Ep. 352: Grand Adventure Northeast Tour 2024 | RV travel camping rvlife rvliving rvlifestyle

2024 is going to be a huge  year for Grand Adventure! Hey Zoe, give me a little room, would you? Greetings friends, and welcome back to  Grand Adventure! I'm your host Marc Guido, and in only five short weeks we're going to be  leaving our winter campsite here in Northern Utah to spend almost the entire  remainder of 2024 traveling all across North America, and bringing you along. We've been getting an enormous amount of  stuff done already ahead of our departure. That has included replacing and

repacking  the wheel bearings on our trailer and getting some electrical  system repairs done to our RV. But we still have an enormous  amount to do before we leave. For example, I need to replace  all four of the trailer tires. I want to do some decluttering  and eliminate a lot of the things that we've been carrying around for the past  year or two that we really haven't needed. And I also have some routine  maintenance to do on The Beast, as this will be our second  season towing with our F-

350 Finally, while all this is going on we want to  get a few last weeks of skiing in before we leave. We told you last week that spring was  springing here in the Salt Lake Valley, but there's still 14 feet of settled snow pack  in the Wasatch Mountains above our campground and we are now back to winter. We're  getting new snow every single day this week, and just this past weekend over two feet  of snow fell in just barely 24 hours. In the 48 contiguous United States, there are  still 12 state

s that we have yet to RV camp in. Our goal by the end of 2024 is to  not only have completed the lower 48, but also camp in our first  four Canadian provinces. Of course, we'll also be finding new  Grand Adventures to bring you along on in states that we have previously visited. All told, by the time we are done  with 2024 we will have brought you to not only our first four Canadian provinces, but also a full half of the  number of United States: 25. And in many ways, some of these stops are  go

ing to be like an old homecoming for us. I grew up in Southeastern Connecticut and spent  many, many years traveling all across New England. Mrs. Grand Adventure is from Quebec  and still has relatives in the area. And we're going to be bringing you to both  of those areas during the course of 2024. Personally, my favorite plan is to have no plan,  but heading east requires a lot of pre-planning. Of course there's little to no  boondocking east of the Rockies, so we're having to make reservation

s in  campgrounds and because of competition, we're having to make these reservations  as soon as the reservation window opens, often 6 months or more in advance.  For example, using recreation.gov, the reservation window for federal  campgrounds begins at 6 months, and at 8:00 a.m. Mountain Time  I'm ready on recreation.gov with the site that I want to book preloaded in one window and an atomic clock  running in another window, and at 7:59:59 and a half seconds,  I'm hitting and clicking "book

now". And you know something? Even with that  strategy, I've only got about a 30% success rate before other folks snap up these  campsites before I can get them. It's also going to cost us a crazy  amount of money for some things. For example, in some parts of Canada by  the time you convert liters to gallons, diesel fuel is running for around $8 per gallon.  Now admittedly that's in Canadian dollars, and by the time we get the benefit of the exchange rate it comes out to about  $6 per gallon in

US dollars. But still, even that's substantially higher than what we're paying for diesel  fuel here in the United States. On top of that, some parts of the US East  Coast have crazy prices for campgrounds, in some regions going for well  north of $100 bucks per night. And our old standby of State Park  campgrounds doesn't always come out cheaper. For example, in Massachusetts they are charging  residents $22 per night for a State Park campsite; however, they are charging  out-of-state resident

s $70. On top of that, they charge an extra  $10 for water and electric hookups, so all told non-residents are paying  $80 per night for a State Park campsite, over triple what they are charging for residents. That's just crazy talk! And Rhode Island  right next door isn't much better. They're charging non-residents double  what they charge residents for campsites. Fortunately for us, the price of  diesel fuel in Canada notwithstanding, the campground prices across the parts of Eastern  Canada t

hat we are going to be traveling through help to make up for it. For our  entire swing through Eastern Canada we're averaging $65 Canadian per night for  what are usually full hookup campsites. Now, by the time we convert that to US Dollars  that averages out to about $48 USD per campsite. Yes they're mostly full hookup sites, but  we're also finding that across Eastern Canada it's almost impossible to find  a 50-amp electrical hookup. Just just about all those  campsites are 30-amp only. We als

o, when we return to the United  States we are entitled to a refund of the 5% federal tax charged in Canada  on campgrounds and fuel and food, and all kinds of things. So that also helps  to defray the cost of visiting Canada. We're truly looking forward to  returning to some areas which we were previously very familiar with, but  which we haven't seen in decades, and as well as traveling into some areas  that are completely brand new to both of us. Let's give you a taste of what you can  expect

on Grand Adventure this season! Aren't there some stunning and  spectacular places on this itinerary? We truly look forward to bringing  you along all throughout 2024, and as a reminder we Premiere new Grand  Adventures each and every Wednesday. So if you're not yet a Grand Adventurer,  I can't think of a better time for you to go smash that little  "subscribe" button right down there in the lower right-hand corner of your  screen, and ring that notification bell to be sure that you never miss

a Grand Adventure! If you liked this episode, please be sure  to give us a big "thumbs up" down below! That's extremely important to  us, and while you're down below we would love to receive your  feedback on our 2024 itinerary. If you've got places that we need to see  in any of the spots that we showed you, please be sure to tell us about it  down below in the comments section. Finally, we'd be honored if you shared the channel  with your friends, family, and on social media. So until next Wed

nesday please remember, life is nothing but a Grand  Adventure! We'll see you then.