Annual Report As We Begin Our 7th Year of Full Time Travel

Miranda at St. Joe Peninsula State Park Campground, Cape San Blas

Good morning and Happy New Year from Cape San Blas, Florida where we arrived yesterday ducking the colder temperatures to our north and where we'll spend time with friends from Birmingham, Alabama later this week. We're camped at St. Joe Peninsula State Park Campground. 

As in years past, I'm cutting and pasting much of the text from the previous year's annual report to save some time.

As many of you who have been following us know, I started keeping tabs of all our expenditures when we started living in Miranda full time. For those of you out there who may aspire to the van life, living in a van down by the river, I hope this glimpse into what our costs in 2024 were provides an assist.

2024 was a bit different in that Melanie was employed full time by the National Park Service as a Seasonal Ranger from July through October. She was an Interpretive Ranger at Salem Maritime National Historical Site in Salem, Massachusetts.

I again offer this disclaimer: you may experience traveling full time differently.  Variables include  your means, your interests, whether you're working or retired, how often you like to move, etc. Use this as a very general guide for the related costs. Costs reflect our way of traveling. The world is/remains your oyster.

In 2024 we traveled 20,463 miles. That's up 7,935 miles from 2023 and reflects our time working in Salem where we drove from Gloucester where we camped at Cape Ann Campsite to Salem Common and parked while Melanie worked 5 days a week, plus various recreational exploring trips during our stay in Massachusetts.

We continue to chase those ideal temps, climate and peak experiences from state to state, sometimes succeeding, sometimes, not so much. We've experienced cooler temps than we like while camped at the beach on Cape San Blas, but as I told a friend, there's no sleet or snow.

Winter 2024 was spent largely in the Southeastern United States. We opted not to travel west because we wanted to view the April Solar Eclipse at our friend Diana's home located just outside Burlington, Vermont. 

We camped in 85 unique spots in 20 different states and 3 Canadianprovinces in 2024.

We spent 14% of our total costs budget dining out and 14% on groceries, down from 2023.   

Campground fees last year were $12,631.53 (13% of our total costs), an average of $1,052.63 a month. In 2023, we spent $7,964.01, a difference of $388.96 more monthly than in 2023. The National Park Service did not provide us with a full hook up campsite in Massachusetts like we had as volunteers on San Juan Island in 2023 and our seasonal site in Gloucester was exponentially more than we normally pay monthly for campgrounds. However, our Gloucester site was the only campsite around and we were grateful to have gotten it despite our late-in-the-season request.

Our time is divided between staying at private campgrounds, National Parks, State Parks, County and City Parks. We also have the Harvest Hosts service which provides us a data base of businesses and private individuals who will allow us to stay for free for up to 5 nights. We sometimes stay on BLM land, too.

Every now and again we park and sleep on a city street or a driveway for a few days. That generally happens when we are visiting a friend or family. We also have a few friends with summer homes in great places that offer us refuge when we visit them.

I could, of course, get off in the weeds here and tell you precisely how the Campground category is broken down, but usually our choice of campground is determined by a given route we've chosen. We prefer National, State, County, City, and BLM or free spots when we can get them, choosing private campgrounds, like a KOA, for amenities like proximity to a city or bike trail, laundry, pool, hot tub, etc.

Campendium is my go to application for finding campgrounds. We are premium members of the Campendium service called Roadtrippers.

Diesel fuel cost us $4,616.74 (5% of total costs) or an average of $359.36 a month in 2024 and an increase of $25.36 monthly over 2023.  

We're glad to see prices continuing to drop again, and are anticipating reductions in 2025 barring unforeseen circumstances. As a point of reference, we spent more in 2021 on diesel, $362.56, traveling about 100 fewer miles. Diesel prices were $2.716 nationwide in January, 2021.

As of January 6, 2025, the national wide the average price of diesel today is $3.561 down from  3.947 a gallon last year, and down from $4.638 in 2023.  

We use Gas Buddy sometimes to find fuel, but generally just to give us an idea of what prices are like in the area. Prices along major highways are generally anywhere from $.20 to $1.00 more per gallon than prices sometimes only a few miles off a major highway.

Also, be aware that using Gas Buddy doesn't always mean the price you see listed is the price you'll pay. Not sure what is going on, but increasingly I've found that the price is inaccurate when I get to pump. Not always, but enough to give me pause. It's a bit frustrating especially when you've traveled a bit out of the way to get the price you believe is a substantial savings.

Mercedes scheduled maintenance cost $946.71 (less than 1% of total costs) in 2024. We had an B service done in the Spring. That's about $7.00 more than 2023.

We spent $9,614.06 (10% of total costs) on miscellaneous maintenance, repair, and replacement items for Miranda such as dumping tanks, tank treatment, DEF, water filters, replacing our refrigerator, replacing the water pump, repairing our steps, repairing our leveling system, installing a storage unit where the Cummins generator had been, replacing shocks, replacing the macerator hose, new mother board for our Truma Water Heater, and other miscellaneous items we needed for general operation.

Our two six year old Electric Assist Trek bikes cost us $1,223.32 (1% of total costs) to ride in 2024. Costs include repairs of flats, miscellaneous items for both bikes and a battery replacement for one bike. The bikes serve us as transportation and recreation since we don't tow a car.

All of this financial minutia can't capture the priceless joy we experience continuing to live this life.  

Sandpipers Gulf of MEXICO