Waiting On The Weather
By the time you read this we may be rolling down the highway, headed south. Or, we may still be tucked away snug and warm in our bed. It all depends on the weather.
Yesterday the forecast for Elkhart, Indiana was supposed to be sunny, with a high somewhere between 65 and 70 degrees. Instead, a heavy overcast hung on all day long, and it was in the low 50s all day. Today the forecast was for cold temperatures, wind, and rain.
I’m hoping that the weatherman is wrong two days in a row, and that we get yesterday’s weather today. If so we’ll leave Elkhart Campground. But if the predicted storm hits, we’ll sit it out and wait for it to pass. We’ve been here a long time, and one more day won’t make a difference one way or another.
One of the great things about the fulltime RV lifestyle is that we usually have the luxury of setting our own schedule, and we don’t have to risk life and limb to get anyplace at any time. If the weather is bad, if we didn’t sleep well the night before, or if we just wake up and feel lazy, nobody is going to be calling to tell us to get a move on.
If we are traveling and things get ugly, we find a safe place to get off the road and hunker down to wait things out. Many times we have been parked in a rest area or a truck stop while nasty storms pounded our motorhome, and watched RVs flying down the highway. That just doesn’t make sense to me. We have also been ensconced in comfortable RV parks and watched folks pull out in weather that would even make a duck seek shelter.
I have always wondered about fulltime RVers who drive into terrible weather conditions just to get someplace else. Why? They have their home with them, so where are they going in such a hurry?
We also never hit the road until around 9 a.m. I just can’t see fighting rush hour traffic to get an extra 50 or 100 miles behind me in a day. Our preferred routine on a traveling day is to pull out somewhere between 9 and 10:30 a.m. By then most of the commuters have gotten to work and traffic is much lighter.
We try to be off the road by about 4 p.m. if we’re near a town or city of any size, to avoid the evening rush hour traffic. If we absolutely have to travel more that day for some reason, we will often pull into a truck stop or rest area, have an early dinner and just relax until the rush hour is over, then we’ll put a couple more hours of driving time under our belts.
Since my night vision is terrible, we try to be off the road before dark. Besides, we became RVers to see America, and you can’t see much with just headlights illuminating the landscape.
Though I always tell people that an ideal driving day is somewhere between 250 and 300 miles, I will admit that all too often, if the weather is good and the driving is easy, we’ll cram more miles into a day than that. If we’re not tired and traveling conditions are comfortable, sometimes we just enjoy the drive so much that we’re not ready to stop. On days like that, it is not uncommon for us to cover 400 miles.
What is your traveling style like? Do you hit the road early and stop early, do you take a more leisurely pace and only cover a couple hundred miles a day? Or, like us, do you sometimes poke along in the slow lane, and other times have marathon driving days?
If you are also stuck waiting for good weather to travel in, you can pass some time reading Bad Nick’s new blog post Halloween Is For Kids, Not Psychos And Fanatics.
Thought For The Day – Middle age is when you have stopped growing at both ends, and have begun to grow in the middle.
