We made it! Our “sticks and bricks” home sold and we are officially living in our RV full time. Our first big trip will be down to Texas to visit Natalie’s family for the holidays. The trip will be 3000 miles round trip. It will definitely allow us time to break in the RV and learn a bit about what we are getting ourselves into.
12/21/14
We started our epic road trip today. Already we are learning stuff. We packed up the RV, double checked everything using a checklist app, put the key in the ignition and….nothing. The coach battery and chassis battery were dead. They are two separate systems. How could they both be dead? We ended up plugging the coach back in until the battery was charged up enough to start. I was worried the the converter was not working properly, so I figured we would have to keep an eye on battery levels. We have Coach-Net which is a road side assistance for RVs. We were connected to a tech and after our chat I was pretty convinced that I unplugged the coach early in the morning causing the battery to drain. Plus, we left the key in “Accessory” for several hours which drained that battery.
Lesson of the Day: Include “unplugging the shore power” as one of the final steps for breaking down/ taking off in the RV.
12/22/14
We didn’t make it as far as we would have liked due to our battery mishap yesterday, but we stumbled upon a happy accident. We ended up staying at Meteor Crater RV Park. It is located in Arizona right next to a giant meteor crater if you couldn’t guess. The crater was pretty awesome.
The crater was a blast, but we got a late start again today due to sight seeing. We did make it to New Mexico where we decided to sleep at a truck stop. It dropped to 23 degrees and snowed while we were asleep. Unfortunately, the heater had to run constantly so the battery had died about 3 hours before we woke up. It was nice and frigid when we got out of bed. I was smart and turned the coach battery off so there was no chance of drain on that.
Lesson of the Day: If its really cold, the generator will have to be fired up for a bit in the middle of the night. Also, truck stops are awesome places if you just need to grab a bite to eat and sleep.
12/23/14
We woke up early from the truck stop and hit the road. Our goal was to get a good 400 to 500 miles today. It was a long 10 hour driving day.
Lesson of the Day: Subsequent driving days should have a maximum of 6 hours.
12/24/14
We made it to Mission, TX! The people at the Circle T RV Park met us with “Hellos” and offerings of booze for the holidays. These people know how to party. We will put a review of this park on our Parks Reviews page.
