We spent the better part of the last few weeks trying out travel trailers to see 1) if our smallish SUV was up to the task of pulling one and 2) to see if the trailer will survive taking us to Baja for the winter.
There are actually very few choices in that regard, and fortunately there is one really good choice, so we went with it, buying one quickly in Memphis.
It should not have surprised me, but moving your life into into a mobile HQ takes some doing, and the organization and upgrades needed stretched from hours to days, putting us behind schedule at the end of our planned weather window.
After many days of preparation, getting the car road ready, and upgrading the dc electric charging systems and batteries, we left Nashville for the first leg of our Baja road trip, going 600 miles South to spend Christmas with family in Florida.
With our weather window closing before the next big winter storm, we decided to leave at 9pm to brave Monteagle, Tennessee’s highest peak and its windy mountain roads at night. The thinking was that we would attempt those roads with hopefully reduced night traffic, rather than the next morning in commuter traffic and the upcoming forecast torrential rain.
Although we wouldn’t make as much headway that night, at least we would set ourselves up for success on a challenging rainy drive the following day. And that is exactly how it played out.
We made it through the pass without incident, and came out the other side at 1am, stopping for the night at a Cracker Barrel south of Chattanooga. Cracker Barrels provide overnight spaces for passing RVs and this proved to be a really nice and quiet spot for the night.
Our first overnight stay in our mobile HQ.
I can’t say that I slept all that well, though I sleep similarly poorly the first night of any sailing trip, so the land yacht experience is not abnormal.
The next day indeed turned out difficult with rain, lower towing speed, and more frequent fuel fill ups, reducing previous expectations of what normal road trip progress looks like.
This is a new normal: slow and steady with a sprinkling of range anxiety. So much so, that we just might name the trailer “Tortuga”. Just like in sailing, however, slow and steady works for me just fine.
We made it to Florida exhausted, but thankful that we left for Chattanooga the prior evening.
When we arrived in the late evening, backing into the driveway proved mentally difficult after such a long day, taking several attempts and aborts to get it right, not unlike docking a boat in new and unfamiliar ports of course, with the requisite peanut gallery.
First night complete. We’ll be here for a couple weeks.
The next leg of our epic road trip, will be the crossing of the country back to Los Angeles, before staging ourselves to cross the Mexican border.
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