Friday, May 19, 2017, 11:46 pm…Disney’s Fort Wilderness Campground
Wow, what an eventful 2 days. Let me tell you, 2 days is pushing it when driving from Arkansas to Orlando, FL while pulling a 30’ travel trailer. More importantly, RV life is definitely not easy.
First, though, an update on the iPad situation. Johnny removed the broken headphone jack from the iPad in less than 5 minutes when we stopped for lunch. I was super relieved and Logan was never the wiser until after we had remedied the situation.
Now on to the “RV life is not easy” statement. We had not 1, not 2, not 3 but 4 tire blow outs on the way here. It all started at a random gas station we tried to go to. Long story short, we missed a turn, had to go find a place to turn around and while doing that ran off a curb into a ditch with the camper wheels. That of course caused us to blow a tire and bend the rim. We were prepared though, we fully expected to have to change a tire or two on this trip. So, quick tire change and we were back on the road within 30 minutes. No more than an hour later, just before Mobile, AL, Papa’s camper blew a tire. At this point we were already at least an hour behind schedule but we couldn’t go on without a spare. We changed his tire, then made it our goal to find a place to buy a tire. Thank goodness, Wal-Mart was only 10 min away and they ha dthe tire we needed. Now, we were exhausted. We had made reservations at an RV park on the other side of Pensacola, but now that was at least 2 hours away and it was 7pm. We changed our plans on the fly and decided to stay at an RV park in the town we were in.
That was a wonderful decision and the best part was, they had a pool. The kids had the opportunity to swim for a while before bed time. They needed to get out some energy after being cooped up in the trucks for so long.
Today, we got on the road around 8am and I can tell you that God was watching over us. Not long after we were on the road Johnny told me to start looking for a tire place. He was not comfortable driving without having at least 2 spare tires (keep in mind we were down to 1 at this point). I found a place , we got another spare and then headed back on the road. Now we were set, 2 spare tires and a long straight stretch ahead of us. Then, literally AT the exit we would have taken the night before if we had chosen to keep going rather than stopping, Papa’s camper blew 2 tires at 1 time!!! Thank goodness for that 2nd spare that Johnny had insisted we get. Then, as we were trying to figure out how to change this one or if we needed to call roadside assistance a guy pulls up. Turns out Florida has a program where “Road Rangers” monitor the interstates and stop to help any motorists who have issues. He got our tires changed and had us back on the road within an hour. Once again, we were looking for replacements for our spare tires, which we did find just one town away from where we were.
I am happy to say that the remainder of the trip was uneventful. We finally pulled in to Fort Wilderness around 8:45 tonight. We are now set up and everyone is tucked in to bed. Tomorrow…we take on Magic Kingdom!!!