All six Martins left home yesterday at 5:00 a.m to start our spring break vacation in Florida.  I planned on a long leg of the drive today (about 12 hrs of driving) and hoped we would get as far as Atlanta. 

The drive didn’t go quite as fast as we had hoped.  There were lots of stops.  Some stops were to check the kayaks or adjust the tie downs.   The Highlander only goes about 130-150 miles before needing gas when towing so we stopped every 2 hours for gas.  We stopped for breakfast and dinner too. 

We also can’t go as fast as other cars, especially up and down the hills in Tennessee.  There was the time zone change to consider as well.  We stopped for the day in Chattanooga at about 9pm.  Accounting for the time change, that was about 15 hours including the stops.  

Part way through our drive we noticed that one of the tail lights on our camper lost its cover and would need replacing.  We added this to the list for tomorrow.

The kids were troopers and never complained about the ride.  We listened to music and a few chapters of the Little House on the Prairie audiobook.  They slept a bunch.  They played and talked. 

Nole drove about 8.5 of the hours and I drove about 4.5.  Near the end of our drive, I was still waffling about where to stay.  We are towing this hotel room on wheels so it seems wasteful to stay at a hotel.  Plus with 4 full-sized people and 2 three-quarter-sized people, it’s harder than it used to be to share one room in a hotel.

In the end, the desire for showers and swimming won and I reserved us one room with points.  Our camper doesn’t have water so there would have been no showers, a dicey toilet situation, and definitely no swimming. 

After a swim for the girls and showers for the guys, everyone settled in to sleep.  I was nervous about leaving the camper (along with our kayaks and a lot of our worldly belongings) in the hotel parking lot so I decided to sleep in the camper.  Because it was pretty mild all day, we hadn’t run the fridge/freezer in the camper so I also ran that overnight so everything would stay nice and cold.  The fridge runs off of propane when not hooked up to electric. 

We got everyone up at 6, ate the hotel breakfast and hit the road again by 7:00 a.m.  We guessed the 8.5 hour drive would probably take us more like 10.5 hours based on yesterday’s numbers and we didn’t want to get there after dark. 

The weather in Wisconsin last week was pretty cold so I didn’t de-winterize the camper before we left.  In winter, you have to put a drinking-water-safe antifreeze in the water lines so they don’t freeze and break. 

We stopped at a rest stop with water and sewer to rinse this antifreeze out.  That’s when we noticed we forgot part of the hot water tank at home.  The good news is the part was easily replaceable and we already had a planned stop at an RV store for that busted tail light we needed to replace.

We stopped for a long lunch and then stopped for the RV supplies and before we knew it we only had 2 hours left of our drive!  Then 1 hour!  Then we pulled in to our campground, found our spot, backed it in on the first try (way to go Nole!) and finished set up before dark. 

I made a late dinner (chicken and mac & cheese) and we were all in bed by 10:30.  We plan to do as little driving as possible tomorrow.