Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Wrap-up and Reflections

It was fantastic to get away in the van again after being stuck at home for a little over 12 months after Wendy's operations and subsequent convalescence, and the COVID-19 lockdown. And, although we started out with our cycling and caravanning buddies, we always knew we would be parting ways at some stage due to various appointments. It is always good to travel with these friends, however, not having to consider other people's plans, likes and dislikes is really liberating; we were able to travel to our own agenda. The freedom to get up and go when and where we wanted was a nice change.

Despite the QLD borders being closed, there were a good number of interstaters on the road and in the van parks and free camps. There were also a large number of QLDers out and about which was good to see. So, although parts of the tourist industry may be suffering, the caravanning and camping industry is alive and well in QLD. We were proud to do our bit in contributing to local communities by staying in van parks and eating and drinking in their towns. In these parks we met some very sociable and interesting people; some who lived not too far from us, and others that lived interstate.

We were disappointed to be heading home however, specialist appointments do not usually wait; we would still be out there if we could. We will wait for school holidays to finish and then look at doing some shorter trips, more often.

We were really pleased with the performance of the van and the vehicle on this trip. It is the first van outing with this vehicle/van combination andeverything worked as designed and nothing broke (except for a small stone chip in the windscreen on the passenger side). The new tow hitch enabled us to tow sway-free and the new lithium batteries, new battery management system coupled with the inverter enabled us to live in luxury even on the occasions we were without 240v power. We were able to use the microwave, toaster and coffee machine whenever we wanted to. We could have even used the washing machine. Of course, this had a lot to do with the fact that we had a never ending supply of free solar power due to the excellent weather we experienced.

This trip took us on some old roads and some new roads and we stayed in 13 new places out of the 16. There are many more roads yet to be explored and new places to stay along the way.

Wrap-up and Reflections

It was fantastic to get away in the van again after being stuck at home for a little over 12 months after Wendy's operations and subsequ...