Trip To Kentucky!

 This has been on our radar for some time.. 

In the midst of planning more things have been added ...

What started out as a small vacation has turned into a working vacay! 

A near and dear friend of ours has found the woman of his heart and is finally getting married, we have been invited to attend their wedding in Kentucky as well as be a part of the event itself. Well.. when you get that type of offer, how can you say no? 

Since, we had time to get all the traveling plans put together... I quickly made the list of when and where plus, linking options for us to take our RV and places we could park. 

Time quickly passed and Henry was informed that he had meetings to attend up in Quantico shortly after the Wedding, This had us considering all ways that we could get to the wedding and to his meetings without making issues of us rushing more then needing too.

We decided to make one full trip, a round about in a way from home base to Kentucky, then on to Quantico for his meetings then back to home base once more. This made more sense and was cost effective on us overall. 

Day of travel commenced and off we started, though we wanted to just sleep in a bit since we were not leaving till around 9am, the normal 4-5am rule didn't need to happen... or so we thought!! 

Like normal 4am kicked off and we woke up! 

Stumbled out of bed.. straight to the coffee machine, no coffee, no working.. not functionality what so ever!

Well.. since we got all the stuff done way early, we sat down, had breakfast and chilled till it was time for us to close up the RV, hook-up and. go! 

All the drama began once we got onto the interstate.. no connection on my phone and my RV Tripwizard was not working.. no matter how many times I reset my phone and even re-installed my application stopped working and would not reset. 

The weather changed from a beautiful sunshiny day to heavy rains, the down pour continued all day and into the next. We were drenched from taking the dogs out, putting fuel into the truck, getting stuck and having to back the truck and RV out.. things kept getting complicated the longer the drive went on. 

Our Trucker or Big Rig GPS which we bought over a year ago put us on US 60, this left us on a path that was truly difficult to navigate in the rain. Tight curves, narrow roads with heavy foliage that had us in some areas driving down the center of the road.  One point the back end of the RV dipped off the road and into part of a ditch (luckily it didn't cause damage) but it did tear off the rear snap pad off of the passenger side landing pad, I do believe that the snap pad ended up protecting our landing gear from major damages.

After a full 13 hours we were overly tired, trying to find a place to stay, rv parks were either full, could accommodate unless we had made reservations days prior, truck stops were packed, some rest stops were closed or packed with not parking spaces to allow even us to tuck in. Desperate for a few hours of rest, located a Go Mart just across the street of a TA, The manager was nice enough to allow us to tuck in and rest. The following morning we headed back out on the road to continue what remained of our journey to Kentucky. 

The most difficult time we had trying to get into our final destination was that our trucker GPS as well as our truck GPS couldn't locate the address for the campground. We had to drop a pin and add the that information into our systems to finally locate it. Also, once you went into the campground you lost all cell services.. no signal! 

We got sick from getting wet and staying that way for hours, arriving for the wedding with a cough and fever were not a good plan for a couple who are starting out in life so, we didn't attend the pre-wedding adventures but, we did end up participating in the wedding before heading out to our next location.. for Henry's job.. in Quantico.

The first leg of the trip was only a few short hours drive.. and we had a nice spot that allowed us to quickly park, set up and rest. I was still fighting the cold that just didn't want to leave me, my poor husband had to do most of the heavy lifting on his own.. while still dealing with the last of his cold too. ugh this sucked!

The following morning we hit the road once more however, while on the interstate we were directed to turn off the road and to save an hour plus 57 miles or so on our drive, I thought we were being taking around road construction or maybe an accident, Henry thought about the time we would supposedly save so we took it. 

IT DIDN'T SAVE US TIME AT ALL!!!!!

We ended up on US 33.. Not a road you want to be on with a 45ft RV when attached to our truck puts us at nearly 51ft in length plus the added height of 13.6ft. For countless hours we heard on the GPS.. tight curve ahead, 7% grade..9%grade..Sharp Incline..Roll Over Warning..this added nearly 5 more hours. If we were in a car, we would have had no issues as you could drive 55 miles per hour, in  our RV.. 20 to 25 was about all we could do! 

As we continued this journey.. we started to run short on gas, there were gas stations but we couldn't fit, they had ceilings that wouldn't accommodate our height, after nearly going empty we found one with a 13ft ceiling and tucked in just enough to get the truck in but kept the RV safe. 

Interesting fact was everyone and their mother came out of the woodworks and wanted to talk about our rv.. what kind was it, what was in it, can they look inside.. 

Normally we would be all about it however, we were tired, sick still and just wanted to get to our camp site. Plus.. our RV was sticking out in the way of others so, I was playing directional operator, guiding drivers around our rv so, we didn't get hit and others didn't get hit either.  It was a complete mess.. but, after filling up our truck we got back on the road and made it to our next campsite. 

This was just another stop over till we arrived in Quantico.. 

Sadly Henry had to work and my fever still hadn't abated .. so while he worked I slept. 

The touristy things I was going to do while there was not going to happen sadly.. 

Before I knew it.. it was time to once again get on the road and head back to Virginia Beach. 

Through the traffic jams. road construction and the Elizabethan Tunnel, we made it home no worse for ware.. life is good after all. 

From this travel we learned much..

1. Double check all application updates so, they don't attempt to update in the middle of your travel and get stuck.. 

2. Contact your bank before travel so, they know that out of state charges are along your destination are valid and don't freeze your card.

3. Make sure you GPS systems have the current maps and travel preferences for the area your are traveling through, that means for every state you might need to change them to avoid road patterns that are not safe for you and the RV, even if its an RV safe GPS. 

... 

Like I said before, with every travel we have seemed to learn many new things and with this one it was a doozy! 

Take care and Enjoy what's in front of you!

Robyn