As a full time travelers we can travel around and kind of avoid weather that we don’t like. It all started with avoiding the winter, so what is the best place to avoid the winter in the United States?
Depature
Florida has pretty much everything we needed to stay warm, enjoy the weather, have fun and visit friends. We’ve been planning this, as you know, for a long time. So how did we actually get here? Our original plan was to leave on October 11th, 2019 and make our way down the East Coast to Florida. However, it didn’t really work out that way. We had to finish a lot of things and ran into several delays. We had to sell the house, sell the cars, start a business, and finalize some other important tasks. Therefore, we ended up leaving on November 11th, which is exactly a month from our original departure date
Our plan
We wanted to walk through NYC, play at the casinos of NJ, see the monuments of DC and explore South. However, it didn’t quite go to plan. Instead we had to rush through the East Coast as fast as we could, because the weather. It got very cold all the way down to northern Florida. We really wanted to slow down and explore what was near us. However, we couldn’t. So we had to remind ourselves, that we can always come back later and see things during the warmer weather.
The only place we did take time to see was the Chesapeake Channel Tunnel, it was right on our way and we couldn’t miss it.
Repair
There was one stop that we couldn’t avoid. As full time travelers we are very dependent on our vehicle. Our beautiful truck had been having an engine miss and it was very uncomfortable to drive. Every time we would accelerate, you would feel hesitation and bucking. Was it safe to drive? Yes. Was it comfortable? Not at all. This issue was pushed to the top of our list, because we will be spending hours and days driving our truck.
We ended up going to a Ram dealership in Rhode Island, where we bought the truck originally. They were nice enough to diagnose the problem, log it into Ram’s warranty system and offered to fix it. We would have been happy to get it fixed right then and there, however, they didn’t have a loaner car for us and the repair would have taken at least three days. Living in the truck camper means that the camper is sitting on the bed of the truck and without the truck it’s very difficult to move.
We didn’t have an option of camping at the dealership because they didn’t have room for us, and without a loaner car we would have been stuck someplace without transportation and without an exact timeline for the repair. So the decision was made to be sure that our warranty case was in the system and that we could go to any dealership and have the repair done there.
Coming up with a new plan
Therefore, our new plan was to find a campground close to a dealership where we could unload the camper for at least a week. And this would buy us time just in case the repairs took longer than originally expected. Unfortunately, forecast for the next 10 days was looking very cold for the entire East Coast and the only place that looked warm enough for comfort was Florida. So we started to make some calls to Ram dealerships in hopes of finding someone that could fix the truck ASAP and a campground in close proximity. After quite a bit of calling and dead ends, we found exactly what we needed. In addition, we setup a warranty appointment as well as booked our stay at a nearby campground. Now, we had a schedule to keep and that changed everything that we had originally planned.
On our way down to Florida, we ended up boondocking at Cracker Barrel and staying overnight
at a Boondockers Welcome site.
This spot has been rated as one of the greatest and quietest places in the area we were. In addition the host had a large plot of land, designated just for Boondockers Welcome!
Cracker Barrel has been our go-to boondocking stop for single nights, since they allowed overnight RV parking 99% of the time
In conclusion, it took us five days to drive from New Hampshire to Florida. There was no point in stopping someplace for a long time, because it was cold and we wanted to fix the truck as soon as we could. Also, we figured out how many stops we needed to make to meet our new schedule and tried to see as many things along the way as we could. However, the new plans didn’t leave much time for exploration. It was exciting to be on the road foe the first time and be true full time travelers!