SHAKE DOWN TRIP 4/2014

Welcome to the first post of our blog. As you can see the date of posting this is way off from when it happened, but this was our first true camping experience with our RV and thought it should be the first post.


This actually happened before the yard sales but while we were organizing for them (see side bar, How It All Got Started).


We took delivery of our motorhome in February of 2014, and started organizing and seeing what we wanted to fit and take with us over the next few months, but we also found a few things we wanted to have fixed under warranty. Thankfully part of the sale allowed us to store the RV at the dealership and that made it convenient for the dealership for when the work could be done, and we wouldn't loose our place in line for repairs even if we wanted to bring it to the house for the weekend. The kids of course couldn't wait to try it and would sleep in it even when in front of the house. We finally decided that the weather was good enough for camping in April. I wanted to give my family a good experience and of course to do a good shakedown run of everything in the RV.


We went to Camp Blanding which is about an hour from Jacksonville. It's a Florida National Guard base that has a campground with full hookups, that is right on a lake that is thought to have been formed by a sink hole. The lake is two miles across and great for swimming and boating, and we even bought an inflatable kayak that fits easily into a small storage compartment.


The whole family had a great time. It was just an extended three day weekend but the weather was perfect. We did the swimming thing and kayaking thing and jumped from the floating dock and even our dog, who we thought hated water, was even getting in up to her chest. We realized that she had never been to a lake and only to the beach where she didn't like the waves. The base had several hiking trails and even a small military history museum. We forgot to bring firewood so had to search the forest for that and had to limit our pieces to a size that could fit in the fire pit as I hadn't packed a saw. We cooked hotdogs over the fire and latter smores over the coals. We even saw fireflies, which for my daughter and wife was a first.


Couldn't have had a better time, unless we could have had a longer time. My kids kept thanking me for the great time they had and even my wife said it felt like home. They were getting more excited to get moved in and to get going. Unfortunatly we still had more than a couple of years before we would truly be on the road, but hopefully they would still like living in the RV and camping next to the beach when we got to Virgina.