After eight years of RVing and one recent epic trip, we are finally declaring it: RVing is the most flexible form of travel.
Our total eclipse trip was almost turned into a failed adventure in the spring. With advanced planning of over a year, we were camping to photograph and video the Great American Eclipse of 2024 from the perfect campsite. Alison and I had picked out an amazing spot at our favorite springtime lake lined with fields of Texas bluebonnets.
Since we were RVing a couple of hours south of our home in the Dallas area, our odds of having clear skies were pretty good for this time of the year. It was a good plan to camp in this part of Texas in April.
Fortune was not on our side.
We had an amazing Saturday enjoying the beautiful wildflowers and playing outside with our boys, but the weather had us concerned. Looking at the radar and future cloud cover, it showed we would miss seeing the eclipse under a thick layer of clouds. So, we used the biggest benefit of RVing with our small Jayco: flexibility.
After scouring the map for an opening far north of us with limited cloud cover, we found a potential open area in northern Arkansas. So, we packed up early Sunday and headed about eight hours north to a new campsite.
If you had been following the news around this time, it was almost impossible to find a place to stay along the path of the eclipse. This goes for both hotels and campgrounds because they were all booked. Fortunately, we were able to find a spot at a rural RV park in the northeastern part of Arkansas.
Would this have been possible as a hotel traveler? Absolutely not. When we checked, available hotels in the path were going for over seven hundred a night! Having an RV saved the day!