The most common question on our return was “Would you do it again?”.
We each have different answers to the question. My answer is an emphatic “yes but”.
First off, I enjoyed the trip very much. The space confinement and long days did stress us, as did the general problem of fitting the trip to four different desires.
I would certainly RV around the country with just Paula. Or just Brian. Or just Jenny. Each trip would be tailored to the specific interests of my companion. Thus Jenny wouldn’t be forced to tramp the battlefield at Yorktown, or Brian to shop at a Mall of America, or Paula to hear bickering sibling rivals for 40 some odd days. As to my interests… well, give me a bike ride in the morning and tasty food and I’m good to go.
And I would take longer. It is a big country. 6 weeks is a long time, but nowhere near long enough to cover the USA. I would also stay longer in areas and try to have more time between travel days (which are painful).
And if I were to do it again, I’d buy an RV. Or rent an older one in good operating order. Having an essentially new RV as a rental was stressful. We didn’t want to mess it up. That complicated many things, including how hard we drove it (we drove it soft and thus were slower), where we put our shoes on entry, how we ate (tucking towels over all furniture). and the amount of driving I did (much more than planned). That worked. The RV arrived home in excellent shape, but doing that definitely affected the overall experience.
I’ll go into lessons learned in another note.
We had fun. I’d do it again. But a tad differently. (-: