Our Fall/Winter 2023 Van Trip Plans: Oregon for EclipseFest23 and Arizona!

It’s hard to believe we’ve been back in Sanford nearly a month now, it’s gone by so quickly! We’ve certainly been keeping busy with lots of live theater shows, time with friends & family, celebrating my 50th birthday and keeping our running & biking up.

All of this despite some record breaking days with excessive heat warnings.

As the state of Florida, and much of the southern part of the US, continues to slowly broil – we’re turning our thoughts to cooler adventures.

Oregon is on the Way to Arizona, Right?

We had been originally plotting a trip out to Arizona this fall to visit our vintage bus Zephyr – we left her at our SKP Saquaro Co-Op storage lot back in January 2022.

We’re overdue for a visit to our community in Arizona and knocking the cobwebs & rodent nests out of our bus’ engine bay.

And then a few weeks ago our dear friends Julie and Marc of RV Love dropped us an enticing invitation – to join them at EclipseFest23.

Oregon, in October. Hmm, it didn’t take us long to start plotting to see just how much of a diversion that would be on our route from Florida to Arizona.

What is EclipseFest23?

It was about five years ago that many experienced the total solar eclipse of 2017 – we missed most of it as we were new boat owners in the Keys and out of totality.

And there’s of course another total eclipse coming up in April 2024 that many are planning their travels around too (we don’t think that far in advance).

However, there’s another eclipse happening this October – that is slightly different.

It’s called an annular eclipse, which means the moon will be too far from the sun to totally block it,  leaving a ring of fire visible.

Visibility will occur over a 90-mile swath of the western part of the US.

EclipseFest23 is being organized about 20 miles from Crater Lake National Park in Oregon and will be in an area that will have a full view for over 4 minutes – one of the longest in the country.

An entire 5-day festival is being planned around it with RV camping, food trucks, entertainment and activities.

And of course a watch party on the morning of October 14. And to top it all off, a concert by Smash Mouth that evening!

Yup, we were sold – this is where we want to be this fall. With new and old friends witnessing a once in a generation annular eclipse!

Join us at EclipseFest23!

And the best part is, you can join the fun too!

If you’re in the area (or like us, not really in the area but inspired to do a cross country drive), tickets to attend the festival are still available.

You can use this link to learn more:

www.EclipseFest23.com

You can also learn a ton more about the event in RV Love’s post, including RV parking costs and logistics – which I won’t repeat here:

See the Annular Solar Eclipse

While our tickets are being comped as ‘influencers’, we’re in no way affiliated with the event – we don’t get anything but appreciation if you purchase tickets.

But if you do use our link and/or promo code of ‘Technomadia’ at checkout – the organizers will be able to know who is attending because of us, and we’re told there might be some special promotions as a result.

Wait, I Thought Guys Don’t ‘Do’ RV Events Anymore?

Yup, it’s true – we’re usually quite reluctant to attend RV events anymore. Let alone announce in advance we’re going to them. We just don’t like the pressure of having solid dates marked on our calendars, or people making plans specifically to come see us when we might need to back out.

Marc & Julie know us well and our event experiences, and made it clear we’ll have minimal commitments in attending. No presentations, no hosting meet-ups, etc. The stuff they know puts pressure and stress on us.

They also know that we’ll be leaving Y-Not behind in Florida for hurricane season – which means we might need to adjust plans accordingly. We’ll of course be watching the tropics closely. But after having gone through two storms last year in Sanford aboard, we feel pretty good about the situation – especially knowing we have dear friends in the area who know our boat.

And to be honest, our stress levels are minimal these days. This semi-retirement thing totally rocks. We’re no longer revolving our travels around crazy work hours and commitments. With our focus on fitness and healthy eating, we feel more balanced than ever.

So it all feels good after sitting on this decision for a few weeks.

This feels more like going to an awesome festival with friends, that just happens to have an RV industry presence at it.

When Do We Leave, What’s the Plan?

It’s been a long time since we’ve done a cross country trip like this. It’s been nearly a decade since we’ve visited this corner of the country. We’re super excited to return.

As we prefer to enjoy the journey, and not make it a dash – we’re putting together logistics to leave out in the next week or two. That will give us about 5-6 weeks to make it to Oregon – a bit faster of a pace than we prefer, but not too rushed. And we’re more than ready to leave this heat behind in our rear view mirror.

The exact route, we’re leaving to serendipity – making it up as we go. We’ll visit friends & family, utilize Haverst Hosts, some boondocking and likely some public campgrounds. We’ll of course also be looking for amazing bike trails and RV nudist resorts to explore along the way.

We’re super excited to have a destination to our upcoming fall van adventures!

What about the Rest of 2023?

After EclipseFest23, we’ll start heading south – likely along the amazing Highway 395 that we explored a decade ago with our dear friends Nina & Paul.

And then we’ll spend some time in Arizona at our Co-Op until we feel the calling to return to Florida. By the end of the year? Early 2024? It’s too soon to predict.

But we are aiming to resume active cruising in the spring, so we’ll want to be back in plenty of time to handle all of the logistics for that.