Annual Report As We Begin Our 8th Year of Full Time Travel

Morning walk along Caprock Canyon, Quitaque, Texas

Good afternoon from the Panhandle of Texas in Caprock Canyon State Park and Trailway near Quitaque (kitty-cue).

We arrived in Caprock yesterday and will leave tomorrow on Epiphany which is the anniversary of  the day seven years ago when we left Birmingham, Alabama to begin (officially) full time travel.

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 your own van down by the river, I hope this glimpse into what some of our costs in 2025 were provides an assist.

In 2025, Melanie was employed by the National Park Service as a full time seasonal ranger and we spent about 6 months living in Dinosaur National Monument in Jensen, Utah. The monument provided us (market rate) with a one bedroom apartment inside the monument near where Melanie worked.  It was the first time we've spent an extended period of time not living in Miranda since we started traveling. We lived in the monument from mid April through the middle of October.

Cutting and pasting from 2025's report, I again offer this disclaimer: You may, and likely will, experience traveling and living on the road full time differently.  Variables include your financial means, your interests, whether you're working or retired, how often you like to move from place to place, etc. Use this as a very general guide for all the costs related to living in a 25 foot van, with two Ebikes, no tow car. Costs I post reflect our way of traveling and living the nomadic life. The world is/remains your oyster.

In 2025 we traveled 20,350 miles, 113 fewer miles than 2024.  While Melanie was working as an interpretive ranger in Dinosaur, we traveled into Vernal, Utah, about 16 miles from where we lived in the monument, for groceries, restaurants, etc. We also traveled to Salt Lake City, UT and Steamboat Springs and Grand Junction, Colorado a few times during our tenure there. In October, during the shut-down of the federal government, Melanie was on furlough and we traveled for several weeks within a few hundred miles of the monument checking out places in Utah we'd been to before and those we had not.

We began 2025 in Alabama with our friends Wade and Jennifer in Birmingham making our way south to spend time with our friends, Beth and Keith, also from Birmingham, on Cape San Blas at St. Joseph Peninsula State Park. We then headed west for winter.

We camped in 87 unique locations in the following 25 states:  Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. 

We spent 16% of our total costs budget dining out (up 2% from 2024) and 15% on groceries (up 1% from 2024). One of the great pleasures of full time travel continues to be eating local cuisine. We now have favorite restaurants all over the country and often look forward to meals at them.

Campground fees were $11,893.73 in 2025. This total includes the monthly charge for our apartment in Dinosaur National Monument and averages out to $991.14 per month, slightly down from 2024's average of $1,052.63. Our camping spot in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 2024 when Melanie was working for the National Park Service in Salem was expensive. 

Our time continues to be 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 database of businesses and private individuals who will allow us to stay for free for up to five 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 friends or family. We also have a few friends with summer homes in great places that offer us refuge when we visit them.

Once again this year, I won't get off in the weeds to 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 such as 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 $4,328.10 (4% of total costs) or an average of $360.68 a month in 2025 a decrease of $24.05 monthly over 2024.  Diesel cost us $4,616.74 in 2024 (5% of our total costs) or $384.73 a month. The current national average of diesel fuel is $3.521. We paid $2.529 at Costco in Lubbock a few days back. We won't complain about lower fuel prices. 

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.

Mercedes scheduled maintenance cost $1,853.13 (2% of total costs) in 2025. We had an A service done along with transmission service.

We spent $5,568.80 (6% of total costs) on miscellaneous maintenance, repair, and replacement items for Miranda. A few of the items include new tires installed and an alignment done including camber bolts replaced at Mercedes, new vacuum cleaner purchase, leveling system repairs, repair of basement storage bins, Mercedes drive belt replacement, Fantastic Fan motor replacement, and service for our Honda Generator.

We spent $1,292.24 (Costco) on six new Michelin tires (1% of total costs). The tires we replaced were three years old and had over 50,000 miles on them. I could have gotten a few more miles out of the tires I replaced, but peace of mind was worth replacing them.

Our two seven year old Electric Assist Trek bikes cost us $1,482.88 (1% of total costs) to ride in 2025. Costs include repairs of flats, miscellaneous items for both bikes and 2 wheel replacements (one replacement involving a mistake I'd rather not talk about). The bikes serve us as transportation and recreation since we don't tow a car. My bike has close to 14,500 miles on it.

This year we will both be NPS volunteers again. First, we will serve as Interpretive Rangers again on San Juan Island at San Juan Island National Historical Park in March and April (their shoulder season) and then on the Schoodic Peninsula in Acadia National Park in Maine at the Schoodic Institute in June, July and August. We hope to travel across Canada from Washington State to get to the Schoodic gig in Acadia.

We've penciled in another go at the Maritime Provinces in Canada for Fall after our volunteer gig ends at the Schoodic Institute and, then we'll travel down the eastern seaboard south.  Hope to see friends in the Outer Banks of North Carolina after visiting with family in the metro Washington, DC area.  

With so much to look forward to, joy remains palpable and we are grateful for this life of travel and our good health which allows.

Our Campsite (#7) at Caprock Canyons State Park