My grandfather passed away right before Christmas, so Val and I went along to New Mexico for the funeral to support my dad.
This was the longest trip we've taken Minnie on, and among the least planned. We decided to do the trip about 2pm or so on Friday, and left by 7. Of course, we forgot a few things, but nothing too terrible.
The original plan for Christmas had been to take Minnie up to my parents house where my dad, who is very handy with wood and stuff, was to help mount the LCD TV in place of the old CRT and big wood cabinet. I'd already torn down the cabinet and old TV, leaving a clean wall (except for the mounting screw holes and a little cabling) in its place. When the new plan surfaced, I quietly cursed that the trip would be TV-less. We ended up watching a couple of movies on the PowerBook, which wasn't too bad.
I drove until about 2:30 in the morning, and my dad (who had gone to bed early), got up and started driving at 7 AM, so we only stopped for a little bit. We pulled in to the Albuquerque KOA about 9 PM or so.
The KOA, at $47 a night was way more expensive than we're used to paying for a spot, and not really as nice as most KOAs are. But, it was right in town at a convenient spot and it had free wi-fi (which Val and I needed, since we planned to work remotely early in the week), so we ponied up for it anyway.
The weather was surprising—while the Bay Area was getting dumped on, New Mexico had blue skies and was sunny, getting into the high 50s and the occasional 60° during the day. It's normally bitter cold and often snowy there this time of year, so this was a nice surprise. We didn't even hit any snow in Flagstaff while en route, which is very unusual.
It did get pretty cold in the evenings—probably the coldest temps Minnie's been in. Minnie's got central heating, which worked well to keep us warm. The windows in the front radiate a lot of cold air into the cabin and the thermostat is in the back, so the front is colder than the back. Not perfect, but not bad enough to really cause concern. Once we knew this, we close a couple of heater vents in the back and turned the heater up a bit, which seemed to help balance things a bit better.
We covered about 2,500 miles on the trip in total, crossing 10,000 total miles on the way back. While we definitely set out to use the RV a lot when we bought it, I'd not have guessed we'd crank out 10,000 miles in the first six months. Eight nights in a row is also the longest continuous time we've spent in the Minnie. Overall, it was comfortable and convenient, and nice to have ready to go on such short notice.