Leaving Florida – The Struggle

We started out on April 1, 2026 for the Great American Heartland Tour (Our journey’s name). This journey is a little different than anything prior. Trips we’ve taken in the past lasting up to 3 months have been in a pickup and driving over 6000 miles and tent camping with Airbnb ever few days. This trip we put all of our belongings into climate controlled storage, sold some stuff and gave away some too. This journey is been discussed for over a year in light discussions and on Christmas day, I decided to pull the pin and do it. So in January we purchased our 2025 Entegra Ethos 20T Ram Promaster Van as our mode of travel.

Our current journey out of Florida has been nothing short of a blessing! We started close to home going to Oscar Scherer State Park as a test to see how we’d do. Check systems and supplies and make sure we could do this.

Then we moved a little further out to Myakka State Park to continue to check our systems, schedules, procedures and get our feet wet at the whole RV life.

Traveling with a large dog makes this whole experience a little more difficult but ever so worth it to bring our favorite traveling companion. Nove has been on all our trips and she loves the van. She rides up on my bed as we drive as if she was the Queen of Sheba.

We said our good byes to all our neighbors, friends after we had to come back into Nokomis for a few extra supplies and minor parts. Like a 50 amp to 30 amp conversion plug. (a.k.a. Dogbone). Which in my book has been a good purchase.

Even though this trip is expected to only last 6 months, it’s been extremely hard and stressful for everyone.