Pages

The Home of Our Road Trips

This is the Home Page for the travelling we have done over the last four years.
On each of eight visits we have written a blog. Each blog is a written and pictoral record of the things that we have done and the places we have visited. Each visit is summarized below, with a link to the actual Blog.
The blogs were originally a way of enabling our friends and relatives to keep up with us while we were away, as well as providing a record of where we went and what we did.
Where We Went
As a general strategy we first of all explored Florida, then the South East United States. After that we have travelled across the South and have ended up in California.
What We Did
We have pursued a range of interests which have loosley fallen into the themes of: Music, Civil War, Civil Rights, Geology and People.
We hope that this record will provide some amusement for those who would read on.

About our Plan

It had long been our plan to tour the United States. We have caravanned in the UK for many years so it seemed obvious to buy a caravan in the US. Now we had retired we wanted to take our time, not just a few weeks at a time, as we had done before. Sally has CFS/M.E. and we need to plan travelling very carefully. We do not want to travel much more than a couple of hours a day, with plenty of days off. How best to accomplish this? After much thought we have bought our own car and Travel Trailer and keep it in the U.S. We accomplished this on our first trip. We now own a 31ft Travel Trailer and 15 seat passenger van, details are on our Rig Page.

Our Rig

New Page 1

Our Rig is made up of two vehicles:
2006 Chevrolet 3500 Express Pasenger Van
2007 Starcraft Aruba 298RKS Travel Trailer.

The Chevy


244" overall (20ft 4in)
Height 82"
177" wheelbase
54ft turning circle
15 seat
Overal Weight 65000lb
Load 2500lbs
Tow capacity 10000lbs
Fuel tank 31 Galls (U.S.) 125 lt
6 litre v8 Petrol engine
3.73:1 rear axle
4 wheel ABS
4 wheel disk brakes
A/C
Cruise Control
Passenger side sliding door



Modifications:
Hitch Receiver fitted
Uprated radiator (twin Core)
Full length running boards
Rear Seat removed.
Load equaliser 


The Aruba


31ft 5" shipping length
29ft trailer
8ft wide
Glassfiber walls with Aluminuim framing
Steel Chassis
single slide out 12ft x 2ft
Total weight 7500lbs
twin axles - bearing 6500lbs
Tongue (nose) weight 975lbs

 Features
15000 BTU A/C
Queen size bed
Seperate Shower and toilet
Kitchen with fridge, mocrowave, sink, cooker and oven
2 sofas
Dinette area

  Outside:
13ft Awning
External shower unit and gas BBQ
Electric tongue jack
Rear Ladder

  On board tanks

LP Gas (U.S. gal)                            14 gall       
Water Heater (U.S.gal)       6 gall       
Fresh Water (U.S.gal)       38gall
Gray Water (U.S.gal)        52gall (2 x 26)
Black Water (U.S.gal)       37gall

 Fuel Consumption
With the Aruba hitched up our Chevy Express manages about 8 miles to the
U.S. gallon, which gives us a range of about 230 miles on a tank,
though the light comes on when there is about 3 gallons left, so we
usually fill up after about 200 miles. A tank of gas will cost us about
$75 - which works out at about 40p a litre. So we make about 8 miles
per gallon, or 2 miles per litre. That sounds bad, but with the cheaper
fuel we get about 5 miles/£.
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)