Ready to depart 2025-02-24 – Bye bye Wisconsin Winter!!!
[Fitchburg 2025-02-24 (Mon) to Carrabelle Day#1 2025-02-26 (Wed)]. Back in August of 2024 Lyn booked a site for a month stay in March at the Carrabelle Beach RV Resort, located in the middle of the Florida Panhandle on the Gulf of Mexico (yes, Mexico!). Lyn’s dream has been for us to tow a Jeep to Florida in the winter and drive it in the sun along the coasts and beaches (preferably with the top off). We then spent months figuring out how to actually make that happen. Technically we could tow our 4700 lb Jeep with our self-converted Sprinter van, but that really isn’t a practical or safe idea. So, ultimately we bought a small Class-C motorhome, after much indecision, late in the Fall. So late in fact that we had to immediately winterize it, and we were not actually able to try it out before this trip. Hardly ideal to take it untried on such a long trip as this, including long distance towing the Jeep, and I was very nervous about that (spoiler – have had no actual problems with either the motorhome or towing so far- whew!).
We arrived in Carrabelle yesterday after 3 long days on the road. It was about 1320 miles, with overnight stops at KOA’s in Benton IL and Hattisburg MS.
Night #1 Benton IL KOA
Night #2 Hattiesburg-Okatoma (MS) KOA
Day #3 – Arrival at last Carrabelle Beach!!!
One of my biggest concerns for the trip was making fuel stops with the motorhome-Jeep rig. Note that you can’t backup the motorhome with the Jeep hitched in back. Without careful planning and selection of stations and accessible pumps you can get “trapped” in un-maneuverable positions (and have to disconnect and fool around) or worse if not careful hit something maneuvering in tight spaces. We carefully selected 4 fuel stops along the route after reviewing them via satellite maps, and building in enough reserve fuel to reach alternates if they didn’t work out (a lot like flight planning when we had our airplane). It all went OK, with the only issue, as expected, having to wait patiently for an (usually one and only) accessible pump to open up.
Only 8-9 MPG with the 7.3L V8 Ford “Godzilla” engine. But she has lots of power and that’s what counts, so drink deeply Godzilla!
First night at Carrabelle!
To celebrate our first night in Carrabelle Lyn made us a small steak, baked potatoes, and a salad. After dinner it was past sunset but we walked down to the beach anyways. We ran into another couple, and they asked us if we were there to see the rocket launch? “What launch?” we asked. Turns out it was Intuitive Machine’s Lunar Lander being launched by a Space X Falcon 9. And scheduled for just 5 minutes from when we ran into this couple. And sure enough right on schedule, with us facing towards Kennedy Space Center (Launch Pad 39A!) over 320 miles away, we saw it as a bright orange-red object climb above the horizon, and after a couple minutes it was a bright white streak. I took a few photos with my iPhone, and really wished I’d have had time to go back to the motorhome and get our big Nikon camera with an 800mm lens.
Intuitive Machine’s Lunar Lander on top of a Space X Falcon 9 2025-02-26.
