Day 1

It’s been a good day today.  Left the house around 9am and after running some errands, I formally hit the road at 10am.  The truck and trailer behaved well today.  I’ve started limiting my speed to 50mph, and that seems to work quite well.  I basically set the cruise, turn on the podcasts, and just handle the various random wanderings of the truck and trailer as other vehicles pass and random wind gusts come along.

Tonight I’m staying in Des Moines, IA at a Costco parking lot.  I got the heater set up and running, set up the iPad with some Netflix, and had dinner.  Right now I have some jazz playing and it’s very peaceful.  I’m rather enjoying myself at the moment.

The trailer is a complete mess with various stuff scattered all over.  I had to clear a path just to get to the front and back.  I’ll spend a good number of hours over the coming days basically “moving in” and putting stuff away.

I found the spot I’m staying at via the “All Stays” app.  Pretty nifty.  I actually paid a whole $10 for it, and it was well worth it.  This Costco is about 1.5 miles from the highway, so it’s really quiet.  I am the only vehicle in the entire parking lot, at least at the time I pulled in, around 5pm, just after sunset.

On the drive today, I saw a lot of different RVs and RV-type vehicles.  One of which had about 6″ of snow on the top of it, which I found quite amusing.  I was hoping that by the end of my travels today that I’d be someplace where there wasn’t any snow, and I’ve succeeded.  There’s a chance of freezing rain tonight, but it’s low.

Speaking of weather, I no longer trust the radar on my weather app.  As I was heading south, the skies slowly turned from bright blue and sunny to cloudy, to completely blocking the sun with thick clouds.  I checked the radar, and it said I was heading into an area of snow/ice/rain mixture.  I considered just stopping at that point and waiting it out, but since no precipitation had actually happened yet, I figured I’d keep going for a while.  If it got terrible, I’ll pull over and spent the night wherever I found myself.  That, however, turned out to be unnecessary.  I apparently drove right through all of it without a single drop, or flake.  It’s no wonder meteorologists get the weather forecasting wrong when their tools apparently aren’t accurate.

With the power splitter I installed in the truck, I can charge my phone, charge my JetPack, charge my Bose Speaker (via an inverter), and keep all of them topped off while I’m driving.  Listening to podcasts via the bose speaker actually works quite well.  When the cruise is set at 50mph, the truck is quiet enough to make listening to podcasts more than reasonable.  Tomorrow I’ll be charging my iPad and laptop as well while driving.  Very convenient having a place to charge things.

Tomorrow I’ll continue heading south.  Assuming I don’t freeze tonight (the Mr. Heater Big Buddy is doing really well right now), I might just follow google’s directions and start heading west when I hit Kansas City.

I couldn’t have asked for a better first day to start my journey!

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