Having missed the autumn/fall in the East last year we were determined to catch it this time around, we had a vague romantic plan of driving up the East Coast, taking in the outstanding autumn colours -dazzling reds, shimmering golds and beautiful bronzes; we could go for long hikes on crisp autumnal days, camp in the forest and then cook our supper over a crackling campfire - funny how things never quite turn out how you imagine! 

What we hadn't banked on was difficulty in finding places to camp, wild camp spots are like unicorn poo, the occasional place we found was often accompanied by hunters and their guns. There were plenty of tourist campsites but they were eye wateringly expensive some as much as $70 or more.  State Parks are great, but you don't often get more than a pit toilet and that will set you back $20-$30 per night as well, that's if you can get in as you often need to book in advance.  It was definitely easier to camp in Outer Mongolia than on the East Coast of the USA!    The problem is we have been spoilt, because in the West and certainly in Canada you can just slip off the road, tuck yourself into a little spot and settle down for a few days. The East, however, is much more populated and seemingly every bit of land is owned by someone, you know its owned by someone as there are numerous POSTED signs usually accompanied by NO TRESSPASSING signs to make it very clear that parking for the night is not wanted or allowed.

We did find places usually with the help of Freecampsites.net  this was the best resource we found, however many of the stops were either Walmart or Casinos. Our usual go-to app is  ioverlander.com  which we used all through Asia and Canada, but it just isn't as reliable in this part of the US, the App is reliant on members contributing and sharing wild camping spots as well as legitimate campsites but many of the spots are out of date, we stopped using it for a couple of reasons, firstly on more than one occasion we drove a significant number of miles out of our way just to find the spot didn't exist at all or had been "posted" meaning it was no longer available or secondly the official campsites listed were just too expensive.   According to the website, they are addressing the issue of updating the app so it may be better in the future

So what did we do? Well we did find the odd sweet spot, but they were few and far between, we used a few of the State Park campsites especially along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and we chanced our luck a few times in places we thought we probably we shouldn't,  and got moved on by Mr Policeman a couple of times, and lastly, we slept at Walmart carparks way too often!

Perfect spot for the night, but Mr Ranger didn't think so "No camping Sir"

Walmart really isn't our favourite camp spot but it serves a purpose, if you need to cover a lot of miles and want to turn up somewhere at night when its dark then it's great, you know there will be bathrooms (that's just a toilet for the English speaking English not a bathroom with showers !) a relatively safe place to park (I'm sure there have been issues in the car parks be we have yet to hear of any) and you can pick up your groceries as well. However it isn't a particularly lovely place to camp - you aren't encouraged to get your table and chairs out, and nor would you really want to, it's much more of a place just to park for the night. In the beginning, I was worried about going to the store in my jimjams for my 2 am pee, what would people think, It could be very embarrassing? but soon realised that they have probably seen much worse than a middle-aged Brit in her fleecy pyjamas and a sweat top, nobody batted an eyelid, common practice it would seem, people wandering the aisles in their nightwear - there is even a hashtag #peopleofwalmart look it up I might even feature!!!

City Camping

The East Coast is graced by some amazing cities which we really wanted to visit, but cities and van life are pretty much a contradiction in terms, it's a bit like saying Tigger is a great van for stealth camping in, it just doesn't work. I know some Overlanders are happy to park on the street in busy built-up areas, but firstly Tigger is sort of noticeable, secondly we don't have a toilet, its one thing getting out to pee in the middle of the night in a forest, something quite different in a city, and thirdly we weren't happy about leaving Tigger on the street all day while we were off sightseeing especially in places like NYC, so we came up with three different solutions for our city stays

No 1 - Stay with friends! Obviously this isn't an option if you don't have friends in said City you want to visit but you could, of course, go Couch Surfing and use their parking slot, or often in the VW world there are people who will offer their driveways for you to camp on, there are numerous Facebook groups which you can join for this, I'm sure its the same for Landrovers or Toyota groups. However we did happen to have some friends who live just outside Philadelphia, the main reason for our visit was to see them but our day trip to Philly and the Barnes Foundation was well worth it.  

Apparently "Philidelphia" is spelt incorrectly on the Liberty Bell -who knew!  And how many trees have you seen that have been to the moon an back!

No2 - House Sitting- We love house sitting, for so many reasons and I may well write a blog post just about this. We bagged a housesit in Washington DC with somewhere safe to park Tigger, we got to do our laundry, have unlimited showers and WiFi in a luxury apartment all to ourselves. We did have to look after two adorable little doggies called Grin and Bareitt but that wasn't a problem it was a total plus point, and a 20min bus ride got us into the centre of Washington DC - perfect. We are members of Trustedhousesitters.com a website for finding housesits, if you are interested in joining then let me know, I can get you 20% off joining fee and we get a couple of free months

 Washington, Art, Culture and doggies!

No 3 - Campsites - Yes in most major cities there are campsites, but the pay off is they are expensive we stayed at the  Liberty Harbour Rv Park which is actually in New Jersey but a short train ride to Manhattan - you are on a different metro system to Manhattan the PATH system but the metro card if you get the right one - Yellow card which says METRO in blue will work for both lines. You can also catch their commuter ferry which is very close to the RV park, but this only runs at busy times so we didn't use it. So how expensive is expensive? *@%*@** expensive is the answer, for this particular site anyway - including tax $102 PER NIGHT and it's going up in 2018, a licence to print money me thinks! so why did we do it? A hotel would have been way more expensive at least for one with a carpark and secondly peace of mind, no worries about leaving Tigger all day. It was really just a very expensive car park, that said it did have pretty good showers and a laundry, you were supposed to be able to get wifi on the site but we could only ever get it  by going into the office

So this is what you get for $100 per night, and there were no concessions for smaller vehicles, so we had to pay the same as the huge RV's !

But for all our moaning, it was worth it - LOVE NYC

But the best thing about this trip down the East Coast has been the people, we have met some amazing guys who have taken us into their homes, looked after us, fed us, laughed with us and shared stories with us - we are complete strangers yet we have been made to feel so welcome and part of a family, we have come away with genuinely new friends. This isn't unique to the East Coast we had the same experience last year in the West,  American hospitality is absolutely second to none, so no matter what bad press you hear about Americans and America, there are plenty more great guys than there are nutcases  we can tell you from firsthand experience that there are some super good people here,.

 New Friends and a couple of old ones :)

Oh and what about the Autumn colours? apparently worse fall for years, been too dry, the leaves have just fallen off and not stayed on the trees and developed colour - Never mind not sure we were really that bothered anyway, our lives have been made much richer by the people we have met than the leaves on the trees

Nine months, 17 house sits, one new hip and we are finally back on the road.

 Finally Reunited 

 It's been a strange 9 months. Enjoyable to be home and see family and friends and to be surrounded by all that is familiar. Eat cheese, marmite and marmalade (not necessarily together, but it would work!) (Are you insane woman? Marmite and cheese is indeed a match made in umami heaven, but with marmalade? No thanks!) and to do normal activities like going to the cinema and have folk over to dinner. (and take the Harley out for a spin around the block. Rebel without a MOT!) However, it has also been fraught with anxiety. Will we ever get back on the road? If we do will Tigger be up to the job after months of neglect by us? Do we actually want to get back out there? (durrr, yes) Life at home is actually pretty comfortable and we have seen quite a bit of the world already. Do we need to do anymore? (Yes!) Have we lost our wanderlust?!!!! (NO!!!)

After 10 days back out here, it is beginning to feel like an adventure again. The wanderlust is returning and thoughts of home, showers, flushing toilets and marmalade are fading fast, to be replaced by the realisation that we can do what we want when we want, how we want, - well, within the constraints of vanlife and the dreaded budget! Google Maps is constantly being studied for the best routes and apps like IOverlander and Boondocking have been updated. I probably know more about America's National Parks than the average park ranger! (thank you, Yogi)  and we have maxed out our Ipad memory by downloading all our favourite programmes to be watched and savoured at a later date - OK we are ready!  However, as yet we haven't done any serious camping (One night at Crisp County Hydro beside a dam, and someone thought it would be a good idea to open the door at night to cool down a bit... woke up with my feet munched off by the 'skeeters"!) as these pesky Americans keep offering us their amazing hospitality with comfy beds, showers and dinners... - well, it would be rude to refuse, plus I feel it is helping with our transition back to vanlife. That's the best excuse I can come up with and I'm sticking with it. (I'm with you on that one xxx)

Mozzie Central!

So what are our plans other than sleeping in random strangers houses and using their facilities? We have been accepted as a Showcase vehicle at the Overland Expo East (the big US Overlanding show) in Ashville North Carolina, at the end of September/ beginning of October - and that is about the only thing in our diary - which is how we want it. No more rushing, no more deadlines, just take each day/week as it comes. We have a vague idea that we want to stay east for the Autumn/Fall, and have a few ideas of places we want to visit, (mostly those national parks I know all about), then head west and south, until eventually we hit Baja where we think we might like to be around December. But who knows? If something exciting comes up in the meantime and waylays us then so be it.

(On the van front,  leisure batteries are not getting charged properly so we are investing in a "smart" alternator to battery charger by Stirling Power. Just arrived today so will install that in the next week and I hope that will improve the situation. The plastic window in the sliding door has started to disintegrate so we sent out a plea for anyone in the VW Vanagon forums over here (America) for help in locating a replacement of some sort. David Wilhite, just outside Nashville, said he had one so as luck would have it, we were only an hour away from him and we called by to see if it would do. Long and short, we got there late and he kindly offered us a bed for the night and gave us the sliding window on the off chance that it would fit and wouldn't take a penny for it. Thank you, David, for your hospitality and the window. It took 2 days of altering but it is now in and looking mighty fine! Top tip. Plastic windows just aren't up to extreme heat. At least these German ones had lasted a couple of years of Africa and Spain, unlike the piece of rubbish sold to us by Brickwerks in the Uk. That one broke after about 9 months and they wouldn't refund us or even tell us who the manufacturers were so we could approach them for advice. Some people eh? Scallywags! That feels better. Needed to name and shame these two for months now!)

So that's it for now - keeping to our new blog rules short, sweet, and often, which could be applied to so much in our lives!  Until next time x