It’s been a wild ride so far. Five days on the road, eight more to go.

A quick summary: Our red-eye flight last Friday night was diverted from Orlando to Atlanta due to weather, so we rented a car and drove (6+ hours!) to cousins Beth & Drake Smith in New Smyrna Beach. Early Sunday morning we drove south for two hours to Port St. Lucie to LaMesa RecVan to pick up our RV. This was all supposed to happen on Saturday, so just one day off schedule. We did a 2-hour orientation, returned the rental car, then drove the RV back up to New Smyrna Beach, parked it in the Smith’s driveway and spent a second night. (In the camper. Had to test some things out.)

Beth had taken delivery of some Amazon orders (including bedding and towels, which she washed – thank god) and I had packed a few things. Plus, we stopped at Walmart on our way out of town to pick up essentials and food.

It’s been a lot of driving each day…too much, really. Even though we switch off regularly, it’s tiring. Driving a new, large vehicle is sometimes stressful. (And truckers! Don’t get me started.) We originally plotted a route (thanks AdventureGenie!) to do about 300 miles per day, getting us home in eleven days. We just changed that to 225 miles and 13 days, so we’ll see how that goes. Scenery in Florida, Georgia, and Kentucky was nice; Illinois, Missouri, Iowa – not so much. Terrific 2 to 6am thunderstorm in Kentucky – no leaks! Some rain on the road yesterday, but mostly good weather, if a bit hot and humid. So much roadkill! Good lord, I didn’t know there were so many armadillos in the south. (All dead.)

This is not a sightseeing trip, so we are missing some points of interest, for sure. We did stop at the Lodge Factory Store & Museum – couldn’t pass that up!

Had to stop at Walmart again yesterday for a mattress topper – hard bed!

No huge problems, however, a lot of stuff to figure out. We feel like we know quite a bit about systems, because of boating, but then there is the whole Mercedes vehicle stuff to learn. Things are beeping at us, we sometimes can’t open the door, the key has to be in a certain location (which is not clear) for the van to start, we don’t care for the navigation system, we’re inundated with flies, etc. So goes the adventure!