Another lesson we've learned

Before starting this grand adventure, we had done a lot of reading on the fulltime RV lifestyle and one of the suggestions we read several times was to be sure and make a checklist to cover everything you need to do before pulling out and starting to drive. This is suggested because you might get interrupted by a fellow camper dropping by, or you get in too much of a hurry, or you just stupidly totally miss something very obvious. Well, the latter is what happened to us. As we were getting ready to leave St. Louis on Tuesday, we had disconnected all the hoses, pulled in all the slides, and took the dogs for one last walk before we hit the road. What neither of us thought to do was make sure to close the big awning. STUPID! STUPID! STUPID! We were slowly (thank goodness) making our way through the campground when BANG! We managed to get it rolled back up with the help of our campground host and headed on our way. When we finally got to Orlando today, we stopped by Camping World and spent over $2,300.00 to get a new one ordered. Since we will be heading back through this way in mid-Oct., we scheduled the replacement work for that time. We also decided that this is what insurance is for, so our stupidity only cost us our $500.00 deductible.

We had planned to take 3 full days to cover the 1,032 miles from St. Louis to Disney World, while driving the last 70 miles on day 4. Our awning mishap changed those plans and we drove over 800 miles during the first 2 days, actually checking into a campground after dark on day 1, and arrived at Camping World a little after noon on Thurs. Thursday morning we had called ahead and reserved an additional night at Ft. Wilderness Campground in Disney World and managed to check in around 3pm on day 3. Checking in a day early really worked out well in that it allowed us an early start for our 10 days at Walt Disney World.

On this trip we finally figured out what our gas mileage was in driving over 32,000 pounds down the highway powered by a 340 HP Cummings diesel engine. Fearing the worse, we were pleasantly surprised that we averaged 7.8 miles per gallon over the first 850 miles of our trip. We were always told to expect somewhere between 6 and 8 miles per gallon so it was nice to see we were near the high end of the range.

We have also set our itinerary for the month of October. We will be leaving Disney World on Oct. 1 and spend two days near Lake Okeechobee in FL followed by three days at the Florida Keys about 50 miles from Key West. From there we will be heading to Ft. Myers for about a week and then back across the state to Titusville for ten days and hopefully see a shuttle launch during that stay. From there we will head across the panhandle to visit some friends near Ft. Walton Beach, and originally thought that we would be heading back to Baton Rouge around Nov. 1, but we are now considering staying in FL till Jan. 1. The main consideration for this change of plans is that we can stay for 3 months in FL for the price of 1 month in Baton Rouge! We didn't realize that Baton Rouge was a such a hot destination spot during the winter months. Go figure. We will let everyone know when our plans are firmed up because as it stands now, our last reservation is confirmed through Oct. 23.