Travel Day
The time has arrived! It is time to pack up and move to our next stop.
This adventure has been quite stressful for Gary. We have had to call an RV repair man in the first month ($195 to take the call, and $75 a half an hour once on site). Gary has also repaired at least two leaks in the first month. One of the things keeping him up at night (literally) was the possibility the slides would fail because we are not level.
(The cement blocks helped but the back one had sunk until the block was level with the ground.)
We decided to start packing a day early and pull the slides in the night before we were traveling. I started taking down all of my décor and putting the house plants and other loose items in milk crates for travel. Everything has to be battened for travel day.
We picked out our clothes for that evening and for travel day. I even packed a reachable bin with travel snacks. While my closet is accessible when the RV is closed, none of the dresser drawers are accessible. Neither is my pantry.
Praise Report. The slides worked. The space is tight with the slides in but doable. Would I want to love that tight permanently? No. But for pre travel day prep, it is fine.
Friday night we had dinner with friends and then went to say goodbye to the local grandkids. We had ice cream cones with Reddi whip and did Valentines crafts and somehow the goodbyes were not terrible. Neither did I cry all night, just the five miles home. ☹
The next morning we were up super early. I guess travel jitters? I made a huge breakfast and we did the final prep. We had asked Austin, our awesome landlord, to help with the tow dolly. I was super nervous about loading the car. I didn’t want to drive the car up the ramps, I didn’t want to watch nor direct Gary driving the car up the ramps. None of it!
So we waited for Austin to help us. As it turned out, this happened to also be the coldest day EVER in Alabama with winds that were like 100 miles an hour. Okay, maybe that is a bit dramatic BUT it was NOT pleasant outside.
We pulled front and hooked up the tow dolly. Austin came out to help Gary and HE directed Gary up the ramps onto the tow dolly. I did help with the safety chains and the tow dolly straps. What a process all of that is! BUT, it is all in the name of safety.
I did one last walk around the empty site and it was time to go. Austin filmed us driving out. She does look good!
Gary has said all along that driving a Class A would be totally doable for him because of all of his years driving truck. If it has a steering wheel, he has driven it. He drove concrete trucks and 18 wheelers and most recently John Deere tractors, lots of things.
Turns out driving a Class A is different. Gary literally held the steering wheel with BOTH hands most of the drive. Now, to be fair, it was an extremely windy day. You wouldn’t think that vehicle weighing over 30,000 pounds would be so easily moved by the wind, but it was.
Sometimes something rattled and I would look back and make sure there were no flying objects. At our first stop I did discover the water pitcher in the fridge was leaning. I moved it against the milk jug and wedged some items around it so it couldn’t do any more dancing in the fridge.
While stopped the first time we both took a potty break. We both enjoy morning beverages and like to stay hydrated. Further down the road I needed to tinkle, that is super funny while we are moving. But then, the ultimate, Gary had to go. It was a straight stretch on the road so I told him if he stood up, I could slip in under him….just kidding. That didn’t happen. But what did happen is Gary pulled into the center lane, the turn lane, in the middle of a 5 lane road. He put on the hazard lights and used the potty in the Rig and then we went on our way!
It was a very long day, even though we only traveled 280 miles. This will be our limit for travel days.
God did a super cool miracle that day as well, but it is time to wrap this up. More on the miracle another day!
photo cred: artofit.org