Category: Hop Inn

Tales from the Hop-Inn. Digital nomads, Andrew and Sean will be traveling the US in a 2019 Airstream travel trailer. These are the stories of the trip, photos, and Plan B recoveries.

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Day Four: TFTD

Thoughts from the day by the traveling Fox…

Today was a shorter travel day as we’ve been cannonballing across the country to the tune of 1510.4 miles as of right now. We’ve visited six states including: Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota, and no Minnesota. Tomorrow we are heading up to the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota. Later in the trip we will visit the biggest ball of twine in the USA. Tonight we are in Adrian, MN at a lovely camp ground enjoying a cocktail while pondering dinner.

Monday we are docking our camper at a co-worker’s place and my plan is to clean the shell and do some laundry while getting ready for FurryMigration – a fandom event in Minneapolis.

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End of Day 3

We made it safely to South Dakota…

Tomorrow we make our way to Minnesota, with the Biggest Ball of Twine for Sunday.

Homemade Chicken Casserole and salad with homemade lemon vignette was dinner.

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On the road with customer calls

Today I’m coming to you from a Flying J station in Gillette WY between customer calls. Successes so far! Two calls from the road with zero issues. These Pilot Flying J stations are nice as they have done recent WiFi upgrades, and often the wifi extends out to the truck/RV parking areas beside the stations. These nice breaks in the driving give you a safe, reasonably quiet place to do the calls.

One disappointment so far has been the Netgear Nighthawk M1 router on AT&T. The router for some reason needs to be rebooted on a fairly regular basis as the SSID stops announcing itself. I’ve checked settings to disable that, but the ol’ “turn it off and turn it on” seems to fix itself. Plus, even though my iPhone had clear, perfect AT&T network pulling down about 5 Mbs, the Netgear said it was roaming on T-Mobile and had no network connection. The SIM I used for the hotspot was pulled from an iPad Pro, so my only thought is AT&T cheaped out on the data plans there, didn’t want to pay for data in rural Wyoming, and only shows it’s “more bars in more places” to voice capable devices as a money saver.

Side note: Jamf Pro has been an absolute show stopper. If you can set up a Mac from a truck stop off a wireless hotspot, it will work anywhere.

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Day Three – Lunch Break

We took off from the Rawling KOA just before eight this morning. Now we’re taking a couple of hours to work and have a bite to eat.

Traveling By Map

Plan is to get to the KOA in Kadoka, SD this evening for our overnight and to try our hands at emptying the black and gray water tanks!

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Day Two – Travel to Rawlings, Wyoming

After a press pot of coffee and some light office work we pulled up the steaks and started our journey north to Rawlings, Wyoming.

We fully endorse the KOA in Beaver, Utah. Clean facilities, level grounds.

One of the things we will be doing is moving the filter to the camper water hookup, bot the directly to the spigot – even though this is what many in the campground had done.

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Day One – Beaver KOA

Fox here…

We loaded up our trailer over the last three days to get ready for this epic cross country journey. Our plan was to depart from Las Vegas at 2:00 today, but then disaster broke…literally. I broke a window because I didn’t close it before turning the trailer to fill the water tank. Luckily I have a very understanding spouse and have dealt with trade show emergencies in my past. A few phone calls, a new window purchased, installed, and we were under way by 3:05.

Our arrival to the KOA was greeted with rain, but we were able to quickly connect power, water, and disconnect from the truck.

Not feeling like cooking, we hit the Timberline Inn Restaurant for dinner. The pot roast is amazing and the pork isn’t too shabby either.

3.2% Beer is … interesting.

Tomorrow we’re working from the park then off to our next stop. Somewhere between B and C on the map.

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We’re doing this thing!

Today we start the epic road trip. After a quick stop back at Airstream for an emergency part, we’re on our way to Beaver, UT for the night.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B1upJsWFYaw/?igshid=102nd12csaxsr

The F-150 is taking this trailer up about 3000 feet into Utah; so far we’re averaging about 15 MPG uphill.

More pictures to come soon.

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Plan B at Day One?!?

Welp, this is looking promising. We’ve got the trailer after an hour and a half delay to start, and the next plan B is… there is no plate. No temp plate either. Not too thrilled with Airstream right now – a combo of failure to plan, lost passwords, and an unwillingness to call the bank to get their crap together.

So plan B is to drive with no plates (not even a plate frame!) with a 15 day temp moving permit in the window. So… this can’t go wrong when you’re gone for a month and a half!

Not impressed for a company claiming to sell a premium product with premium prices.

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Tales from the Hop Inn

Ah, the digital nomad. Going from city to city, laptop and iPhone with hotspot in hand. This will be a short post, but that’s what Andrew and I are going to attempt this fall, a coast to coast trip from Las Vegas NV to Boston MA. The last character in this tale, a 2019 Airstream Globetrotter 27FB. We’ll have photos from the road, best practices, and some “plan B” stories as well I’m sure. The trip starts August 28, the planning and packing is happening now!

Keep track of the tales by following us on the web at hopinncoffee.com and social media to come.