(Scott here)

Since this is a long post I have made it possible to jump to sections of the post if you don’t want to read the whole thing! Jump to Travel Days. Jump to Daily Stays. Jump to Gas.

It is a question I occasionally get so I thought we would discuss it. If you know me you may know that I have a thing for spreadsheets. I really do enjoy Excel and when I was working I did my best to come up with reasons to learn Access to figure out how databases actually work. I am far from an expert, actually I consider myself to be a novice, but I still enjoy dabbling in Excel when I can. So, in addition to our paper logbook I keep for our travel days I transfer that information into an Excel spreadsheet, labeled “Logbook”. This log book has a number of different worksheets and has evolved over the last 5-6 months and will continue to evolve. Some information I have not found important to keep so I don’t keep it. I wanted more, so I have added it. This logbook has to work for the RV and Boat.

I am going to talk about each worksheet briefly and what I keep in it. The first worksheet I call “Travel Days.” This is where I transfer all my handwritten notes from a travel day into the worksheet. Excel will quickly create a form to enter data in and I will take a screenshot of each worksheet to show the info. For reference, if the form doesn’t have a white area to enter data that information is pulled from somewhere else, like the line for “Started at:” since I entered that city in the “Ended at” spot the previous travel day – why enter it twice? And, a formula enters the info for “Day of Week:”, “Total Mileage:”, etc.

I decided to title each “leg” of our journey. I am not sure if that will continue to be what we call it. Our summer will be “2023 Summer” and when we start the Loop I think I will split that into sections such as “Inland Rivers” or “Gulf” or “Bahamas.” We will have some overlaps as well since we will be putting the boat in the water later this month or early May as well as still living in the RV. I am not sure how that will work yet, but we will figure it out!

My next worksheet is “Daily Stays.” Here I keep track of where we stay, number of nights, the location type (state park, private campground, anchor, marina, etc.) As you can see there are a lot of blanks on this form. I will shorten this form considerably this summer.

This next worksheet is “Gas.” Here I keep track of the type of fuel purchased (gas (RV or dinghy), propane, or diesel (for the boat)) and the cost. Again, you can see I try not to type data twice and near the bottom I have places to enter data for the boat.

I have a separate worksheet to keep track of RV and Boat maintenance, but I also use a program, RV Life to keep track of that info as well. Not sure if I will continue both or just use one.

The final worksheet is “Pump Out Log.” When on the loop some states require a log of when and where you have pumped out. These states are mostly on the east coast, but I will be keep that log as well. This isn’t nearly as important for the RV.

For our Daily Stays worksheet I created a Pivot Table to breakdown the number of days and costs for each Type of Stay we had. That has been posted about already.

PLEASE pray for warm weather! Next I will talk about what I have done, so far, to get the boat in the water and get her ready to head to Henry, IL for the summer.