The next trip was in January, going down to Walt Disney World for me to run the Dopey Challenge (a 5K, 10K, half marathon and marathon, 48.6 miles in 4 days). I'm a runner, but I'm not young, and I rarely run more than about 3 miles. So this was definitely a challenge (and definitely a little dopey!). But it was a great feeling to accomplish it! There's a (boring) video of the races on my YouTue channel if anyone wants to get a flavor of it.

video of the races on my YouTube channel

As for the rest of the trip, we took parts of 4 days to drive down. The first day was the long one, starting around 8:00 AM and covering 740 miles in 14 hours before stopping at a rest stop in southern Illinois. Day 2 was short, only going 200 miles in 4 hours to get to my brother-in-law's in Nashville where we hung out a while. The next day was a little more aggressive again. After a later start we covered 500 miles in 10.5 hours, staying in a rest stop in northern Florida. That left us with 200 miles in 3.5 hours to get to Disney World a little before noon. Total miles for the drive down was around 1600.

Leaving Minnesota on New Year's Eve meant not being able to have water in the motorhome, so we couldn't use the bathroom or take showers until we got to Nashville. In fact, my extra jugs of RV anti-freeze, stored in the motor home, were frozen solid right before we left! We didn't have any broken water lines, and I was able to flush out the lines and fill the water tank at my brother-in-law's, so we had full functionality for the rest of the drive.



We stayed at Fort Wilderness Campground on Walt Disney World property, as we always do when going there. Here are a couple pictures of our camp site.



Then of course since we were heading back to a Minnesota winter we had to winterize the motorhome before it was too late. Rather than try to do that at a rest stop somewhere I did it before leaving Disney. Which meant not having that functionality for the entire drive home. Oh well...

We covered the trip home in 3 days, with ~600 miles in ~13 hours on day 1 bringing us just into Tennessee, ~760 miles in ~14 hours getting us into Wisconsin on day 2, and a short 240 miles in ~4 hours getting us home around 9:30 AM on day 3. Fortunately a neighbor had cleared my driveway, so we were able to just back in and start unloading. We had received ~17" of snow while we were gone!


Speaking of weather, we had great weather for the trip. We left after some really cold weather with some snow (and right before the 17" of snow hit), but had relatively mild temps and only a short time with light rain on the drive down. We never even used the furnace driving down.

The first couple days we were in Florida were hot and humid (we ran the AC hard). Then we had light rain for one morning, but after the rain the temp and humidity dropped and it was quite pleasant the rest of our trip. It did rain our last night, and a little that morning, but stopped by the time I was winterizing the motorhome and breaking camp.

There were no weather issues to speak of on the drive home (although we did run the furnace both of those nights).

I suppose one other thing to mention from this trip is that we finally experienced Buc-ees. After seeing the signs and hearing people rave about it for years we finally tried to stop at one. We ended up just driving through the parking lot and leaving because there was no place to park a motorhome. Then we tried another. This time we found enough open spaces that we could park way in the back (but there wasn't much room), so we did go in. We had the famed brisket sandwich, which I'd say was good for fast food, but not what we were hoping for based on the hype. And otherwise thought it seemed like a Wall Drug wanna-be. So sorry to any Buc-ees fans out there. It seems like an OK place to stop if you're in a car, but not worth the hassle of parking a motorhome.

We were back up to about 7.5 mpg average on this trip. We've done a little better at times when not pulling the Bronco, but I'm sure winter gas didn't help, and again I was pushing a little faster than I sometimes do.

 

Next up wasn't a trip, just some routine maintenance. I ended up taking it in to have the awning replaced, the roof resealed, the slide serviced and the seals around a bunch of windows replaced. Not exciting (and not cheap!). But all part of owning a motorhome.

 

Our last trip (so far) was a hodge podge of different things. The main point of the trip was to go to my niece's wedding in Kentucky, but while we were there we added some 'wheeling with the Bronco at Windrock in Tennessee, trips to Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, and visiting my brother in Kentucky. All in all we put 2100 miles on the motorhome and 800 miles driving the Bronco.

The campgound at Windrock is great if you want to be at Windrock. Not much shade, especially considering the number of trees they must have cut down to get rid of the shade. And pretty out-of-the-way unless you want to be there. But nice for our purpose.


Windrock turned out to not be my favorite place to 'wheel, but it was still good and gave us some challenges (without doing any significant damage).




The drive went well, but with one hard day going down and another coming back. On day 2 going down we spent too much time unsuccessfully trying to find propane. Then we had a problem finding a place to park for the night. That all made for a 700 mile / 14+ hour day to the Kentucky / Tennessee line. I was really wiped out at that point. Part of what made that longer is that the rest stop in Tennessee has almost no truck parking and was full. There were no good options ahead, so we ended up driving about 10 miles past it to turn around and stay at the (northbound) Kentucky rest stop.

Then the first drive day heading home was a bit of a grind again. After a somewhat late start we drove 450 miles in 11 hours, getting to southern Wisconsin. The slow average pace this day was due to stopping for a nap at one point, a very nice benefit to traveling with a camper!

 

Well, I got way behind in this thread again. Back in October 2023 we went down to southern Missouri for my third time to 'wheel with the group of old Jeeps I met on another forum. Not a lot to say about this trip. Day 1 started at about 2:00 PM with an 8 hour / 415 mile drive to just north of Kansas City where we spent the night. Day 2 was about 4.5 hours to go the last 220 miles to Rush Springs Park, the first area we 'wheeled.After 'wheeling at Rush Springs and spending the night there we had 3 hours and about 150 miles to get to SMORR for the next three days of 'wheeling.

And then after 'wheeling on Sunday morning we drove 9 hours / 480 miles to spend the night in northern Iowa, leaving about 3.5 hours for the last 175 miles on Monday.

All of the drives were quite uneventful. But it is really nice having a nice place to sleep on a trip like this! And a road trip a month later in my wife's car where we had to stay in a hotel reminded us of how nice it is to just pull over and sleep instead of needing to check in, find where to park, find your room and carry the luggage in.

 

Then in April (2024) when I tried to start the generator for its monthly exercise I found both batteries stone dead. I never figured out why they had drained, but I did add manual shut-off switches, as well as getting longer cables for the main coach battery. That allowed me to move it to the forward position so it's easier to add a second battery when I want to (the second battery has to go in the rear position).

I also added Anderson plugs to both batteries. I have Anderson plugs on most of my vehicles so adding them to the motorhome makes it easier to jump start it or hook up an air compressor or something. And I can use the Anderson plug on the coach battery to hook up a second battery when desired.

Here's the coach battery (it's under the entry steps) with room for a second battery


And here's the van battery with the shutoff switch and Anderson plug.

 

Then in May another small project. When I got this motorhome the van radio came on when the coach battery was turned on rather than when the van key was turned on. So I rewired it to get the switched power from the van rather than from the coach. But now after adding the new shut-off switches I realized that it was also getting unswitched power from the coach (I hadn't realized that there was any unswitched power from the coach). So now the radio gets its unswitched power from the van too.

 

Then in June we made our third trip to Moab Utah. Driving out we were stopping at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. That made it a little confusing to work out the departure time and daily drive distances. In the end we left at 6:00 PM on Thursday, and drove ~230 miles, stopping at about 10:00 north of Des Moines. Friday was the weird day because we drove ~620 miles, starting at 7:00 and stopping about 5:30 (11.5 hours with the time zone change) just east of Denver. The problem with that day was that going any farther meant we wouldn't have any good places to stop until well after dark, and we wanted to be able to see the scenery and not be really tired driving through the mountains. So we stopped early.

Saturday was then pretty short and relatively slow, driving about 380 miles, getting started at 7:30 and pulling into our camp site at about 4:00. We did go over Loveland Pass rather than through the Eisenhower Tunnel, which added some time and distance to the day, but was a nice scenic drive on a beautiful sunny day.

We didn't spend much time at Black Canyon, pulling out at about 11:00 the next morning for the 190 mile drive to Moab, getting there about 4:00.

I did (re)learn that on this drive I should buy gas in southern MN so I can make it all the way to Nebraska before filling up again. Iowa gas prices are relatively low on the signs, but it's a bait-and-switch, with the posted prices being E15 and E10 being a LOT more expensive. E10 in MN is probably cheaper than E15 in Iowa, and E10 is a LOT cheaper in Nebraska. On the other end of the trip, I should've filled up in Grand Junction CO on the way out. Then I could've made it back to Colorado on the return trip and not had to pay Utah prices for gas (which made Iowa E10 look really cheap!).

Coming home we left a day earlier than planned, which we thought would give us an easy drive over parts of three days. And it did turn out to be pretty easy, but on paper (or on pixels) it doesn't look it as I drove about 480 miles (from noon to 9:00), stopping in eastern Colorado on Friday, and then an 800 mile day, starting at 8:00 and getting home at 11:30 (14.5 hours with the time zone). I think 800 miles is my record in the motorhome, but the drive was going well, and it never seemed worth stopping.

The total trip was ~2,700 miles in the motorhome (plus another ~650 in the Bronco), burning 382 gallons of gas, for an average of 7.2 mpg, about typical mileage for this rig.

There were no issues with the motorhome. We never had a dead battery (but then again, we didn't really use them hard either). I continue to be impressed with how well just the van's AC keeps the temperature down on the road. We were never tempted to start the generator to run the coach AC. On the other hand, the coach AC was doing all it could to keep the temperature in check while we were camped in Moab. But then again, it was upper 90s and low 100s while we were there.

However I also continue to be unimpressed with the engine and the powertrain management system. The trans doesn't stay in the right gear and the engine needs to scream on any hills. I know it's a pipe dream, but I'd really like a turbo diesel and a manual transmission in a motorhome!

Here are a couple of pictures from the trip. The first is going up Loveland Pass.

Here's one picture from Black Canyon of the Gunnison



Here's our camp site in downtown Moab



And here's one picture from the Moab 'wheeling in the Bronco.


If you want more of the 'wheeling, I have videos on my YouTube channel.

 

In July we had another motorhome trip. This one was about 600 miles and never left Minnesota. After realizing that we were getting to quite a few National Parks without making a point of it my wife decided a few years ago that we should make a point of it. And there's a National Park right here in our home state that we hadn't been to.

Well, now we have! We went to Voyageurs National Park, on the Minnesota/Canada border. We towed the Bronco up (on its street tires) just for transportation while we were there (I drove it around in front wheel drive, never bothering to put the rear driveshaft in after taking it out to tow).

I took Friday off, so we left Friday morning and got to camp ("The Pines at Kabetogama") at about 3:00, giving us enough time Friday afternoon and evening to set up camp and drive to the park visitors center, as well as to a couple of hiking trails where we could bring the dogs (pets aren't allowed on most of the trails in most National Parks).

Here's a view of our camp site



Here is the four of us on a dock near the visitors center



And here's a view from one of the hikes (the far horizon is probably Canada)



So that was Friday. This was Saturday



I woke up that day feeling terrible! I won't get into the details, but I basically switched between the bed, the couch, and occasionally a chair outside if I was feeling really ambitious! My dog was happy to keep me company all day. My wife's puppy was willing to crash with me at times. And my wife... well she read a couple of books.

Fortunately I was starting to recover by evening, and we took a short walk down to the lake, and then another around the campground. The next morning we rented a 2-person kayak and went for a 2 mile paddle before packing up and driving home. I had to rest a little after the kayak trip (and the hike back up the hill to the motorhome), but I didn't have any trouble driving home, and I even grilled the steaks and cooked the potatoes that I was supposed to do for supper the day before (and could even eat them!).

So it wasn't the greatest trip, but it wasn't a complete loss either.

We did have some trouble with the motorhome. My wife had been noticing a smell in it, and on this trip we realized that we were losing propane (it turned out to be a leak in the supply hose for the fridge, we also had the propane detector replaced since it hadn't told us about the problem.). The fridge runs on 110V AC or propane, so if we shut off the valve on the propane tank to not blow ourselves up we need to run the generator to provide power to the fridge. Even with 6.5 hours of generator use (it pulls from the same tank as the motorhome engine) we still got about 7.7 mpg on this trip, pretty good for towing the Bronco, but there weren't many hills, and we were never above about 67 mph, with a lot of the trip closer to 60.

So that was that trip, and one more sticker in our National Parks book!

 

Then in September we made yet another trip to Walt Disney World. Looking back, I went to Disney World two or three times as a kid, once with my wife before we had kids, three times with our kids, and this was now the sixth time as empty-nesters!

After driving through Atlanta one too many times I had decided that we would never do that again. So on this trip we went through Birmingham and across southern Alabama to catch I75 in southern GA. Coming home we took I10 across the FL panhandle and then up through Birmingham, which is the route we'll do on future trips.

It was interesting how close the time and distance were to the Atlanta route. Comparing to our last trip there, coming home through Atlanta was 1,593 miles in 30 hours 30 minutes. This trip home through Birmingham was 1,638 miles in 29 hours 49 minutes. With avoiding the stress of Atlanta, this is how we’ll keep doing this trip.

The drive went easy. There were a lot of construction zones, but never any backups. We did have to slow down to about 35 mph for 10 – 20 miles a couple of times as we drove through the tailings of hurricane Francine on the way down, but it was just heavy rain, so not so bad overall.

We did achieve a milestone of sorts on this trip. We topped 87,000 miles on the odometer, which means we’ve driven the motorhome more miles than the 42,837 it had when we bought it!

Otherwise there was really no adventure, which is what you hope for in a trip like this. But here’s a picture of our camp site. And since you probably can’t read the sign in front, the top line says “welcome to our wheel estate!”

 

In October we made our last trip (so far), going down to Southern Missouri Off-Road Ranch for the 4th time, meeting up with some friends from another on-line forum. After 'wheeling the Bronco there we stopped at Gateway Arch National Park on the way home. Kind of cool I suppose, but as National Parks go it certainly wasn't one of my favorites. Still, we added another sticker to the book!

And again, if you want to see more of the 'wheeling, check out my YouTube channel.

 

And the final post to get this caught up, another undesired motorhome adventure, but fortunately it was quick, easy and free!

There was a puddle of dark liquid growing under the generator. I can't get under the motorhome to see very well, and it's dark when I get home from work and temps were in the teens/low twenties this week. So with 40s forecast for Saturday I figured I'd leave it for a few days.

With the color of the puddle (at least as far as I could tell in the dark) I was afraid it was motor oil. And I couldn't imagine an inexpensive problem that would suddenly cause motor oil to be dripping out of the generator. But when I got the front end up on jacks so I could get under I found it was just a rotted rubber fuel line leaking. I only had to replace the section of line from the shut-off valve I installed earlier to the generator, and I had some new fuel line in the shed. So a quick, easy and free fix!

 

Our next motorhome trip was to southern Florida to check off a couple more national parks. It was an 11 day trip. 5 of the days were nothing but driving the motorhome distances of 500 - 700 miles. 3 other days included 200 - 300 miles in the motorhome (but also other stuff) and 1 was ~200 miles in the Bronco (to get to other stuff). So out of the 11 days only 2 didn't involve quite a bit of driving. I was telling my son that and he said "quit complaining!" to which I replied "I'm not complaining, I'm bragging!" Seriously, it was a very good trip. I wouldn't want to do trips with this much driving every month, but it's good just to spend time with my wife too.

On the drive down we ran into the only "motorhome adventure" of the trip. The camper battery doesn't seem to hold much of a charge. It'll charge up quickly and has no trouble starting the generator, even after sitting for a month or so. But with very little use it quickly starts dimming the lights when the water pump comes on and won't start the generator. So we got through the trip by starting the van to jump start the generator in the mornings, and I'll have to replace the battery before the next trip (which currently isn't scheduled yet).

Here's our first camp site at Disney's Fort Wilderness Campground.



After a day or so of shopping and hanging out at Disney's pool we drove down to just south of Miami and set up camp at a very... photogenic campground! By that I mean it looks REALLY good in photos! (maybe not quite so good in person) Seriously though, while it wasn't the high-end campground we were expecting from the web site pictures, it was clean, and the pool was very nice (the shower houses a little less nice). So it was fine.



On the day we arrived at that campground we drove through the south side of Everglades National Park. This was the end of their dry season and we saw them fighting a grass fire. At times the smoke was pretty thick on the road, and once we were stopped while planes dropped water along the edge of the road. The picture below is the first plane dropping water about 200 feet away from us, no picture of the second plane dropping water less than 50 feet away because we were in a Bronco with the top down and were ducking for cover! The pilot was actually very good and we didn't get wet, but we were a bit spooked! And no, it wasn't that the fire was that close to us, they must have just been trying to wet down the grass near the road so it wouldn't catch fire.





The next day we drove across the north side of the park to go for air boat rides, something that's been on my bucket list since watching "Gentle Ben" as a kid! That was fun and we even got to see this guy about 15 feet away. The first ride was on a small boat, mostly going slowly through the mangrove "tunnels." The second was on a larger boat, mostly going faster (up to ~30 mph) in more open water. I posted a video to give a little flavor of what the boat rides were like.


The next day we made the short drive to Biscayne National Park where we got in on a guided kayak tour of the shore line. It was quite windy on the bay (part of the Atlantic Ocean) so they were offering that anyone who wasn't competent in a kayak could "upgrade" to a boat tour at no extra cost, but we stayed with the kayaks. It was fun getting back into the mangroves, and we saw quite a few crabs and fish (no more crocs though!). And the wind and waves on the bay weren't that hard to deal with.



After that it was just the drive home, so another very good motorhome vacation in the books!

 

A very minor motorhome project to report on. When we took the motorhome down to Florida last spring the coach battery wasn't holding a charge very well. Even though we really weren't using any electricity to speak of overnight I still needed to jump it from the van battery to start the generator in the morning. So before the next trip I replaced it. And since about a year ago I had set it up to take two coach batteries easily I replaced the one dead one with two fresh ones. And to refresh memories, the two batteries are connected in parallel using Anderson plugs, so I can disconnect them easily when it's parked for an extended period. And there's a shut-off switch so they can be completely disconnected from the rest of the electrical system while in storage.

 

And the next trip... Since the trip to the Florida National Parks last spring was set to be our only motorhome trip of the year we decided we needed to do something about that. But with several other big trips recently and coming up we couldn't justify a big trip. So we took a 4 day weekend trip to Theodore Roosevelt National Park next door in North Dakota.

On Friday after work we drove 240 miles to Fargo, North Dakota (does anyone remember Fargo North, Decoder from "The Electric Company"?). There were no rest areas near where we wanted to stop so we ended up staying at a Flying J truck stop, a first for us. That worked out pretty well. All the available spots were back-in, which is challenging when flat-towing a Bronco, but it worked. We were able to park between a flatbed and a truck that was dead-heading, so it was open on both sides, giving us a nice cross breeze with the windows open. And while there were enough idling trucks to keep it from being quiet, it turned out to be a white noise that was easily to sleep through. Plus they had Cinnabons!



Another 320 miles on Saturday brought us to Medora, the tourist capital of North Dakota. I'm not joking about that title. With a National Park and a big musical show it's definitely a tourist town. But it was surprising to find a tourist town that didn't have a gas station! (fortunately on our return trip we could easily make it back to the first town on the freeway that did have gas).



We were set up with plenty of time to drive through the park before dinner. We didn't do any hiking, but did see plenty of the ubiquitous prairie dogs and bison. And speaking of bison, there are plenty of signs saying that wildlife is dangerous and that people and wildlife should maintain a safe distance. Unfortunately bison can't read!



The next day we drove up to the "north unit", a separate part of the same park that's about 60 miles away. We did what was supposed to be a hike of just under 3 miles. But apparently we couldn't read a map very well. It ended up being 4.6 miles. And although it was in the 70s and overcast as we started, it was sunny with a heat index near 100 by the time we finished. So we were a bit played out at that point! We finished the day by driving the length of the scenic road, driving back to camp in Medora and then driving into town to play mini-golf and eat ice cream!

Monday we were back at the south loop, taking our time and doing a few very short hikes (nothing over a mile). Then after going back to camp for a nap we went back to the south loop after dinner and ended up getting surrounded by bison again!

Tuesday was just driving the 560 miles back home.

We ended up liking Theodore Roosevelt National Park a lot more than we thought we would. It was "just" some wildlife loops, a few short hikes (there are longer ones if that's what you want) and "badlands" scenery. But we really enjoyed it!