After four years of planning, dreaming, hoping, our launch day has finally arrived. As is our usual routine before a big trip, neither my wife nor I could sleep much, and so we got up before 6 a.m. to pack up the last of our belongings.
This wasn’t the way we planned the start of our trip. We were expecting to leave from Denver and to have easy access to our trailer in the final weeks before our departure. But my mother’s health precipitated a move to Philadelphia in August, and our trailer had been parked at a friend’s house in Delaware for the past four months.
That meant we had a ton of stuff still packed in boxes and loaded into the truck instead of neatly stowed in its proper place in the trailer.
It was good to get out early because the weather was not cooperating. After a relatively mild start to the winter, the forecast called for the region’s first winter storm to roll in by noon. We wanted to get out ahead of it. But as we neared my friend’s house, the snow began to fall.
We decided to unload from the truck only what was essential – basically just what needed to go into the refrigerator and freezer – and deal with the rest in more temperate climates.
We ran into our first hiccup when we tried to connect the trailer to our truck. The front jack had no power. Was it possible the battery had died in the cold temps? I ran through options in my head, before settling on connecting our power cord to the generator built into our pick-up truck. That did the trick and after some fiddling with the weight distribution hitch, we were on our way.
It rained pretty much the entire day. Along the way we saw scores of accidents, including a motorhome that had somehow plowed into a construction truck. We hope everybody involved is okay.
We had decided not to get a campground for the first day, but to try to get as far south as we could on the first day. We didn’t want to have to set up the trailer in the dark, especially since the unit was still winterized and would take some time to clear the antifreeze from the system so we could use water.
We targeted Kenly, N.C. as a good place to stop, and as we approached it seemed like a good time to stop. The deluge of rain finally let up. It took a couple of tries to get the truck and trailer situated correctly in the parking lot. We grabbed a quick dinner and settled in early.
Our grand adventure has begun!
Days: 1
Miles traveled: 413 miles
Next stop: Skidaway Island, Georgia
