GORHAM – The traveling Dunns of Gorham, who are on the road in an 18-month family RV adventure, are managing a Christmas tree lot in the San Francisco Bay area this week.

“We are busy selling Christmas trees,” Tanya Dunn said in a telephone interview this week, adding that San Francisco 49ers’ fans were jubilant tree customers after the team trimmed the New England Patriots on Sunday.

Brian Dunn, 46, his wife Tanya Dunn, 45, their children, River, 15, and Mercy, 11, and their dog, Daisy, left Gorham in November 2011 to tour the country.

They launched the travel adventure after the family rented out their Gorham home and bought a 2006 pickup truck and a 30-foot fifth wheel RV. They waved good-bye to Gorham friends and set out to tour the country.

They had planned to return in a year, but now have extended their adventure to April 2013. They are working to stretch gas money.

At the Christmas tree lot, Tanya Dunn said, they are working 12-hour days through Christmas Eve. She estimated they’ve sold 600 trees with the average one going for $80. Mercy is helping out with customer service at the cash register and River is assisting buyers with securing trees on customers’ cars.

While away from home in Gorham, Brian Dunn, a graphic designer for Transformit in the Gorham Industrial Park, performs his job for the company remotely. The children are keeping up with schoolwork on computers. Tanya Dunn resigned from her work as a waitress at the Blue Burrito Cafe? in Westbrook.

A year into their adventure, Tanya Dunn reported that they had visited 15 national parks, countless memorials and historical sites, museums, major cities and Native American lands.

“The trip has been quite an adventure and an exhilarating time! We have been living a life full of wonderful experiences as a family and seeing and doing things that some never get a chance to do,” Brian Dunn said in an email this week.

But, the family has experienced some bumps along the road, including replacing brakes on both vehicles and eight blown tires on the RV. Along the way, they’ve found jobs to pay for gas, even working a sugar beet harvest in Montana this fall.

Mercy said the trip has been fun.

“I’ve been experiencing so many things that I wouldn’t have been able to back home. However, I am looking forward to returning home to see my friends and cousins,” she said.

The family is gearing up now for the final months of the journey.

“I’m excited to go home to see my friends, be in a house and have my own room,” River said.

“I could stay on the road a little longer (maybe a month or two) if we were going to be doing some really cool stuff during that time.”

In an email earlier this fall, Tanya Dunn said its hard for them to believe they’ve been gone a year.

“Without having been caught up in the normal daily grind and being able to take the time to enjoy ever-changing scenery alongside local cultural variances has made our time out feel much shorter than it actually has been,” she said.

“It only feels like yesterday that we pulled out of our friends’ driveway, waving goodbye to those dear to us,” Brian Dunn said. “Now having been on the road for 14 months I have mixed feelings about returning to the life we left. That said, however, I truly miss home and the friends and family that await us there.”

After Christmas, the family plans to travel from the San Francisco area, where they’ve been since Thanksgiving, to Southern California.

“Working the Christmas tree lot has been fun but tiring. I’m not a fan of staying in one place for this long, but it’s all part of the adventure,” Mercy said.

The Dunn family of Gorham is selling Christmas trees in the San Francisco area this week. Brian and Tanya Dunn are pictured with their children River, 15, and Mercy, 11. They have spent the past year traveling the country in an RV to visit national historic sites and museums.