Extended Cruising

[captaingary]

My wife and I are planning our first extended cruise across America that we anticipate to last nine to 10 months. We own a home in California and plan to keep it vacant. We would appreciate any advice on what to do about things like mail forwarding, phone forwarding, utilities (turn off or leave on) or anything else we should be looking at.

[Guest Wayne77590]

I have call forwarding and find it a very beneficial service. Even though my Son is staying at our stick house, I still forward the phone. He uses his cell phone. It's very convenient getting forwarded calls, and the caller does not know if we are there or not, they just suppose we are, and we just may be.

[aceinspector2000@yahoo.com]

In traveling to the countless parks both state and national how hard is it to get a coach in to them 40' and over? My wife are in the looking stage now while we build our barn-a-minimum when we're not traveling. We defiantly want at least a 40' if for nothing else for the room. Going from a house to a MH is going to be trying enough living in close quarters. Any and all comments are appreciated.

[Guest BillAdams]

We have been traveling in a 40' RV since 2000 (living in one full-time since '97) and we have never had any problems finding a good camping site during our travels. That doesn't mean that we can park anywhere, but finding somewhere to park has always been very easy. With that information in mind, we have stayed in many campgrounds (and especially State parks) where if we were any longer we would not have had a place to park. I don't know why the pivot point seems to be 40', but once you move to a coach longer than that you will find that many of the sites you might have liked to visit are unavailable to you. Even knowing that, if we ever do trade our coach it will be for a 45' unit for the added space (again, we are full-timers) and we will just have to figure out how to do what we like to do. That might mean that we have to use dry-camping options more often but I promise you that it will never include choosing the Outdoor Resort, Great Outdoors, Motorcoach Resorts or any of those "stuffed shirt" parks as a place to stay!

[inspecman]

I will be going full time with in a month or so. I have what is called Yahoo Voice it is a phone for my computer has it's own number answering service. I was in an area where i couldn't get phone service and it came in handy all i did was use my air card and i still had phone service. It costs 2.99 a month and you can load your minutes at $10.00 or $25.00. It was a life saver. Might be something to think about. You pick your own area code and phone number depending what is still available. You only get charged for phone calls you make, so no cost for receiving incoming calls, that helps too.

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[hermanmullins]

Gary, There is a service your land line provider has that is very helpful when you are away from home. If you have an answering machine, they can automatically forward you incoming call to your cell phone after X number of rings. You can set the number of rings. Just give them a call and they can set it up for you. Many phone companies have call forwarding, however you only have to turn off your machine when you leave for an extended time.

Gary (garykd), you make a very good list. People going on a trip could make a copy for a check list.

[ClayL]

If you are only going to be gone for a year you can give the post office a TEMPORARY forwarding address to a mail forwarding service.

The UPS Stores offer mail forwarding service and a lot of people use them.

[bizsmith@yahoo.com]

After a few years of forwarding calls to the cell phones, we will be making the break and go cell only. Why pay the land line for nothing. Have you noticed how much smaller the telephone books are getting?