Keli: “I’m ready to go somewhere.”
Me: “Where do you wanna go?”
Keli: “I don’t know…ANYWHERE!!!”
Me: “Shouldn’t we at least decide on a general direction?”
Keli: “I’ll start packing.”

I’m also sure you’ve cleverly determined at this point that we headed south…at the end of July…and not just south, but about as far south as we can go…at the end of July…yeah…I know…

RV Maintenance Before Departure

I’m equally certain you have also determined what a manly man I am and how I enjoy (insist?) on doing my own maintenance on our stuff when it makes sense…and sometimes even when it doesn’t. I am, therefore, on a first name basis with our mechanic who politely bails me out of messes I end up getting myself into.

The RV was due for an oil change and fuel filter change. So, naturally I dove in head first with absolutely no experience on the Mercedes diesel chassis…but I had watched a YouTube video and was, of course, an expert by osmosis.

The reason I’m telling you this is because I did something wrong and had to address it on our voyage. My simple goof had an effect that I will likely tell folks about for centuries to come. It restored my faith in humanity.

I know that sounds a bit melodramatic, but during our current state of affairs in our beloved and beautiful country, we all need an occasional sign that things maybe aren’t as screwed as we are led to believe.

My brilliant mistake: I overfilled the oil.

Mercedes has a little digital screen in the middle of the dash that will display an error message sometimes when a warning light comes on. It’s pretty helpful since there are about 372 little warning lights that can come on…and those clever German engineers like to make them into symbols that require deciphering via the codex that is the owners manual. (The DEF fluid symbol looks like the van is passing gas in a rainstorm.) This time the little oil can symbol appeared with a message that said “Hi”.

Germans. When is the last time you’ve actually seen an oil can?

Anyway…we had decided to stick with two-lane roads which took us through all kinds of charming little towns. We stopped at a little tire shop on a Main Street in a cute little town somewhere in South Carolina so I could tell someone how bad I am at doing simple tasks and have my man card revoked. The experience couldn’t have been more perfect.

The little, 2-bay used-to-be-a-service-station-with-gas-pumps shop was clean and tidy and there wasn’t a customer in sight when I pulled into the parking area. I told the polite young man what an idiot I was and that I needed a little oil drained. As it turns out, this can be a difficult conversation to try and have with someone who doesn’t speak good English, but we eventually communicated and he very pleasantly did exactly what was needed and with a smile only charged me $5. He got a big tip.

When I imagine having vehicular issues while traveling, my mind drifts to a Mayberry-like experience where I find a small shop in a sleepy little town with nice folks who know what they’re doing and are happy to help. This is exactly what that was. It was very refreshing and really made my day.

Little Ocmulgee State Park

I believe successful traveling in an RV requires the ability to manage the highs and lows and keep expectations realistic. I am, mostly, a failure at that. Keli is very good at it. Arriving at Little Ocmulgee State Park in southern Georgia was a real disappointment. I suppose I was still riding high after the previous stop and now expected unicorns and rainbows for the duration of the trip.

On their website, this place looks great, with a lodge and a lake and activities…but because of the neverending pandemic, the only things operational at this park were the golf course and campground…but the rates were unchanged. It was only an overnight stop for us but it was incredibly disappointing. We were not there to play golf. We wouldn’t have anyway because it was 97 degrees. Our “pull through” site was poorly designed with a picnic table on the wrong side, very unlevel and barely enough room to extend our awning. It was also parallel to and adjacent to the campground road and, as we discovered, the choice congregating spot for everyone under 12 in the entire park. Ok…pretty trivial.

The condition of the bathrooms was not trivial. Possibly the dirtiest I’ve ever seen at a campground and no toilet paper in sight. I have the distinct feeling that there is NO management whatsoever at this place. If there were, they would have likely told Bubba with his jacked up truck that back-in sites are meant to be backed in to and not to drive head-in, up and over landscape timbers just because he’s too lazy to learn how to use reverse.
We won’t be back there.

Stops Along The Way

We really dig being able to stop at places that look neat. Sometimes we have a reason, sometimes we just need a break from driving.

I observed something during our two-lane journey south through South Carolina and Georgia this time: nearly every little town we passed through had railroad tracks running right through it. It really made me wonder about the histories of these places and if they sprung up because of the railroad or if the railroad came through because of the towns. Either way it was really fascinating to see the older buildings and the homes and how the houses and buildings changed as you moved away from the town and tracks.

We are really fortunate to live in an area that is inundated with craft beer and small, local breweries. In fact, we are so accustomed to it that it seems odd not to find breweries in every downtown area we pass through. Keli found this one for us and we REALLY wish it was closer to home.

Halpatter Brewing Company is one of those gems we really love to uncover on the road. It is the type of stop we will most likely include on our next southerly tour. Great folks working there, a small but diverse and well thought out selection of beers and really great food. This place is poised for success and if you are ever traveling anywhere near it, we HIGHLY recommend you make time to visit. And take home a selection of crowlers to share with your friends! We’ll be back!

Silver Springs State Park

Our first REAL destination on this adventure was Silver Springs State Park and, for the most part, it did not disappoint. This was pretty high on Keli’s priority list and it really was worth the effort…even though the museum and stores were closed. They are known for their glass bottom boat tours, but after seeing one from land, we don’t think we can recommend it. What we can both recommend is renting a kayak and paddling the loop. It is stunningly beautiful. We can’t wait to visit a few more springs like this.

It’s also worth noting that we stayed at the Silver Springs State Park Campground and (like most state parks) it was fantastic. It had VERY roomy sites, very clean, very up to date, and you can bike through the woods to get to the springs!

Check out our videos below and let us know what you think about Silver Springs!

Because we had sooooo much video from the paddling tour, Keli made an extended cut that you can watch below.

The post RVing to the Florida Keys – Part 1 -Silver Springs appeared first on RV Travel Blog.

We sat in the RV with the motor running when I texted my cousin in Georgia to let him know we might be passing through the area if he was around and available, and if so, we’d love to see him. If he were busy, we’d go in a different direction. Nothing was decided at that point. Nothing at all. We were either headed straight south through Atlanta or we were going to hit the coast again and figure it out as we went.

As luck would have it, he has a long term spot at a private campground on Lake Hartwell (I had no idea) and he said we could join him there because, coincidentally, that’s where he was headed. How crazy is that? We had a destination now!

A few meandering hours later we arrived at the campground. He informed us that not only was his brother coming to join us but our other cousin as well! This was turning into a small family reunion among the 4 (and a half) of us that had NEVER happened before.

Do any of you know what happens when you get together with Irish cousins that you haven’t seen in 10+ years? Some adult beverage consumption and spinning of yarns may have taken place into the wee hours of the morning, followed by a boat rental on the lake the next day to thoroughly test our fortitude. Good times. No…GREAT times!

Staying Local-ish

During our boat ride, we noticed several other camping areas with lakeside sites, so Keli found a great one and booked an awesome spot while we were still on the boat! This led us to make the decision to stay around the lake for the next few days and explore this wonderful area that is pretty close to home for us.

Payne’s Creek Campground

We’ve never stayed at a COE campground before but we follow several YouTubers who swear by them so we were kind of excited. The Army Corps of Engineers manages 8 campgrounds around the lake. The spot Keli found for us was at Payne’s Creek Campground and she scored site #24, which honestly is going to rank as one of, if not the, best spots we’ve found so far in our travels. Please remember we are new at this but holy crap, look at the screenshot below to get an idea of the location of this site.

You can walk out of your RV and in less than 10 steps your feet are going to be wet. The sky was overcast, so I didn’t get a lot of cool photos but here’s one more where I drank my coffee while watching bass break top water to grab their prey.

Watsadler Campground

Our next move led us to Watsadler Campground a few miles down the road from Payne’s Creek. The drive took us through the town of Hartwell, which is much smaller than you’d imagine but it really caught our attention so we parked on the side of the road and walked around.

The people we spoke with in the stores and brewery are just really nice folks. They really exemplify the friendly vibe you expect in a small southern town. The best part of the experience was not something we expected…and its food. Yes, food. You know we like our food and we don’t really eat a lot of food from restaurants but we’re damn glad we tried this…

OMG, these are the most delicious and most unique fried pickles I’ve ever had. Maybe its because I don’t like fried pickles. Well I’ve just been converted. House made and not a frozen, food service pickle chip poured out of a bag, these babies are real deal spears dipped in batter and soooooooooo good. We enjoyed these at the downtown brewery called Southern Hart Brewing Company and even if you’re not hungry or thirsty, you should stop in there anyway. You won’t be disappointed.

After our drizzly, spontaneous walkabout in town, we headed to and located our spot at Watsadler Campground. Now I didn’t do any research nor did I look at the map before saying this (because I’m lazy) but I’m pretty sure most of the sites at this campground are on the water, or at least very, very close to it. We had #17 at this one and it didn’t disappoint.

Stop #2 at a COE site: definitely worth it. They really found a way to raise the bar with these places by keeping a comfortable distance between sites and every site seems to fit in pretty naturally with the surroundings.

NOTE: All of these sites at the COE operated parks are water and electric only with a dump station near the entrance/exit. I personally like that because we usually don’t connect sewer at all until we’re ready to dump somewhere in the 5-7 day range.

Springfield Campground

If you’ve never heard of Google Maps, it’s a pretty cool app on your phone and computer that offers satellite imagery of places on the earth. I know, I know…I’m being facetious. We scoped out our site at Springfield Campground and located another spot on the water, on a point that looked like the first site at Payne’s Creek with lots of trees and and privacy and we assumed based on this data that it would be very similar.
Data can be wrong.

We arrived at the gate and spoke with the nicest camp host we’ve encountered to date. We now know all about her adventures with her hubby (a retired truck driver) since retirement as well as how folks come to be camp hosts through a variety of methods. I apologize to the folks waiting behind us at the gatehouse…

When we arrived at site #35, we were quickly reminded that google maps is not real-time. In fact, it appeared to not even be recent. Our expectations and reality parted ways. Apparently sometime in the recent past, a LOT of trees had been removed leaving the red clay shoreline and “natural” grasses exposed. The vibe was different here also. I don’t know for sure but I’m pretty sure there was a “camper” using his food trailer as a sleeping area a few sites down from us. Not cool. But he did give us some free boiled peanuts and we didn’t have any side effects.

But since we booked 2 nights there, we decided to enjoy it! The weather wasn’t great during the whole trip but something magical happened…

Keli landed her very first fish! It was a whopper! (Meaning it was about the size of a whopper candy.) We had a very relaxing couple of nights there fishing, cooking, eating, talking and really simply enjoying being away after the stresses of the last few months.

For those of you who are considering RVing as an alternative means of travel, try to remember a few things: you don’t have to fill your days with activities, which is very hard to do in our current situation. You are driving around in your home. Relax. Your stuff is with you wherever you go. Sometimes sitting under an awning by a lake while it rains is exactly what you need to do. Sometimes casting a line into the water and catching nothing is a fine way to let time pass. And sometimes accepting free boiled peanuts from a stranger in a campground turns out ok too.

Check out Keli’s video of our trip below!

The post Lake Hartwell, SC/GA – Family, Fried Pickles & Campground Hopping appeared first on RV Travel Blog.

Since all of our spring plans were cancelled due to some sort of virus thingy, we jumped at the first opportunity to bug out and head to a state that was open. That sounds ridiculous if you say it out loud. Jekyll Island, Georgia was the closest and most desirable, at least from our point of view. So we went!

We passed the entrance to Jekyll Island on Hwy 17 during the last leg of the Florida trip at the beginning of the year and put it on our list of reasonably close places to explore. So…we explored it.

The campground is located on the north end of the island, a good distance from town. Personally, I dig that. I like the fact that the campground sort of has its own area separated from the civilized folks. The island has 7 distinctly named beaches (or beach access areas?) around the coastline and some of them really are uniquely different from the others. Honestly I feel like they probably could’ve stuck with maybe 3 or 4 different names but I’m not in charge of things like that for obvious reasons. Nonetheless, Keli insisted we visit EVERY SINGLE ONE of them…and Keli always wins…

If you click on the map below, you’ll open up the larger version and you can see that the road on the island basically takes you around the circumference, at least as much as the marsh will allow, and there are biking trails that more or less follow the same route.

As you know (because you diligently consume every word we write) we have a small RV so we can quickly unhook from a campsite and drive it wherever we need to go. It’s small and maneuverable and we love it. However, on this expedition we decided to act like sane people and leave it parked at our campsite while we (finally!) utilized our electric bikes. This particular outing is the exact use case scenario that we used to rationalize the purchase of the electric bikes.

Jekyll island boasts 20+ miles of bike trails, so naturally we needed bikes with a form of propulsion other than slightly-more-than-middle-aged legs.
(I am of course speaking of myself and not my lovely Keli who will probably never look like she’s even close to approaching middle age.)

We really got to know our bikes on this adventure and I’ll probably have a separate post about them in the near future. They really saved us on Jekyll Island and ended up being close to if not THE perfect means of movement around the area.

Jekyll Island Beaches

So what about the beaches? Well, without being too overly verbose, I’ll try to keep the highlights to a digestible minimum.

The most recognizable beach on Jekyll Island just so happens to be the one that is closest to the campground and it is appropriately named Driftwood Beach.

So…yeah…Driftwood Beach is pretty much one of the most interesting beaches we’ve ever been to and as the tide comes and goes, the scenery changes completely. If you dig taking pictures, you will not get bored with this place. You can (and we did) walk or ride your bike from the main beach access point all the way north around the tip of the island to the fishing pier. The landscape will NOT leave you bored.

Essentially the entire east coast of the island is one, long continuous beach and with the exception of Driftwood Beach, the scenery is fairly typical throughout the rest of the island from what we experienced.

The 3 southernmost beaches, South Dunes, Glory and St. Andrews are noticeably quieter than the others, but you should take that with a grain of salt since there is a pandemic and many places are still completely shut down. I will say that we had a very peaceful moment at St. Andrews Beach when we spotted a group of dolphins leisurely swimming by in the brackish water about 100 yards from where we were sitting. Of course I didn’t have a long lens with me to capture it. My bad.

Beach Village, Golf Courses and Touristy Stuff

I’ll have to keep this brief because (as we all know) things are little odd right now and its not fair to talk about things without context. We all know what’s going on in the country. We all know its going to take a while to get back up to 100% open. With that being said, much of the touristy stuff was simply unavailable to us, including the museums and historic buildings on the west side of the island. Only a few restaurants were open, we have no idea about the golf because we never even laid eyes on a fairway or clubhouse, about half of the shops were open in beach village, and I’m really unsure if any of the major hotels/resorts were open at all. To say it was quiet might be a HUGE understatement…but I’m not complaining. How often do you get to hit a popular destination like this with great weather and empty beaches?

On a side note, the campground was NOT empty. Not even close.

There is an interesting argument to be made regarding the social distancing stuff and RV life but I have no dog in that fight so I’ll leave it alone. I will say this: being fully self contained in our little rig with the ability to drive, cook, communicate, sleep, shower and poop without coming into contact with other humans begs, perhaps, a little more consideration in these scenarios.

Fails

Since we began our RV travels with, by all measures, an incredibly successful experience, we naturally assumed we had it all figured out and this short jaunt would be cake. Well…I screwed up a few things.

Surprisingly, Rechargeable Batteries Need Chargers

Since I am a red-blooded American male, I naturally always adopt the “Be Prepared” motto from the Boy Scouts. I am the guy who is always overprepared with everything…always…redundancy rules! So when I busted out my giant, 25 year old camera bag and began stuffing it to the gills with almost everything photo related that I own for this 4-day trip, (2 camera bodies, 4 batteries, 5 lenses, filters, tripod, etc. (Overkill???)) something didn’t get included…a battery charger.

Funny thing: digital cameras really like electricity stored in their batteries or they won’t take pretty pictures. I survived and chided myself repeatedly almost daily…after searching through every bag I brought along at least 3 times. Fail.

Laptop Computers Also Like To Be Charged

That’s right folks, yours truly ALSO somehow neglected to include a power cable to charge ye olde laptop that joined me on this trip. Oh I thought I had everything figured out for this RV adventure. I had the photo gear and the computer gear so I could start this blog post and really stay on top of things. Fail.

Food? I Screwed Up Food Too?

For reasons I can’t explain (my age?) we didn’t really bring a decent variety of food on this trip and I kinda ruined our bread. I’m not sure how it happened. I mean…after the last 2 months of not being able to eat at restaurants, I know I’m a master chef now, so how did I botch this?

Answer: one stupid recipe faux pas (caused completely by me) that lasted throughout our trip. I normally make a loaf of sandwich bread that is just fantastic and a batch of hamburger buns about once a week. Since I screwed up the recipe, our sandwiches sucked and the burgers weren’t great on the buns. It sullied our culinary experiences. We should’ve just bought regular bread and moved on , but nooooooooo!!! We HAD to use the CRAPPY bread so it wouldn’t go to waste. AND to add insult to injury, I tried to cook something brand new on the trip and that failed spectacularly also.

Here’s a tip:
DON’T TRY TO COOK NEW THINGS WHEN ON A SHORT RV TRIP!
STICK TO THE CRAP YOU KNOW! YOUR CAMPGROUND NEIGHBORS WILL LOOK AT YOU FUNNY WHEN THEY HEAR YOU SWEARING AT YOUR GRILL!
Fail.

Final thoughts

Despite the goofs on my part, Jekyll Island is a fantastic place to visit. Since it is somewhat close to us, it will probably be on our short list of quick getaways when time is a limiting factor. It has a very diverse landscape and a LOT of beach on its coastline. You could go bird watching along the marsh on the north end of the island or find a monstrous expanse of deserted beach on the south end. If fishing, horseback riding or golf are more your style, that’s available as well. I personally find it quite intriguing that Jekyll Island has so much to offer and they offer it with great respect for the ecosystem and environment.

This is not your typical over-commercialized beach area with huge hotels enormous parking lots and resorts every 7 feet, Jekyll Island integrates a few residential areas and commercial areas that exist within the confines of what make the Island so unique and desirable in the first place. I certainly wish more places would follow that philosophy.

Check out Keli’s video of our experience:

The post Jekyll Island, GA – 7 Beaches and Several Mistakes appeared first on RV Travel Blog.

So, obviously we haven’t posted anything in a while. Sometime shortly after we finished our inaugural 10-day road trip we wrote about here, we had to terminate an employee who (we discovered too late) was so unbelievably bad at her job that we had to do damage control for weeks afterward. Of course we were also looking for a new candidate to fill that position as well so we put off the travel plans we had lined up. We found a very, very good candidate and began the training process until…something called a Coronavirus happened.

I’m not going to go too deep into talking about the pandemic thingy because we’re all in uncharted waters and have no idea where we will end up at this point. All I can say for certain is that we’ll remember this for a long time and I’m glad we weren’t full-timing in our RV with no home base to hunker down in. I feel for all of you out there trying to figure out where to stay next and looking for toilet paper. There might be a surge in bidet sales for RVs after this, if there even is such a thing…

During this productive time of business repair and plague lockdown, we have done a LOT of cleaning (of everything) and prepping the rig for a departure sometime in the unquantifiable future. Since we returned from our 10-day adventure at the beginning of January and since we live someplace that does get cold, we winterized after unpacking. I prefer the compressed air method just because I don’t like the thought of chemicals in the water lines. No big deal. We did it the same way in the fall. This time as we were dewinterizing and getting her ready to high tail it to the nearest anyplace else as soon as this crap is over, something different happened. Something wet happened.

I’m a procedures guy. I’m a VERY linear-thinking procedures guy. I’m also pretty mechanically inclined. I’m not the least bit afraid to take stuff apart, figure out how it works and repair or replace whatever that stuff is. My brain catalogs that junk in a place that I can easily recall later. I might forget the names of my kids but by golly I can rebuild a carburetor that I haven’t seen since 1993. So when I started opening up water lines and flushing out the system in our beautiful, newly cleaned home on wheels, I was completely baffled when no water came out of 2 of the 3 water distributing devices on the rig. BAFFLED! Shower faucet: perfectly fine. Bathroom faucet: nada. Kitchen faucet: bone dry.

Being the confident American male that I am, I told Keli to read the damn owners manual while I keep looking critically at things I don’t know the names of with hopes that an intimidating stare will simply unbreak whatever is broken. She informed me that part of the procedure was to fill the fresh water tank and try using the water pump to send liquid to the sinks. That linear-thinking brain I was talking about earlier couldn’t fathom a logical reason why that would make any difference whatsoever, but I relented and flipped the valve to fill the tank. I waited. When it was full I went in and tested the pump method of water delivery to confirm I was right all along and the stupid owners manual is crap.

The next series of events felt a lot like three stooges episodes I remember as a kid. Water was most certainly being distributed, but not out of a sink. It was flowing freely from under the corner of the bed, which, coincidentally and curiously (I’d like to speak with your engineers), is exactly where the electrical panel is located. Keli was not in the RV. So here I go grabbing towels to throw down on the floor, running around to the back of the RV to unplug shore power, running back in the cabin to see what I can take apart quickly to determine where the hell the water decided to flow from that is clearly NOT a specified location in the owners manual.

There’s this new thing I learned about in RVs that looks like this:

According to the stupid manual, this thing is supposed to be checked, cleaned, maintained, blah, blah, blah…regularly and IF YOU’RE USING COMPRESSED AIR TO CLEAR YOUR LINES YOU SHOULD REMOVE THE BOTTOM BOWL SO YOU DON’T DAMAGE IT AND CAUSE A LEAK.
Stupid manual.

Do you have any idea what kind of idiots go to the camping store to buy a stupid water strainer they just broke in the middle of a pandemic?
Me neither.

Our leisurely day of cleaning and prepping our beloved mini-coach with starry eyed anticipation of the next voyage morphed into tools and RV parts and foul language scattered everywhere with panels removed, wet towels and tiny fans shoved into nooks and crannies while we crawled around attempting to dry out all the things that were never meant to have to be dried out.

New strainer installed, water tank filled (again), lines tested, little fans blowing into moistened RV nether-regions, water hose attached and live… kitchen faucet test: nothing. Bathroom faucet: same.

Do you know what other things RVs have that we discovered that day?
Faucet screens.

Do you know what faucet screens do?
They catch crud.

Do you know what we found in the strainer that some moron blew up and flooded the RV?
Crud.

Do you know what happens when faucet screens catch a bunch of crud? They don’t let water through.

Just read the stupid manual.

Happy camping and everyone stay safe out there!

The post Life, Pandemics and the Beginners Guide on How to Flood Your RV appeared first on RV Travel Blog.

Pilot + Co-Pilot = Flexibility

YouTube is a really cool thing. We’ve learned a ton from RVers on there and we still follow several of them. Now when we watch some of these solo travelers I am really bummed for them because I can’t fathom how they can be quite as flexible as what we just experienced on our 10-day trip.

I suppose the aspect that made our trip so successful as a spontaneous, reservationless exercise was that there were two of us. I could focus on the driving and complaining while Keli looked at the potential stops along the way, estimated our arrivals and called places to find us a patch of ground to park on for the night. I think traveling solo would take some of the fun out of that. Who would listen to me complain? But we’re newbies so its still all exciting and fun.

The takeaway here is that RVing as a couple or simply with someone else who can help is really the way to go versus traveling solo.

RV Gastronomy

We like to eat. Honestly we like to eat what we cook more than we like to eat what other people cook for us which is funny because we are not chefs…and we don’t even pretend to really know what we’re doing in the kitchen most of the time. Our stationary home has (obviously) way more flexibility than our home on wheels so right out of the gate we knew it would take some planning and adjustment.

We’ll probably do an entire post (or maybe ongoing series) on this topic sometime in the future but the bottom line here is that we totally surprised ourselves with what we were able to accomplish with food on this trip.

I think it is only fair to discuss briefly here what we actually eat so we can put this all in context. If you read the Day 10-recap post, you’ll remember that we only ate out twice on the whole journey. Add one more meal where we had a weak moment in a greek bakery and brought spanikopita back to our RV (we should’ve brought a LOT more back).

So here’s what our normal breakfast consists of every single day of our lives, RV or home: coffee, bacon, eggs and orange juice OR coffee, sausage links, pancakes and milk. How easy is that? We both agree that buying breakfast ANYWHERE is just about the biggest waste of food money, bar none! We make damn good breakfast, too.

Lunch was always variable because we were usually moving during that time of day. It might be PB&J with chips or warmed up black bean and rice burritos that we made at home and brought along or various lunch meat sandwiches. Simple, quick and easy cleanup was the rule of the day on lunches. I will tell you when you’re looking out your door at a quiet, secluded coastline, just about everything you put in your mouth tastes better.

Dinners were more interesting because we were pretty much always set up somewhere and could bust out some ingredients and the flat top griddle outside. Now we’re getting fancy with burgers, fried potatoes and onions, local shrimp, reheating tamales we’d brought, etc., etc… We never felt an ounce of remorse for our food choices. In fact, our normal non-mobile life works pretty much the same way…we’ll make a bunch of food on the weekends and eat it all week for meals! So this worked the same way.

Here are some photos of our basic setup inside and the gear we decided to bring to cook outdoors while in camp.

Nothing crazy. Nothing earth-shattering.

The only thing we need to figure out is how to use the convection oven part of the microwave more effectively. It seems there is some sort of specific sequence of button presses equivalent to nuclear launch codes or memorizing 128 bit encryption passwords in order to really use the oven the way it is intended. I wish engineers would understand that people who do their own cooking are not smart people and we much prefer something with a simple knob and an on/off button at most. Mrs. Coppolillo from my geometry class will be more than happy to confirm that me and quadratic equations are not compatible in the same universe no matter how many times I had to take that damn class and my *%$#*% oven shouldn’t be that complicated.

Anyway…

We came home with more than enough food left over to stay on the road another 10 days without eating out at all. I call this one a big win!

It’s Not as Scary as You Think

Embarking on a trip like this with virtually zero experience was scary. I’ll just go ahead and admit it. That also meant it was incredibly exhilarating and unexpectedly, very freeing.

I’m sure that sounds contradictory when you hear me talk about being mentally exhausted from driving, etc., but I’m not sure I’m smart enough to pick the right words to make it make sense. We were living day by day on this trip. We had a vague idea of what our plan kinda might look like but we had to decide the night before or the same morning which way we were going to go, approximately where we would like to end up for the night, and sometimes what we wanted to see along the way. When is the last time you lived like that? For me personally its the kind of mindset that I remember when I was a teenager in the summertime before cell phones.

Get up at 11:00ish, maybe clean yourself off, maybe call a friend on the phone to see if they’re home, maybe you end up going on a hike in the forest, maybe you end up hanging out at someone’s house talking about their newfangled CD player in their car, maybe you end up driving around aimlessly until you end up at the mall hoping to meet girls…basically all the kind of stuff I yell at my teenager about so he doesn’t think this is how life is supposed to be when you’re an adult.

Maybe the real truth is that us adults have got it all wrong and we could learn a little something from our past selves or from our offspring about how to really live in the moment again.

Don’t tell him I said any of that.

Hit us up on the contact page if you want us to elaborate on something that we know very little about, just say “hi” or tell us how we’re doing it all wrong!

The post Lessons Learned from Our First Real RV Trip – Part 2 appeared first on RV Travel Blog.

They Sell That Sh*t There

One of our concerns was whether or not we brought the right clothing for this trip. Since we are newbies, we really didn’t know what to expect…and not really knowing where we might end up was part of the challenge (and a lot of the fun)!

I view our RV as a big backpack when I think about packing clothing, I only want to bring what is extremely functional, lightweight and versatile but covers a lot of scenarios. Since we knew we’d be heading to warmer climes (hopefully), we didn’t need much in the way of warm clothing so we pretty much kept that to a base layer system, a fleece sweater and a down jacket. I brought along 3 pairs of “outdoor” pants…2 of which have the zip off legs (aka: dad-pants), and a couple pairs of shorts. Keli’s lineup was pretty much identical in this area except maybe she had a couple more sweaters. Also, it IS possible to wear pants and shorts more than once without washing them. I’ve done it. Nothing bad happened.

Non-negotiable: socks, underwear and (mostly) t-shirts can only be worn once unless you’re on a thru-hike or stranded on a desert island…and we weren’t. If you disagree, I don’t care. I have limits. We just lasted for 10 days in our RV and never had to do laundry. However, since I only own 7 pairs of my favorite socks, compromises had to be made and other socks had to be brought into the game. I survived.

Keli actually packs lighter than I do but I blame that on me being practically twice her size so it doesn’t count…and I don’t want her to be better than me. She does, however have some dedicated RV clothing which includes socks that permanently live in the RV and athletic clothing that is made to be worn repeatedly without washing…so I guess she is better than me…

Footwear is a challenge for me personally and I don’t know why. Flip-flops, running shoes, hiking shoes, hiking boots and “water shoes” were all in my inventory. That seems ridiculous. I’m pretty sure the hiking boots will be left behind on the next trip to beachy places…and the water shoes seemed pointless until we needed them and then they were great! So I need to possibly find a way to combine the flip-flops and water shoes into one item… Keli’s loadout was similar except she left the hiking boots at home, so she wins again.

Keli’s uncle laid some truth on us when we were visiting recently and we were reminded again just before we hit the road:

“They sell that sh*t there”

Keep that phrase in mind the next time you’re packing for a trip and the stress of forgetting things is getting to you.

Paper maps are cool

If you’re opposed to things printed on paper and want to rely solely on digital stuff, I think you’re doing yourself a disservice. A road atlas should be one of the first things you acquire if you want to do any traveling at all… and if you’re over 40 you probably want to pick up a magnifying glass to go along with it.

Most, if not all, of our travel decisions on this trip began with looking at the road atlas. We have one that was given to us and it’s the giant, spiral bound monstrosity with the entire country in it, state by state with magnified insets of larger cities. You can’t pinch to zoom and please don’t ask how I know that. There is something far different about looking at a big paper map than looking at a 7 inch screen to plan a general route. It just works better and I’m pretty sure it can also be used as a leveling block for your RV. I’m kidding.

Individual state road maps are good if you really need to see ALL of the little roads that can’t be printed on the map we have. But…that’s what we use the GPS and Google Maps for. So far we feel like we have a great navigational toolbox at our disposal and I would not recommend leaving the paper maps nor the electronic versions out of the equation. And speaking of electronical stuff, we use the Garmin RV 770-LMT-S GPS unit and for the most part we are very satisfied with it. We may like it more or less if/when we ever really learn how to use more of the features offered so we’ll keep you posted. We bought it because it is specifically made to keep your RV’s specs (height, width, length, etc) in it’s little brain and prevent you from doing stupid things in your RV without at least some notification that you’re on your own with the decision you’re about to make.

200 miles per day is the magic number

We picked the 200 mile travel day number somewhat arbitrarily but not without some educated (and decidedly inexperienced) thought processes. The reality of this is probably something more along the lines of aiming for about 4 hours of driving per day. Let me explain…

Driving our RV (even though it is pretty small) is tiring…mostly mentally. If we’re on a major highway, I’m trying to keep up with traffic and not get blown into another lane by passing semis. If we’re not on a primary road I’m always looking for low-hanging branches, wires, etc. as well as watching my lane position. Since our goal with purchasing a smaller RV was to explore places we couldn’t access in a larger RV, this happens quite a lot. It wears me out. I’ve heard other RVers talk about a 330 rule…driving no more than 330 miles per day or being finished driving by 3:30 in the afternoon. I totally understand that now. By 3:30, I’m mentally shot.

The other great thing about our 200 mile per day goal is that it gives us a lot of flexibility for how the day can unfold. We aren’t rushed to get breakfast going or break camp, we know we can stop at whatever sign/attraction/beach strikes our fancy and we can usually be at whatever camping spot we end up in by 5:00 pm, which is apparently when most of them really WANT you to be there.

Naturally this could change in the future or depending on the nature of the trip, but for our 10 day excursion into Florida, it worked beautifully for us.

The post Lessons Learned from Our First Real RV Trip – Part 1 appeared first on RV Travel Blog.

Since I didn’t want to make your eyes bleed with more terrible photos, I decided to make your eyes bleed with more words. I also didn’t feel it was necessary to write a post about the boring journey home from Savannah. There was nothing whatsoever interesting about it.

• We traveled 1,922 miles in our 10 day journey.
• We stayed only 1 night in every location except Fort De Soto Park.
• The only reservations that weren’t for that same day were for Fort De Soto Park Campground…and those were 24 hours in advance.
• We ate only 2 meals NOT in our RV with food we prepared ourselves (except for the spanikopita Keli bought in Tarpon Springs).
• We really didn’t need our bicycles at all on this trip.
• We tried to limit our travel to right around 200 miles per day.
• We didn’t have any issues getting our RV anywhere we wanted to go, but we also don’t do stupid things with it.

Since we are fairly new at this RVing thing, we really wanted to make this trip happen to get a feel for the experiences and places and challenges that come with this mode of travel. I can honestly say this was the only trip I can remember where we both agreed that we legitimately did not want to stop. We learned a lot about where we would want to spend more than a day or two. We learned a lot about how to eat quite well in our RV (Hint: its pretty much the same as eating well at home). The trip sparked some conversations about how we could do it again and spend a lot less on campgrounds and fuel but even those costs were much less than if we’d stayed at hotels.

The bottom line is that this trip was ultimately an experiment to see if we could pull it off and how it looked logistically. We now know that we could pretty much stay on the move continuously if we wanted to do that and soak up as many miles as we could stand without worrying too much about where to park for the night or how to manage our tanks. We were also pretty surprised to learn that we didn’t need our bikes as much as we thought. We do have e-bikes that we’ll be bringing along once I solve a small safety issue during transport. So all in all this was 100% a success from pretty much every single viewpoint. I will now get upon my soapbox and proclaim to the world: I AM AN RVer! And so is Keli!

The post Day 10 – Savannah to WNC – Recap appeared first on RV Travel Blog.

I know I’m not a super fan of old, historical monuments like forts but I felt like we should probably spend a whopping $2.50 each and go see the damn fort…and Keli needed a magnet for the fridge…

After the fort, we went over to the Atlantic side of the park to check out the beach area there. You’ll never guess what we found…

If you’re wondering whether or not we got a late start that day, we most certainly did. We were also a pound heavier with sea shells…

Once we finally put rubber on road, we continued north out of Florida to…well…we weren’t quite sure at that point so we made some decisions along the way. We couldn’t find a spot to overnight on Jekyll Island so that was out. We didn’t really think we had the time frame to island hop on the Georgia coast and we didn’t want to only do Charleston for one night. That led us to Savannah…and not a lot of great pics to share with you folks…for reasons I can’t explain…

Savannah has RV only parking spots at their visitor center which I really appreciate and it only costs $20(!) which I do not. Evidently you used to be able to park overnight there but that is no longer the case since there are many signs stating that quite clearly. Hopefully you can afford to eat a snack after cashing out your 401k to park your RV in such a prime location. But I digress…

As usual, we wish we’d had more time to spend walking around Savannah because it is such an awesome place. I’m sure we’ll be back there again. Keli found us a site at Skidaway Island State Park so we made our way over there for the last night of our southern escapades. We don’t have any pictures of the campground because we suck.

Tomorrow we head back home…

The post Day 9 – Fernandina to Savannah appeared first on RV Travel Blog.

If I had to choose a recurring theme for our Florida adventure up to this point, I’d have to say it would certainly have to include an apparent lack of people at the beaches. What the heck are all of those campers doing at the campground? I don’t know but they aren’t at the beach…

The north beach area at Fort De Soto Park is big. Like really, really, really big. I’m guessing we were there at low tide or something and that exposed the sand bar right off of the main beach which made it even bigger. We walked a loooong way north out on the sand bar and then back again. Our watches told us that we had walked about 3.4 miles. That’s kinda crazy to me but I guess that is why they have enough parking there for all of the residents of Pinellas county.

Another cool part about the north beach area: SHELLS!!!

There were quite a few shells to be found at this beach. Most notable were the sand dollars. Disclaimer: we live in the mountains and although we have been to quite a few beaches, we probably have no idea what real shelling looks like or what to do if we actually did see it. Keli had fun and spent a lot of time finding sea shells. That’s all that matters.

Wait a minute…FORT De Soto? Yes, there’s a fort.

So…Fort De Soto was built by some people a long time ago to defend against something that was probably going on at that time and blah, blah, blah…I’m not a history buff and not all that intrigued by old forts beyond the fact that they do seem to exist in prime locations and governments typically buy them and turn them into parks for public access. So…yay old forts!

It was a good day. It is a fantastic place that I have to recommend to anyone traveling to the area. If you like to roam in your RV, please make sure this is on your list.

The post Day 6 – Fort De Soto Park appeared first on RV Travel Blog.

Somewhere around Spring Hill on Hwy 19, Florida turns into one continuous strip mall all the way south until maybe somewhere around Cuba…but we didn’t go that far so I cannot confirm.

We did hop over to 19A and discovered a wonderful little touristy place called Tarpon Springs.

I’m not going to give you a history lesson or handbook entry to Tarpon Springs because it very obviously has it’s own marketing campaign. What we didn’t realize, and that we learned from a bartender in a small, new brewpub is that Tarpon Springs is almost an entirely Greek community with generations of history in that one location. We found a little Greek bakery down a side street and left with a few goodies to enjoy later. We kinda wished we hadn’t had lunch in the RV before stopping because we both love Greek food and there is NO shortage of dining options in Tarpon Springs. Also, if you hadn’t noticed, the sponge scene is pretty popular. I guess that’s the big draw…along with the touristy shops. It is also worth noting that there are a few RV parking spots in the first paid parking lot when you arrive at the town. Our RV fit perfectly and the lot attendant was thankful we parked correctly and didn’t take 4 (!) spots like another RVer down from us. Please be courteous with your RV parking. Tarpon Springs is a very cool town with lots more to see and of course, we’ll be back. I’m pretty sure Keli would make me drive all the way back there just for more Spanikopita!

Leaving Tarpon Springs, we headed south on Hwy 19 again to the only destination where we had made reservations the day before arrival. Again, we really lucked out and landed a 2-night stay at Fort De Soto Park Campground. After much discussion, we decided this was to be our southernmost point on this particular voyage and we wanted to have a day off to just relax. We scored site #208 at the campground which is waterfront AND right next to the bathhouse…again! The only gripe I have is, as you can see below, there is no actual view of the water. But considering the park was completely sold out and somehow we just happened to find a spot while looking at their online system the night before, I’m not complaining.

Fort De Soto is not a state park but is operated by Pinellas County and they run a very nice park. The entire island is the park and as you can see below, the campground is on a part that is a few miles away from the beach.

We rode our bikes a little that night but since we’d had a pretty full day of driving and exploring Tarpon Springs, we just relaxed, knowing we had the next full day of nothing but enjoying this location.

If you are considering this park and campground, which you absolutely should, try to get a site number before #207. They seem to have clear views of the water which would’ve been the cherry on top of this park for us. You can also zoom in on google maps while looking at the campground map on another screen and get a really good idea of which spots are prime!

The post Day 5 – Yankeetown to Fort De Soto appeared first on RV Travel Blog.