The Mitch and Val "Roadshow"

Category Archives: Travel Stories

You get what you pay for.

Mitch and I agree: In the contest of the music festivals between Coachella in Southern California versus South By Southwest in Austin, Texas, Coachella wins hands down. Here’s why.
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By Valerie Coffey


Photo: TripAdvisor

Death Valley is one of America’s most “to die for” National Parks, and it’s one of my favorite places in the world. I’ve visited the park perhaps nine times in four decades. It’s a must-see National Park if you like natural beauty, mountains, the desert, or history. Here’s why:

Death Valley, situated about three hours west of Las Vegas in the Mojave Desert, is a region of extremes — it is the lowest in elevation, the hottest in temperature and the driest in recorded rainfall in North America. It’s also one of the quietest places, and perhaps the darkest region of the U.S. at night. It’s not so much a single desert valley as much as a region consisting of  several valleys, plateaus, and mountain ranges in Eastern California’s Mojave Desert. Its name comes from pioneers (the Lost 49ers),  who struggled to cross this part of the frontier in 1849. The hottest air temperature ever recorded on Earth is 134°F (57°C), which  occurred July 10, 1913  at Furnace Creek Ranch, which is #1 on my list:

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By Valerie Coffey

We have gone nearly coast to coast in a short time, from Palm Springs, California, on Jan. 29 to Pensacola, FL, on Feb. 14 in time for our first Mardi Gras. We learned a lot. Let’s bust some myths! (If you have any trouble viewing this post, WordPress viewed on Chrome is to blame for eliminating spaces between random words and crunching them together. If you are seeing this problem, try viewing it in Internet Explorer or Mozilla instead.)

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By Mitch R.

Happy New Year 2015!

After four months on the road, we posted Mitch’s Interim Report Card Part I, in which we graded ourselves on how well we’ve accomplished the goals of our trip. We also named some best of the bests, like best scenery, favorite place for fun and frolicking, and favorite surprise experience.
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By Mitch R.

Valerie and I have now been on the road for close to four months, the length of a school semester, so it’s a good time to evaluate the best of what we have seen, experienced, and accomplished since becoming full-time RVers. If our trip were to have an interim report card, this is how we would evaluate some of our goals:Love Shack US map
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By Valerie C. Coffey

We decided months ago before we arrived in Florida that we wanted to see manatees, whatever it takes, wherever that would take us. We’ve never seen one even in captivity, much less in the wild. So we booked a site at a charming RV campground called Nature’s Resort, near Homosassa Springs Wildlife Refuge and Crystal River Wildlife Refuge, two places that are considered the best places to see manatees. We arrived in early December.

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By Valerie Coffey

Alright, we’ve been very vocal about the trouble we’ve had with the Beast and how it consumes our days, but what also consumes our days is having fun in new places! So here’s an example of the fun!
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By Mitch R.

Since beginning our RV adventure, many friends and family have asked us, “How’s life on the road?” and “How is your life different now compared to living in one place?” The answer is complicated, but having now completed almost three months on the road, we can better describe how our lives and our lifestyles have changed since leaving our “sticks & bricks house.” Some of these differences we anticipated, but many we didn’t.
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By Valerie C.

Welcome to colorful Colorado! In early October, we passed through southwestern Colorado all too briefly on our way between Arizona and Moab, Utah. We took a day to drive the scenic route into the Rockies between Durango, Silverton, and Ouray (pronounced “your-RAY”), Colorado.
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By Valerie C.

In my previous blogpost, I described how new RVs have many more problems  than used ones, and how you aren’t supposed to begin a year-long trip in a brand new RV — in spite of the dealer telling you not to worry because your rig is under warranty.

We decided to do it anyway, because, we thought, we were going to get the problems fixed right off the bat. After all, our Camping World dealer in Florida kept our brand new Class A motorhome for nearly a month after we bought it to deal with the problems we found our first night.
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