This was my first time really driving an RV, while I drove it on the test drive we were going to travel around 300 miles back home. I was certainly nervous and hoped everything would go alright. I intended to take my time and not rush. This is also the first time my daughter would be driving this far, as she would be following in our van. We were supposed to leave around 10am it was now 3:30pm. We wouldn’t arrive home until after 9pm at best.
I decided to use mostly large roads instead of the back roads used to get to the dealership. This would take a little longer but ultimately be safer. We made it about 4 miles from the dealership before my wife told us to pull over. One of the baggage doors had come open, even though it was locked. I closed it and made sure it was closed and locked and we got back on the road. We had to merge onto an interstate and I was going too fast, so I hit the brakes pretty hard to make the curve. My daughter thought the back end was going to come off the ground, luckily it didn’t.
Once we were on the highway everything was going very smoothly. My son fell asleep in the passenger seat, he was much more confident they I was. We stopped at a McDonald’s/filling station and used the RV bathroom, this was very nice. So far we had driven through a lot of construction and traffic. Soon the traffic began to lighten up and we made it to I465 which diverts traffic around Indianapolis. This was the scariest driving I have every done. The expressway was at least 5 lanes across and people were speeding and switching lanes like crazy. I slowed down and just couldn’t wait to get off that expressway. It was around 7:00 at this point and I couldn’t imagine what rush hour would have been like. Luckily we were only on it for 13 miles. The transition to I65 was very easy.
I65 has a lot of construction all the way to Kentucky. This slowed us down but it wasn’t too bad. We stopped at a rest area for a quick bathroom break and to eat a little snack. I really enjoyed being able to do all of this in the RV. As we were leaving the rest area the girl notice a small door on the RV was open and required a key to close. I got out and found it was the gravity fill for the water tank. I played find the right key and finally found the correct one, locked it up and we were off.
Prior to getting back to Kentucky we started discussing dinner. The girls decided they would go pick something up and meet us at the house. When my son and I arrived at the house we turned in the driveway and then felt the RV get stuck. I thought we might have gone off the driveway and just gave it some more gas, we climbed right up the driveway without any other issue.
The girls arrived shortly after we did and we all gladly went in the house for a good nights sleep. What a long trip, it previously took us 5 hours in our van but it took 7 hours in the RV. Since I had been up since 4am due to the freezing cold RV, it was a very long day. At least we all arrived home safely.