, who enjoys eating wild blueberries on the trail as much as his Mother. While the coast of Maine is stunning, it would be a mistake to miss the mountains and lakes in this state!

New Hampshire - We explored the Green Mountains and the clear lakes of this state, and enjoyed them all. This was one of our favorite states, and we're already putting it on our list of places where we would like to spend more time. 

Vermont- This state has more covered bridges than any other. Since we have moved away from the Atlantic coast, Denisa has shifted from lighthouses to bridges. While not all of them were in Vermont, we included 32 pictures of covered bridges in the blog this year. Just like lighthouses, covered bridges took us down roads that we would have never driven. We enjoyed the White Mountains that go down the center of Vermont, and Lake Champlain on its west border. Vermont is another state that we would like to visit again.

We crossed Lake Champlain on a ferry, and entered the state of New York again. We were a little early for the peak fall foliage, but we enjoyed the Adirondack Park that covers about one-third of the state of New York. After leaving the mountains, we headed to the Finger Lakes in western New York. 

You will notice that the dots between camping spots got further apart as we started moving through more familiar states that we have visited before. While we enjoyed our time in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, we must have been in a hurry to see our grandchildren and children. We got back to Kansas City in October, and winterized the motor home. After being blessed with wandering through so many of God's wonders in the northeast, we settled into life with family and friends and got off the road for the rest of 2022.

The year in numbers:

We parked in 81 different camping spots.

Our average nightly camping fee was $14.16 (includes free nights boondocking or staying with family and friends.

Our average paid nightly camping fee was $25.58.

We visited 20 different states this year--10 new to the motor home. We also made a one-day trip into the province of New Brunswick.

We spent $4,176 on 880 gallons of diesel fuel (at an average price of $4.77 per gallon). That includes the low price of $3.29 per gallon in January in Texas to $5.89 per gallon in Kentucky in June. That $5.89 is the most we've ever paid for a gallon of diesel. As you might guess, this is by far the most we have ever had to spend on motor home fuel. The only year that was close was $2,583 in 2019 when we bought all that expensive Canadian diesel.

We spent $94 for 23.5 gallons of DEF for the motor home. That purchase doesn't break the bank, but it's a pain to find fuel stations that carry it.

We don't even try to keep track of the amount of fuel we use in the pickup. While we are glad to have its four-wheel-drive capabilities, it doesn't get as good fuel mileage as our little car once did.

We finished our year with the motor home parked at the same location where it was at the beginning of 2022. It was parked at the ranch in the panhandle of Oklahoma, as we spent time with our family for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. We feel blessed to have spent our eighth year wandering God's wonders. Thanks for coming along!