2018 Far East Trip

The 2018 Far East Trip is officially “ON”!!

In general, New Mexico to Minnesota for a family wedding and some time at the home office. Then to near St. Louis to visit more family. Then, who knows… Maybe to Ohio to visit more family… Or… maybe I’ll have had enough of the far east and will head back out west. We’ll see. It’ll be at least a six week trip – probably more like two months.

In the middle of last week I made the short hop from the Hacienda way up on the continental divide to near Albuquerque for some visits and business. I documented that bit here.

This past Friday started the first long haul segment to Minnesota. I decided to enjoy some of the secondary roads and took the route shown below.

The drive was pretty uneventful and Missy ran well. She still has a vibration that really annoys me – still working on that. I’m now of the opinion that more than one thing is going on as the behavior is very confusing to me.

Our route is shown below.

Friday night night was spent in a nice little RV park near Hugoton, KS named Eagle RV Park. I kinda like the unattended operations. Pull in, pick a spot, put your money in an envelope and enjoy. Nice and easy. Photos?? No… forgot. Sorry…

Saturday was mostly lots of cruising – about 550 miles to Onawa, IA. These long drives give me lots of time to contemplate the changes I’d like to make to Missy. She is nowhere near “done” so I have a long list of things to do anyway but always adding more to that list.

Again, another RV park. This one named ‘On-Ur-Wa RV Park’. A very nice couple checked me in and even provided a golf-cart escort into my spot. Very easy!

I don’t normally stay at RV parks when traveling due to the hassle of getting in and out. This time around, I expected it to be hot weather and wanted shore power for air conditioning. It certainly wasn’t as hot as I had expected but I carried on with the plan anyway.

We completed the last 300 miles to near St. Cloud, MN on Sunday. Yeah… I know… there is even more ‘east’ in that track.  Getting kinda scary…

As before, that leg was without excitement – which is always VERY much appreciated!

We are now comfortably parked at my sisters farm near Kimball, MN.

With 180 gallons of diesel it was theoretically possible to make the entire 1,300 mile drive from NM to MN without stopping for fuel. However; Missy’s fuel gauge doesn’t work and I’m paranoid so I stopped twice. If nothing else, those stops afford the opportunity to clean the windshield. Both times, the fuel consumption averaged out to 8 mpg (8.18 and 8.23). The first tank included some slow dirt road driving, the second tank was entirely highway at mostly 63-65 mph.

I hadn’t weighed Missy in quite a while (before adding the bathroom, washer drying, etc.) so decided to do that at one of the last fuel stop. She had about 80 gallons of water, 100 gallons of fuel, and all of my belongings on board. The “Trailer Axle” is my Jeep Wrangler. Thus, Missy currently weighs 42,160 lbs.

I can add another five more tons of stuff!!