Friday 30th June – 27,000 miles, state no 47 and returning to where it all began

On the way home last night I had tentatively mapped our next booking - a state park in Vermont. Maybe we still haven’t learned enough about the size of this country even after 9 months?! The Satnav corroborated my fears this morning, informing us that we had in excess of a 6-hour drive to do.

Paul Bunyan, the iconic lumberjack....

I looked at alternatives, then we took a very brief detour to take in the largest Paul Bunyan statue in the land (had to be done, right) and discuss our options.  In the end, we opted to do the mileage today leaving less for tomorrow whilst also making time to stop at Campers Inn (CI), Merrimack, where we bought the RV to give them a heads up about our plans.  As we neared the end of our tour I was become more nervous about the process of selling the RV.  What if Campers Inn have changed their minds and won’t sell it on our behalf so we have to look at selling it privately?  How long would that take?  How would I be able to break it to Tash and David that we’d need to park a 30ft RV on their driveway with a ‘for sale’ sign in the window??!  Endless questions that would hopefully be answered when we got to see Joe at Campers Inn this afternoon.

After a quick lunch stop, I drove a solid two hours into New Hampshire to reach CI for 420pm.  We both felt quite emotional returning to where we'd been united with our beloved RV.  And deciding to pop in for a quick chat today turned out to be amazing good luck for us.  Joe, who sold us the RV, has been off work for months recovering from open heart surgery and the Manager was going on vacation the very next day until 15^th July – after we’ve left the country!! I dread to think what would have happened if we’d turned up on another day.  The receptionist seemed doubtful they’d be able to help and got us to write our contact details on a piece of paper but luckily the Manager, David Hirsch, made time for us today.  He said they don’t usually do consignments but as we had been promised, and with Joe off, he agreed to help – phew! He took a brief look at the RV seeming happy with its condition despite us not having prepared it for sale yet.  He agreed that they will sort the damage to the ladder out and the other minor cosmetic issues.  He was happy that there was still plenty of rubber on the tyres - I can’t believe we have done so many miles without having to replace a single one!

We went back inside to his office and began the haggling process.  We had done some research on line to compare what other similar-aged RVs were on sale for so we knew we were going to have to take a hit due to the high mileage. His initial offer was low but we managed to come to an agreement on what we felt was a reasonable offer – $43000 for us and they keep any profit over that.  Privately, I wouldn’t have expected us to have achieved more than 46k at best.  They may be able to reach 50k but to leave the hassle of the sale with them combined with not having to worry about paying for repairs etc – I’m happy.  It will have cost 15k to buy and sell the RV rather than the 45k it would have cost to hire an RV for 9 months at 5k a month!  So, we have completed the trip at a third of the cost and I for one wouldn’t swap our experience for anything.

We hadn’t wanted to take up too much of David’s time but he must have been in the holiday mood.  We couldn’t get out of his office until we had chatted about travel and politics and basically put the world to rights until it was 6pm!  

For once, we managed to capture the moment we had driven 27,000 miles in the RV

The excuse for this poor Vermont State image is the rain conditions...

The skies had become dark and it started to thunder as we left, still with 2 hours and 20 mins to go! The rain hammered down giving us very poor visibility (see video below) and we only stopped very briefly to top up on gas and swap over.

We reached Winhall Brook camping area in Vermont past 9pm, just as it was getting dark.  It was still raining a little and we were exhausted.  We made instant mash to go with our microwave dinner and beans and watched a terrible film about two guys lost in the desert whilst I made blog notes.