2019 was our first family cruise and RV trip! The RV thing had been on my mind for a several years, debating about flying way north and picking one up. Something kept holding me back about that scenario but when we were in Yellowstone, this year in July and August, there were Cruise American RV's everywhere. About 50% of RV's were Cruise America. We made friends and even looked inside one and the kid's from that point on were adamant that they wanted to travel in a RV. My only requirement was that we left from San Antonio on our first one and that we went with a REALLY small one so not to add stress to driving it every day. We also knew we wanted to take Tiger on her first out of state family vacation, too. So, we booked the RV in August and all we knew was Arkansas was our destination. I did my favorite activity - some light vacation research for the "Natural State" and decided on 3 key stops in central and Southwest AR. Then, we just got excited about it and didn't even book our 3 RV park spots until November 1. Everything just fell into place and we were able to plan to spend one night on the way there and one night on the way back with Blake's family in Wylie.
The week of, Blake and I watched some RV how to videos and even Delaney wanted to watch to be prepared. We all counted down the days and finally on Thursday afternoon, we picked it up and all night, we just leisurely "moved" in. It was kinda cool not even needing suit cases. The evening was beautiful and the excitement was high.
Friday, around 11:30AM, we were off. We didn't even go to the grocery store, that is how simple we made it. Diane had been in town the weekend prior and ironically on Sunday had decided to cook 4 big meals for us for the week. We froze those 4 meals and they are what we ate 4/5 nights on the road. It was so wonderful. We packed up our pantry and refrigerator and figured we find plenty of Walmarts in Arkansas, for whatever else we might need. I truly loved this about this trip.
We used our cruise small room organization techniques for the 25' RV. We learned that things fall off the counters while you are driving, so you must secure them. We even lost the glass carafe from our big coffee pot half way into the trip, due to this.
We named our RV, Fred. Fred was definitely a gas guzzler, getting about 8 mpg and every single time I wasn't in the front passenger seat, Tiger would immediately grab it, so Blake always had someone who loved him, riding shot gun! We arrived in Wylie by dinner on Friday and had such a wonderful night with the Nash's. We made sure to run an extension cord across their yard and the entire street, to plug Fred in. Delaney, Blake and I stayed in the RV that night and the Carter and Addison stayed inside with their cousins. Nash and Heather made an incredible shrimp and crab leg boil for us.
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