RV Road Trip 2013 | Time for a Change

Always one for surprises, although my husband and I had been planning this RV trip for a few months, we didn’t tell our son. This April vacation would have us out of town during Patriot’s Day and the Boston Marathon as well. My husband had really wanted to run in the marathon this year, but I convinced him that we needed this family vacation. More about that later. We have always wanted an RV road trip but we were never quite sure what kind of vehicle we actually needed. After doing a little research, and reading articles on sites like campingfunzone.com, we were able to make an informed decision. Apparently, most people use an inverter generator in an RV, too. After all, we live in an age of technology where being without electricity is an absurd thought. To be quite honest, with the amount of equipment that is indeed electrical that I use in everyday life, I can’t imagine going without either. You can find the best inverter generator at Lawn Garden Top. Since our son expects that we usually take a cruise for a family vacation, he was dressed in his plaid American Eagle shorts and t-shirt ready to head to the airport to catch a plane. We had hoped to pick up the RV and be back before he was out of track practice, but the Cruise America rental center wasn’t available until after 1 pm, which completely foiled our plans.

The rental location is in Stoughton, a good half hour from our home and with all of our supplies on display in our livingroom, my son began to get suspicious. I created an intricate story of needing to get supplies to his grandparents in New Hampshire and for the most part he believed it, except that he saw something vegan sitting on top of one of the boxes. Darn!

Regardless, he went with us to pick up the RV not knowing what we were doing or where we were headed. When we arrived, I wasn’t sure of his reaction to this trip because, after all, he’s a teenager. Luckily, he was excited about the trip. We had to wait for them to finalize the cleaning of the camper and then we had paperwork to do before leaving. We weren’t on the road back home until 2:30 pm and we didn’t get home til 3 pm. Our Compact 19′ RV came with ¼ tank of gas so to fill it up required a mere $100 (yikes!) to get it to ful. After packing everything up, we finally hit the road at 4 pm.

Since it’s 2013, we, like most people, no longer use paper maps to navigate. However, when we’re at home, we use our iPhone’s connected to our vehicle’s stereo to navigate. The RV we are in has a “line in” feed, but we didn’t have a cable. Rich decided to use Google Maps to plot our course, but as I predicted, this isn’t as reliable as some other navigation apps, like MapQuest. It asked us to get off the highway to get onto 84 West but then take the next exit to get onto 84 East. She was going to have us doing circles, but I put an end to that quickly.

Driving along I-84 in New York

Once we were on 84, I felt comfortable. Having grown up in New York in Orange County, I rode on 84 frequently and knew how long it was going to take us to get to where we needed to go. Although I don’t travel back to this area often, it does feel like home and is so familiar to me. Despite objections from my son, it wasn’t hard to relive some stories about growing up here or about my father, who passed away ten years ago, while driving through the area. Much has changed, but the area still remains the same in the end.

We made a quick restroom stop in Montgomery, NY and filled up on gas when the tank was ½ full. This time the fill up was $87 and considering we were getting about 11 miles to the gallon, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I used my US Credit Card anyway which has a rewards system to at least I’m getting some benefit. Despite the case of water, soda, and snacks I had already packed, my husband and son decided while they were there that they needed more. Rich opted for an energy drink and since he was driving, I wasn’t about to say no. This RV isn’t a huge one, but I’m a little intimidated about driving it at this point. I think I’ll have to work up to it, but since I did all the driving in Ireland and he refused to (opposite side of the road and stick shift), I think it might all even out in the end.

Directly opposite the Hess Express station was a Subway and knowing we could grab a fast dinner for the road here, we jumped on it. Apparently, there was a friends and family promotion or something like that and we were able to “buy one and get one free.” That meant a Veggie Delite for both Rich and I while Cristian lucked out and got two BMT’s, both of which disappeared fairly fast. I wish I had his metabolism!

Cristian setting up his mobile office in the RV

Since the RV has two seats in front and seating in the back, it’s impossible to carry a conversation between all three of us while driving, as it is loud inside the RV. In the front, the driver and the passenger can talk, but the third person is pretty much on his or her own. Cristian had his laptop and video games on that as well as his iTouch, but I am always hoping that we can learn and grow and not miss opportunities. For this trip, he was in charge of creating and maintaining an Excel spreadsheet for expenses as well as assisting in finding places for us to visit. Initially, he met this with obvious resentment as he would rather be playing video games than anything else, but he has stepped up to the plate and participated in a way that I didn’t expect.

Now that’s one of the reasons that I wanted to do this trip. Yes, we could have taken another cruise and stuck to the status quo, but I wanted my family to push ourselves out of our comfort zone and try something new. Since our son will be going off to college in the Fall, there won’t be many more family vacations like this in the future and quite frankly, I wanted to take advantage of all of the time I have left like this together. That means not saying “No” to a family picture and not diving headfirst into my email or FaceBook or Twitter or anything else while I was on this vacation. This trip was about creating memories that we can hold onto for a lifetime and I was determined to make that a reality.

Where were we headed to in our RV? Our initial plan may not have turned out as we like, but we did get to travel to some interesting places. Read my next post to learn more about our road trip where you’ll be able to read about all of our mishaps including what we learned about ourselves and camping, what we packed and should have packed for a week of camping, and dealing with stress while on the road.