Yay! The first day of the trip is finally here! We, of course, took the obligatory “us-ie” to commemorate the start of the trip!
Before we get too deep into the weeds on this trip and our journaling, we want to remind our 7 followers that this is a co-authored blog. Ben is the planner and takes copious notes and pictures during each day, which turns into the outline and the meat of our blog. Since Ann’s vision has been failing her for the past few years, all Ann does is add her two cents, and her humor, and Ben faithfully documents her GI escapades. It’ll be a fun little game for our followers to figure out who is doing the talking LOL.
We have almost a year of planning into this BIG 2026 Adventure and we’ve FINALLY been able to con our adult children into joining us for an exciting 10 days of our 60 day total journey. Besides planning which National Parks and sights to show the kids, Ben has truly outdone himself this year when it comes to digging deeper and investigating which roads we should NOT take on our journey. I’m happy to announce that this year’s journey will be 100% free of any cattle path, road, highway or interstate that is listed on the “2026 worst of the worst ranking paths/roads in the U.S.”
Not only are we choosing better roads, we’ve also been busy replacing all the dishes and everything else that was broken from all those horribly bumpy, absolutely terrible roads from last year’s journey. We even went so far as to replace the whole dang Airstream, completely by accident. The story of how we accidentally bought another Airstream is definitely worthy of it’s own blog, but we’ll cut it short and just say Ben “accidentally” found a screaming deal on a 2020 model of Airstream with a more spacious floorpan, which we love, but we could never justify buying brand new. The strange twist to this purchase was that the bargaining on the deal was finalized while Ben was rolling down the Tampa International Airport runway, taking off to Italy for a week of meetings. The last text I received as he was taking off was the following… “Bought a newer Airstream just now. I’ll tell you about it when I land. Love you!” UGH! Never give Ben too much time in airports to look for stuff to buy (huge eye roll by ME).
Our trip started a mere 30 hours after Chris walked off the Florida Polytechnic graduation stage (and off the payroll, but we haven’t shared that little bit of news with him quite yet). We now have exactly 9 days to boogie to Arkansas, where we’ll drop off both grand-dogs with the Noni and Pop-Pop and then head out to Zion National Park, where we’ll meet Hannah, Chris and Chris’ girlfriend, Maya, to begin our adventures on May 20th.
Now that the actual roadtrip begins, here’s the plan for today, DAY 1. Drive from the Englewood farm to Madison, FL. It’s an easy, shakedown kind of first day. It’s been a year since our last big trip, so we need to ease back into this gently, after all. Only a few turns to get us to Interstate 75 and then one more turn onto Interstate 10. Just a quick depiction below, so everyone understands the gravity of what we’ll be dealing with today. As the big lumbering truck and camper combo, our plan is to stick to the middle and right lanes and make our way gently up the state of Florida, into the panhandle.
Waze says it is about a 4-1/2 hr drive. 290 miles. Plenty of time to get there.
So, we shut down the house, went through the list one more time, and at the bright and early crack of 10:30 am, we pulled out of the driveway. Right on time! No point in arriving at the RV park before we can check in, right?
We got all the way up to the highway, about 15 minutes from our farm on busy surface streets, and got going on 75N at exit 193.
As soon as we hit 65 mph, the ass end of the of our shiny, newer Airstream began to gently sway (this is when I start to sweat because Ben didn’t see my side of the closet in the trailer. 😬 I don’t trust the weather in mountainous regions and so I prepare for the worst! Nothing wrong with bringing along 5-6 extra coats, just in case).
Trailer sway is a Capital B, Big Deal. Once it starts, it can quickly escalate to a Big Problem. Add in heavy wind buffeting from semi trucks or any kind of windy weather, and swaying takes a challenge and makes it downright dangerous. It means that the trailer is not balanced correctly or angled correctly.
So, we knew we had a problem that would require getting off the highway to address. So we slow rolled it at 64 mph to the next exit 195 (which was two miles north), turned around at the overpass, and took the interstate (at no more than 64 mph) back down to where we got on (exit 193).
Rather than drive all the way back to the farm, we go just off the highway to the side of the road and we (by “we,” we mean Ben), decided to take the hitch down a few inches, trying to tip the trailer forward a bit and shift the weight forward. While “we” were fixing the hitch, it seemed like a perfect time for us (me) to hit the bathroom. I mean, we’ve gone a total of 10 miles by this point and my tummy was rumbly. Never pass up an opportunity, right?
Trailer adjusted, we jump back on I-75 to see if it worked.
65 mph. Nope. Still got a shimmy.
Get off at exit 195. Again.
After consulting with our friend Daniel, who knows more stuff about more stuff than most people we know and after also checking the google, we decide we need to get a rough guess on how heavy the tongue is on the trailer. You want about 10-15% of the total trailer weight on the tongue, and you also want about 60% of the trailer weight to be in front of the axles. If there is too much, or not enough tongue weight, it can affect the steering of the truck. If there is too much weight behind the trailer axles, it can really amplify any swaying quickly. We need to know what we are dealing with here so we can address it correctly (and because all of the above is super nerdy info, you know Ben is heavily involved in this blog 🤓). (Hey now!)-Ben
Next stop, Daniel’s shop. Disconnect the trailer. Daniel used a forklift with a heavy duty engine scale to pick up the front of the airstream. Scale maxes out at 1100 lbs so it’s probably 12-1400 lbs on the tongue.
Which is A LOT. With our weight roughly estimated, we go all the way back to the farm to put on the weight distribution hitch, which we owned, but is a bit of a pain in the butt to use. Honestly, if your trailer is loaded right, Ben’s thought is that you shouldn’t need a weight distribution hitch anyway (🤨hmmmm…”we” seems to be insinuating that “me” might have brought too much crap. “Me” is just waiting for “we” to say I need to take some stuff out of the trailer. UGH😒! Everything I packed has a purpose. With the kids coming on this trip, it’s all so important that I have no idea what I can take out!).
So, next, we get the hitch on without doing the complicated weight shifting bars and we also moved a bunch of weight around to change the balance and shift the weight off the rear axle and out of the bed of the truck (Ben thinks I was shifting weight around, but I was really secretly going potty again. 🤪)
We decided to give the drive another try with the lower, longer hitch and new weight arrangement before dinking around with the bars that move the weight to the truck. It just such a hassle every time we hook up or disconnect the trailer.
We drive from the farm back to the highway where, once again, we get on at exit 193, and once again, there is a shimmy.
We get off at exit 195, yet again, and find a big gas station. We grab the weight distribution bars. That’s the last thing we can think to do before just going back and dumping everything that added the weight to the trailer (here we go again with the too much “crap” talk). It had pulled fine earlier in the year on our Bradenton test run (again, this means it’s my fault).
But we were carrying a lot more crap now (and there it is… “crap” and it’s 100% my fault 🤣).
So, on with the bars. Let’s see how this works….never done this before but Ben read the text and understands the theory. Tab A into slot B, yep, ok, now pull this bar up to here. Ok, (hhhhrrrrrrrnnnnnnnggggggg )
hmm…
(hrraaaannnnnnnggeggeggggggg)
(breathing heavier than expected for something little old men and ladies do with their camper) one more try
(HRRHRRHEHHHHHHHHGSSSAAAAAANNNNNGFFGGGG!!!!!)
Ok there must be a tool for lifting this bar(light bulb goes off💡). Yep. And we know precisely where it is at that exact moment, and that place is not here with us. That tool, that we now very clearly understand what it is for, is back at the farm.
So, we go all the way back to the farm.
Open the garage.
There’s the tool.
Let’s go see if this helps.
hrrrrng. Click
Go to the other side.
hrrnn. click.
Ok, yep, that tool is pretty important to the hitch system.
Really glad we didn’t grab it when we came back and got all of the other weight distribution stuff on the last run! 🙈
Trailer weight settled and distributed, off we go to the highway.
We get on at exit, you guessed it, 193.
It is now 1:45 in the afternoon by the way.
These shenanigans started when we originally left at 10:30.
So, we were now almost 3 1/2 hours into this. We literally didn’t know what else to do if this doesn’t work. We’re already wondering if we need to delay our departure so that we can rid of anything that isn’t critical or just reload everything into the 2013 airstream. We know that the shorter, lighter Airstream loaded well and pulled just fine last year without a weight distribution hitch (Ben seriously has no clue about all the extra crap I packed into this thing. I mean this 2020 model has sooooo much extra storage and so many extra drawers. Is it not okay to fill those cabinets and drawers with junk food and games for the kids? Come on!).
The only thing that can be causing this much trouble is that the camper is a bit overweight, with too much stuff on board. When we get to Hot Springs Village, we are going to have to put this camper on a diet (I’m definitely busted!🤭).
Fingers crossed and lots of prayers as we get onto 75.
We hit 65. Not much going on back there. Creep it up to 70. Little itty bit of shimmy but not nearly as severe. It’s still lurking there a bit. Still wiggling slightly when we are passed by semis. But this is manageable.
So we cautiously continue past good old exit 195. We keep it steady and controlled at about 68-70 mph.
We took easy all the way up on I-75 and on to I-10. Thankfully, we made it to our first campground of the whole trip in Madison, FL.
We’ll take it super easy the rest of the way to Arkansas, over the next two days.
We are carrying way more stuff than we should be carrying. Didn’t really think of it until it happened. Oh well, we are good for now and we will deal with the weight issue when we get to Arkansas.
We shall title that chapter “Airstream Fat Camp”
For now, we are off the road and tucked in for the night.
Tomorrow is a long day. Headed to Hattiesburg MS and the Hattiesburg / Okatoma KOA!
TaterTotTales 