Well, actually its Day 3 but my computer died for a couple of days. Mark says its the humidity. I say its Best Buy floor model lemon. Anyways, for the time being its working so I thought I'd share the adventures we had on our first long drive in the RV.
We left Brentwood around 7:30 Saturday morning with everything but the kitchen sink (oh, wait we do have a kitchen sink on the RV) and our 5 children and 2 extras that were catching a ride with us since they had a full car going already. Ben and I were driving the Yukon (couldn't bear the thought of being trapped in an RV "Resort" without a mode of transportation other than packing the house on wheels back up just to make a Wal-Mart run. To my dismay, Mark had me lead the way. Never fear, I had trusty Tim's directions to get us there with a 30 minute short cut (just keep reading).
Every thing was going just dandy. Ben and I had Mark Levine's new book playing on the iPod. We were doing a lot of "oh yea" and "amen's" when we hit the back up just south of Birmingham. We spent about an hour in stop and go but mostly in stop position. At one point Ben jumped out of the car and got in the RV so he could fix our lunch since Mom hadn't stopped to eat breakfast because she had to load just one more thing. About 5 minutes after Ben abandoned me, the traffic started moving and I was left alone until we stopped at a rest stop to finally eat.
After lunch and after mom did a quick pick up of the RV (did I mention that I'm the "everything has a place and everything should be in its place" kind of person?) we hit the road again. This time Ben was my navigator. Mark had mentioned that he wanted to get one more load of diesel before we got on the Alabama backroads so once off the interstate we had 2 choices of gas stations - neither of which carried diesel. The first little tiny station we came across had a big "we carry diesel" sign and plenty of room for Mark to pull in so we stopped and filled up both vehicles (well, after I waited about 5 minutes for a guy to get his behind out of my way because he was chatting with a car at the pump next to the only open pump and didn't seem to be in a hurry.
Once we left the station we were on our way and ready to see the beach. Ben was reading the directions one step at a time and I was doing my best to follow them (did I also mention I'm directionally challenged?) At one point Ben said we were to turn onto FL Hwy 4 but there was something I remembered he said before that. Well, we came to a FL Hwy 4 sign and had just a split second to decide if this was the way to go. I turned. Mark followed. It was about 4 seconds later that I realized this was the wrong decision. Unfortunately, it took us about 15 minutes before we could get to a place that Mark could turn the RV around (there went our 30 minute short cut).
This little mistake also meant that we would not reach our destination (Destin RV Beach Resort - remember that name because later I want to write about the differences between an RV Resort and an RV Park) before the 5pm closing time. (Did I mention this was our first trip in the RV and I was sure Mark wouldn't know how to hook everything up? Just one more thing to add to my long list of anxieties) Mark did call the Resort office and got the access code and instructions in route so at least I knew we wouldn't be camped out in a Wal-Mart parking lot that night.
About 5:05 we found ourselves finally going across the Bay Bridge just moments away from the Resort. Or so I thought. Mark, who is usually so good with directions, turned right onto Hwy 98 in Destin. Anyone who has been there knows what kind of traffic we were in. Mark was somewhere way ahead of me (he was leading by this time) when he realized he had turned the wrong way. I did a U turn and just wondered where in the world was Mark going to turn the land yacht around in that traffic. Ben and I found the turn off and waited for Mark to join us. Thankfully, we got the RV in our assigned spot and Mark did get everything hooked up just fine. That's about all I can get told now, more to fol....
2 comments:
This is almost too much - but please - DON'T STOP!!!
I can't wait for the next post, either! I think this is going to have to end up published as a book one day! :-) Between you all and the Smeltzers, you could get a sweet book deal!
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