The Second Road Trip

After a very long six month wait our Lance was finally ready for us to pick up. We were planning to leave for the Florida Keys a mere twelve days later. Nothing like working on a deadline!

To say we were excited would be an understatement – we were thrilled to be able to travel again and wasted no time getting the Lance outfitted for her first road trip.

However, we soon learned that no matter how top notch the quality of your RV is, there will still be issues. The first problems we discovered were that the furnace was did not work properly and the plumbing to the shower leaked into the wall cavity which was filling with water. In hindsight, we were glad we found this out BEFORE we left because the only fix was a trip back to the Lance dealer over an hour away. We undid all the packing we had accomplished and back to the dealer she went. At this point, we were only three days away from our scheduled departure date. This moment is when I learned that RV life was going to take some flexibility on my part.

The Lance was able to be fixed quickly and we were finally ready to hit the road! Our plan was to spend six weeks on the road: two weeks driving to the Florida Keys, two weeks in a rented vacation house with the grandparents, and then two weeks to drive back home.

What we planned: leave early in the day so we’re not driving at night, limit eating out and carefully pack so we don’t bring excess stuff.

What we did: quickly threw everything we owned in the trailer, fed the kids Arby’s for dinner and left at 7 pm.

We only made it three hours down the road and spent our first night in a Cracker Barrel parking lot but at least we were finally on the road.

We needed to get south as quickly as possible so we could be above freezing temperatures and put water in our tanks. One problem with RVing in cold weather climates is that we can’t use water until there is no risk of freezing and breaking water lines.

So we headed south as fast as we could! The next day we covered almost another 500 miles and arrived at our first campsite with hookups. Actual conversation that Matt and I had, “We definitely shouldn’t arrive at a campsite late at night in the dark when we hook up for the first time so we can make sure everything works.”

*pulls into pitch black campground in the pouring rain for inaugural hook up to water and electricity*

Did this process go smoothly? Absolutely not. We’ve been without water for two days now, driven for the past eight hours, it’s way past bedtime and tensions are high. Matt went outside in the rain to fill our freshwater tank but it won’t fill. The water kept pouring back out which he figured out was because the pipe was routed incorrectly.

After this very late night, which will go down in family lore as one of the lowest points of the trip, things started to look up. The kids got into a groove with their virtual schooling.

We found some nice, slightly warmer weather which improved everyone’s mood. And, best of all, we kept checking national parks off our list. Winning.

Elleny celebrated her eleventh birthday on the road.

Perhaps the best part of RVing, however, was meeting fellow RVers. While we were at Hunting Island State Park Campground in South Carolina our campsite was directly next to the nicest, sweetest couple (hi Leif and Penelope!). One minute the kids are playing outside and next thing we know they are hanging out at their campsite chatting together and listening to Adler reading aloud. We exchanged our information and hoped we’d cross paths with them again some day. (WE DID!)

South Carolina was absolutely lovely; Georgia was fantastic but we had a deadline to get to Florida.

After two weeks of travel, we had finally arrived at our rental house in Islamorada. The first challenge was actually getting the RV into the narrow driveway off a tiny alley and making a hard ninety degree turn to the house. A crowd gathered to watch but thanks to Matt’s trailer skills he was able to maneuver it through the gate with inches to spare.

We weren’t worried about how we were going to get back out of the driveway because it was time to hang out in the Florida Keys!

There was swimming, fishing, kayaking, cousin time and grandparents but way too soon it was time to start heading home. Luckily, we were about to take the long way to get there.

We squeezed a lot into our two week journey home including meeting up with our friends, Donna and Jean Marie, at Crystal Bridges Art Museum in Arkansas. These two adventurous women have inspired us to travel so it was a full circle moment to see them while we were all on the road!