The Day is Near for Our Departure

Well after many months of planning and buying online for our trip we are getting down to the actual packing of our bags, I never thought the time would come but it's here. Most of our personal belongings from the house have been packed and put in storage for the next year. Now we are down to clothes for the next ten days and clothes for the next year in America. I am sure we will be buying clothes whilst there but we need to make sure we are not freezing cold from day one.

One final purchase was some plug adapters so we can don't have to keep swapping them around the trailer. A quick check of eBay and there are plenty to buy, just choose one making sure they ship to the USA from China. We figured why ship them here and carry them to the US when we can get them delivered straight to John's, just another package for the mud room.

We purchased our yearly pass to the National Parks, a cost of $80 which is very cheap even includes a hanger thing to clip it on your rear view mirror, very flash.

When we first purchased our airline tickets we were limited to our return date, that is the airlines can only predict so far into the future, so in fact our original return date is Feb 2013. This is a limitation which can't be helped so making an allowance for this, is important as there is a charge to "change your return date". At the present time we are only days away from being able to change our return date to a day in October 2013. I am hoping having this booked before we go will help US Immigration by showing further proof that we in fact will be returning to Australia, not withstanding they won't even let you in the country without a return ticket.

I had read on a forum that having proof of travel insurance for the whole period of travel will help, not that we ever travel without it but important to add this to the ever growing pile of paperwork.

Speaking of which our ever growing list of supporting documentation includes;
Recent bank statements
Rates notice for our house
Travel insurance
Letter of employment for both of us including our position and salary range
Letter from employer showing a breakdown of our leave with our expected return date
A return ticket to Australia
Proof of our money transfers to buy the fifth wheeler, truck and cash for living expenses
Letter from real estate agent showing income from our house
Plus the usual other stuff like photo copies of our passports, international drivers licences etc.

I have also taken electronic copies and put them on the IPad which are then backed up to the cloud so if our Ipad is stolen or misplaced we still have a copy of all our documents, top this off with copies to an USB stick and we are well and truly covered.

The only thing left is our goodbyes to our family and friends and to get on our plane.

My next blog will actually be from the USA, till then watch this space.




- Posted by RnR on their IPad

Location:Brisbane

Final Preparations

First week of October and our departure date is nearly here, thank goodness! For the last several months I have spent many hours on the Internet and on the phone to the various people in the USA. One thing I will say, is in every conversation I have had on the phone to someone in the US has always been very pleasant, in fact it's been fantastic. I cannot fault a single one of them, from purchasing our fifth wheel to buying insurance every sales representative has been brilliant. I can't wait to meet them and the many other Americans we are bound to meet.

So now we are counting down the days to our departure not months but days. As expected some final purchases come to mind??

Now we already have a GPS with US maps but Camping World sent me an email with a GPS specifically for RVers. The first question that came to mind is what's so special about this GPS? Well with this GPS you enter your type of vehicle, the length, its height as well as many other details and it will take this into consideration when calculating your route. Now I must admit I am nervous about the size of our rig, and I have a truck licence but I would hate to be cruising along some road and wipe off the top of our 13 ft high trailer (3.9 metre) or having to back up 500 metres to avoid a low bridge, that will not look good for us Aussies. This GPS will also warn you of the many other hazards a large rig must be aware of, so for $225-00 it seemed like a good purchase, thanks Camping World and of course free shipping as we are Good Sam Club members.

So while checking out Good Sam we found a link to a club called Passport America. It was $39-95 to join and you receive 50% off selected RV parks, we figured, use it for two nights and we have our money back in the shopping cart it went.

We also intend visiting the many National Parks around the US and we have used the NPS website on our last trip so now we intend to buy a yearly pass, $80-00 for the year, great value.

Final preparations, mmm not to sure about that. There will always be one more thing?




- Posted by RnR on their IPad

Location:Brisbane