We now have been without our toad for about 3 months and over 3,000 miles. We had been contemplating traveling without our Jeep for quite some time and when we had some mechanical problems towards the end of 2008, we made it official that we would begin traveling without a tow vehicle, at least for the next year. Since our plan for the next year is to do many of the tracks and we hardly ever use our tow vehicle during our times at the tracks we thought this would be a perfect time to give it a try. At this point the pros are outweighing the cons by a big margin. We have saved so much money by not having to renew the plates, registration, and insurance. Gas mileage has been the greatest savings of all, we were averaging about 7 mpg when we were towing, we now average 10 mpg, we even had one that was over 12 mpg on our road trip from San Francisco to Daytona Beach. We have also saved so much wear and tear on the RV from not having to pull the Jeep, and there are no longer two vehicles to do maintenance on, including replacing tires and other repairs. We also made better time while traveling, we still only did around 300 miles per day but our days ended much earlier than when we were towing, even though we are still only doing about 60 mph, at least now we can maintain our speed more consistently.
We make sure we get our errands and shopping done prior to checking into the campground and we are taking advantage of other means of transportation. Many campgrounds offer free shuttle service to the local tourist attractions, there is always public transportation, like taxi’s and buses. We have also been riding our bikes much more lately, which is not only good for our environment but is fabulous for our health.
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