Personal Blog: 2023-03 The Beast

I have been on a journey since I left Virginia back in November. From my old hometown of Herndon, VA, I packed my belongings into a small U-Haul van and drove up to Philadelphia, PA to pick up and move into my home on wheels. From there I crossed the American Midwest through Columbus, OH and St. Louis, MO to take in the holidays with my family in Wichita, KS. I spent a couple months around 10,000′ elevation in South Park, CO skiing the resorts and the central Colorado backcountry before going south to Albuquerque, NM to see an old friend. I briefly stopped to lose some money and gain a couple fancy meat cubes in Las Vegas, NV then joined some friends to ski in South Lake Tahoe, CA. After briefly stopping to check out a friend’s farm in Northern CA, I left Commiefornia behind to leisurely wander the Oregon coast on my way to Seattle, WA.

At the moment, I’m camped out on a wooded hillside overlooking Rain City in “The Beast” – a 31 ft class A gasoline motorhome with cup holders made for beer cans and seats made for beer drinkers (wide).

The rules of The Beast are simple:

One hour of power ballads each travel day.
Local art made by local artists to show where we’ve been.
Help people that can be helped.
Truth and ideas are important.
No skipping workouts 💪.

I chose a motorhome over a converted van because I wanted to be able to stand up straight inside, take a shower without sitting on a toilet, and lie down in my own bed even on travel days without having to move a bunch of things around. There’s a lot fewer places I can go an park, but it’s like having a small NYC apartment everywhere I want to roll. Emma, the mud wagon, is already paid off so I just rent a trailer to take her with me wherever we go to get into the small and tight places. The plan, for now, is to make it to Alaska after the initial pothole patching season for the mid to late summer, then head back to where ever I will find myself in the US after.

With Emma in tow, together we are 50′ long, 12′ high, and less than 21,500 lbs. I’m getting about 7.5 miles per gallon. Let me be frank, a whole bunch of things broke in our trip across the country and it hasn’t been cheap. But I do appreciate everything that it has given me and the mud doggo. The nature of my blog will be changing as the old ‘trip report’ format doesn’t really apply very well – every day since I left has been a trip. First I’ll cover central Colorado and talk about the two months I spent up there learning the mountains. Then a few pieces about the lessons learned from RV living. I hope you don’t mind the lack of structure and that you’ll come along this journey with me.