Adventures in Camping: Cross Country Camping Chaos

From Houston to Little Rock to Nashville to Anderson to Raleigh, and then back home. 18 days camping and our longest trip away from home in the new camper.

We're heading to Raleigh to spend the New Year's holiday with RDB's family - and hopefully see a few of our friends from there during our week long stay as well. Leaving from Houston on Christmas Eve, then heading back Jan 2nd, we'll be home to TX on Jan 10th. Long trip, but great itinerary.

We made a few additions to the camper to have a little fun along the way:

We started out a bit later in the day then planned, but I have to remind myself sometimes, that's normal. I can want/think that we're leaving at 7am in the morning to get a jump on things, and if we don't leave till noon or later, guess what? It's still 100% ok.

And I suppose, that's a big part of the learning curve on our first cross country COLD trip - that we can plan a lot of things to work out just fine, and then, well, they don't. And that's ok.

So, here's what was happening:

We made it to our Little Rock, AR KOA as planned on Christmas eve, even arriving with enough Christmas spirit to put up a few Christmas decorations.

I'd been watching the weather for this trip - knowing that we were taking the northern route and trying to be prepared for cold weather. We had purchased a heated water line (damn, those are pricey!) and our camper already came with the "all-season" package - heaters for the fresh/gray/black tanks, as well as additional insulation on the floors of the slides.

What we didn't expect was that the furnace, both electric and gas, would stop working. And of course, we didn't know this until we were already set in our site in Arkansas, with the nightly temps expected to get into the 20s.

Not much we could do about it at almost 11pm, so we bundled up, put Diesel's new heating pad into his bed, turned on the little ceramic heater we had along with the heated blanket on the bed and tried to get a decent night's sleep.

Don't worry about Diesel - in all of these issues, I think he was 100% just fine!

We left our chilly Christmas morning in Little Rock heading out to Nashville and on our way the news broke about the intentional attack on the AT&T building in downtown. Thankfully, we had no plans to go downtown, but unfortunately, this meant that cell service was down in the region - and that impacted our BRIX hotspot in the camper (and the phone lines of the local 911, as well as the phone lines of the local RV dealership we reached out to to help with the next set of problems).

So, we knew we had an issue with the furnace not working - and I posted on the TX Camping and RVing Facebook community to see what others had experienced, but in addition to that problem, we noticed on our lunch break that the fridge was not running off the power inverter from the truck battery. Good thing about the frozen temps is that the fridge turning into a cooler wasn't the biggest of our problems.

The biggest of our problems was the water line leaking in the basement of our camper. Again. And the water heater not heating water. Again. I've honestly lost count how many times we've had the techs at Ron Hoover working on these issues - as recently as the day before we left for this trip.

We arrived in Nashville with no heater, no water, a fridge that only worked on shore power, and phone and internet issues. Exhausted, we cuddled up and went to bed. And froze.

We were both wide awake around 3am. (Cold will do that to you.)

We bundled up and stepped outside, armed with troubleshooting ideas from our Facebook community; we were just too tired to try anything when we rolled in and set up for the night, thinking we could make it thru like we did in Arkansas; but 19* is a whole lot colder than 29*. (Cold will motivate you, too, ya know.)

Flashlight in hand, we opened up the backside of the furnace, threw the main switch off and on again, toggled the sail switch and as luck would have it - the heater started!! You might have heard our celebratory high-five a few miles away.

The following morning, we called the local Route 66 dealer, who was literally just 2 miles up the road from the KOA, to ask for help with the leak issue, and they totally blew us off. Not worth mentioning their name here, but I sure plan to blast them on Yelp and Google... we were completely shocked by their lack of customer service when an out-of-towner in their service network was having a problem. Shame on them. I'll be sure to lodge a complaint with Route 66 as well.

With no help in sight for the water leak, we packed up from the East Nashville/Lebanon KOA and continued the journey down towards Anderson, SC for our next stop (heading south, as planned, now that we had picked up a bottle from Nelson's Greenbriar Distillery) We'd have to make other arrangements for the leak (like putting a pickle bucket underneath it in the basement to catch the water for the duration and just dumping it as need be.)

When we stopped for dinner, RDB worked on the inverter and (thank goodness!) the fridge began working again! We were starting to feel a bit positive!

But then as we continued down into Georgia, the traffic began to snarl around Lookout Mountain. What should have taken 2 and a half hours had taken 4 and a half, so we decided to find a closer KOA and give up the attempt at making it to Anderson, SC that evening. Cartersville KOA to the rescue - with a 50amp full hook-ups site that we settled into.

Crossing our fingers as we hooked up, the furnace came on (yeah!), the fridge was working properly (yippee!) and the water heater was producing wonderful, glorious hot water! (hoorah!). The showers we took Sunday morning definitely bolstered our mindset.

Small things to be grateful for.

Our original plan had us arriving in the Raleigh area Sunday afternoon, and it was still plausible, but with the traffic delays we hit Saturday, it was going to be a solid 7 hours on the road and we'd be arriving long after dark. Not a problem, we do that often in our weekend trips in Texas state parks. I started looking up the details to call the NC state park and find out their late check-in procedures, when I noticed online that they locked their gates at 6pm. Ok, not problem, the parks in TX do that too, they just give us the gate code. As I continued reading, I was informed that they do NOT give out the gate code (emphasis theirs).

Well. That's a problem.

We certainly wouldn't be there in time on Sunday evening so we had to make other arrangements (Greensboro KOA to the rescue!). And beyond just Sunday, a 6pm "curfew" really puts a damper on hanging out with family and friends- either at the campsite or at their homes, as everyone is still working this week. We may have to find somewhere else to stay altogether. Ugh.

(Side note: I just read back thru what I've written, and twice I said "KOA to the rescue!" You know what? I'm totally feeling that vibe this weekend! Thank goodness we've found them as a resource on this long distance trip - having the chance to drop in near the highways and byways, as we've "Kamped Over America," has really been a blessing!)

The nice thing about the stop in Greensboro is that it meant our final destination was only an hour and a little bit away the next morning. Back in the truck, one more time, to drive those final miles... not that Diesel minded at all, he just curls up in the back seat, farts occasionally (bad enough that we roll down the windows and THAT wakes him up) and hangs out until we get to where we're going. Spoiled pup.

I called the NC State campground again to see if I could get a live person to pick up (it was only answering machines over the weekend) and thankfully got to talk to a ranger. Come to find out, no, they don't have a curfew in the park - they stopped closing the gates at night about a month ago (gee, I wonder why!) but yes, they have turned off water in the individual sites, but there's two different places where we can refill our onboard freshwater tanks during our stay.

And once again, everything was ok.

We made it in to the Jordan Lake Rec Area - Poplar Point late afternoon. Y'all - I had forgotten that we were in a site on the water. With an incredible view of Jordan Lake....