1,000+ Mile Journey Through Sub Zero Winter Chaos for Our Dream RV - Worth It??

What's our video for this week? Well, we have a lot going on. One F350, a 5 by8 U-Haul trailer full of all of our stuff, 2 days, 1,000 miles, and a crazy polar vortex. And I forgot to mention, they are very important. Not one, but two cattle dogs and a crap ton of snacks. You may be wondering, why is all this happening on an RV lifestyle YouTube channel? Well, today we are leaving to go pick up our brand new home on the road. Hey, hey, hey. Today is packing up day. We are 2 days out um from departing from Florida and to go pick up our new fifth wheel. So, now we have a um we have to load up everything we own, all of our belongings into a 5x8 U-Haul trailer. And um we leave. It is Friday now, and we head out on Sunday. Um I have some uh crazy weather in the works. It's going to be really cold, and we'll we'll explain we'll explain why in a little bit, but it's going to be really cold. And thankfully it looks like no not a lot of moisture in the forecast. But we are going to be driving to the freezing tundra or for us we call it freezing tundra. It's not really the tundra but to us Floridaidians it's going to be freaking cold. One of the problems here is that we're going to have such a prolonged period of cold afterwards. It's going to be in the teens in some of these places in the mornings after the snowfall happens. Uh and there's really not going to be a warmup for several days. I hate moving. It is literally like I don't know. It's probably one of my least favorite things to do in the whole wide world. Um kind of I grew up uh very poor. My mom was a single mom. Most of my life it was me and her. And uh we moved a lot, moved houses a lot. And it just uh it's just stressful. Packing, unpacking, packing, unpacking, packing, unpacking. So, um I'm hoping this is it for a while. Um it should be it. This should be the last move for a while. And you're probably thinking, well, it would have been a lot easier if we could have just moved our stuff from our motor home right over into the new camper. But with the way this worked out, um it just didn't work out that way. We sold the motor home in November and um we kind of like had our eye on this floor plan. Um we were eyeing it. We were still kind of going back and forth between do we get a travel trailer or do we get a fifth wheel? And then we were kind of looking at the Alliance uh Delta under 30 foot travel trailers. And then we were looking at um this 23 ml fifth wheel. We just decided, especially after seeing the 23 ml fifth wheel at the Tampa RV show, we were totally head over heels in love with it. We knew we were making the right decision. Um I mean, this this fifth wheel is 100% us. I feel like the floor plan and everything about it was made for us, literally. I mean, it's just it's just perfect, I think, in in every way possible. And we could see ourselves living in it, you know, for 3 years, maybe more, just like we did our motor home. Again, unfortunately, we've now had to wait until mid January to get it. And we have to drive up to Elcart, Indiana, um, to pick it up from the factory. And yeah, like we were saying earlier, we're basically driving north into the frozen tundra. to pick this thing up. We didn't show you the stressful situation it was to back the U-Haul in here. Narrow road. Anyway, not getting into the details. This is the last trailer I plan on pulling like this. Uh this is where our stuff goes. And uh we don't have a whole lot of stuff left to to pack in there that we didn't already get into the bed of the truck. So, I think this is going to work out great for us. And uh let's get it done. [Music] Yeah, I think we are uh getting really close to um packing up this U-Haul. We're going to have to empty this trailer out in the freezing cold and we're literally I think what we're going to do is we're just going to throw it throw it literally into the fifth wheel, shut the door and leave and get the heck out of there. That's how cold it's going to be, you know. Um I'm definitely Yeah, we're definitely not unpacking outside and then putting it in the fifth wheel. So, and the fifth wheel's winterized, so we can't we can't really live in it in that kind of weather. It's just too cold. It's and it comes winterized from the factory. We're going to leave it winterized um until we get down to uh warmer weather. So, but the furnace should work, so we should be able to get it nice and warm in the trailer. But yeah, but we'll see when we get there. In the meantime, um, while Chris is loading up the U-Haul trailer, I have, uh, started opening up our brand new TPMS system. We went with the, um, TST Truck System Technologies um, TPMS system. Um, I've read that it's literally the best on the market. Not cheap, but um you really should not cheap out when it comes to uh safety uh stuff like this. This was a big deal. Um so we wanted the best. We just have four cuz we only have uh four tires on the trailer. Our truck already has uh TPMS built in. And then um I'm reading about how to set this up and it has a rechargeable lithium battery. So, I'm going to need to get that charged up and ready to go for our trip. Um, I don't know. We might test it out on the U-Haul trailer and see how it works or we might not. Um, but it should be pretty much plug and play. That was definitely a musthave. Um, on, you know, we knew we were getting this trailer. We went and bought uh a bunch of stuff that we needed. We also bought extra like electrical stuff, wire from the trailer to the truck like for the trailer brakes and lights and stuff. And we also we had to buy like we're going from having a composting toilet to having a normal RV toilet and black tank now. So, we had to go and and uh buy all the hoses. Um we had to buy wheel chocks. We had to buy leveling pads. And um we also have wood cuz that's what we used. Um, with our motor home, we had wood plus some uh some little of the Lego leveling blocks. Um, this basically all the goodies that you need with a trailer cuz this is this is going to be uh completely different. Um, coming from a motor home to now a fifth wheel. It It's going to be a learning curve for us. And uh we had to buy some stuff that um we did not have or did not need with the motor home. Of course, we packed up all of our stuff, including bathroom stuff. And then last night, I needed that one thing that we already packed. I'm like, really? I haven't used this in months. And then I need it. That's it. I need it when we already have everything packed in here. Thank goodness Chris has a great memory. I don't. And he remembered. Um I didn't remember where it was, but you found it pretty quick. He remembered where this box was with the I grew up in the era of Tetris on Game Boy. So, uh, that's pretty much what we got in here. He's the ultimate packer. Yep. Because I hate it. If you need your life packed up and moved, call Two Men in a Truck cuz I'm not for hire, but if I have to do it, I'm I'm kind of pretty good at it. We'll see. We'll see how it goes. Somehow Lindsay still has gave her the choice. Run out of space. Two things that are still outstanding. One is her bread maker. Her what do you call it? That my ninja comi. Yeah. Whatever it is, your air fryer, right? And that's like it's a box. It's pretty big. The others are plants, which are forever and ever. Amen. So, I gave her the choice. Which of the two are you going to take with you? And she took the keys of the truck and said, I'm taking both. So, I guess I'm going to have plants and an air fryer fit somehow in here. The plants are probably going to have to go at my feet. No, it'll fit in here. All right. Like the snake plant we can throw in here. It's not that big of a deal. But my ones that are my favorites are probably going to stay with me. I can go anywhere. It's amazing. It can go here and go way up there. So, we are definitely We are at the finish line. Finish line. Yeah. Well, kind of. I mean, finish line for packing. We're almost there. We leave tomorrow morning. Um, it's going to be raining and then where we're going to end up tomorrow, which is somewhere in Tennessee, it's going to be below freezing with rain. So yeah, that's going to be fun. And uh we're definitely going to plan on coming off the road before the sun sets and um you know, leaving in the morning where the sun's already up and hopefully started to melt things. Hopefully there's no ice. It is a cool and rainy morning. I think we got like over 5 ines of rain um overnight here. It's just been It started last night and it just rained non-stop throughout the night and into this morning. And we are just packing up some last minute things. I feel like there's always last minute things. There's like the important stuff that um we can't pack away in the U-Haul, like our our bathroom stuff and our snacks. And we have a portable freezer that we have to hook up to our DJI power station so that can stay running as we drive. some um last minute uh just knick-knacks, belongings, um things that didn't get packed up yesterday, and some shoes, you know, like that's packing. At least that's always packing when I move. There's always things that we forget. not like forget. They were just literally I made bread for Chris's mom yesterday. So there's all my one of my banitins, um my bread flour, all that is in there. So it didn't get packed with the rest of the stuff because I was doing that. Um and then all of our snacks. We got a lot of snacks. We are some snack eaters. We are definitely not going to starve on this journey. Um and we just found out or we found out we've been keeping an eye on the weather. We are driving into some snow. Um we're hoping to make it to like southern Tennessee tonight. It's about um six to seven hours to get there. Um I think it's going to be I don't know like the Georgia Tennessee border kind of near Chattanooga. And we might see some snow. I know Nashville is getting dumped on right now. Um we might even try to get to Nashville, but I don't think we're gonna push it. I think we're going to stay safe, get in somewhere, you know, just after 5, after sunset, and chill out for the night, and then get up in the morning, not too early, because we don't want to end up driving on um ice on the roads. Uh cuz it's definitely it's going to freeze um where we're going. It's going to get cold enough to freeze. And this might sound stupid or silly. You really don't know, but I have a bunch of creamer that is like shelf stable almond milk creamer that I pack and I take down to Baja. And that is literally packed into the front of the U-Haul. And where we're going, it's going to be it's going to freeze overnight every place that we go to. So, we're kind of like, what's going to happen to those that almond milk? And I think I have some coconut milk in there, too. Like, is it going to freeze and then explode? So, we might end up having to go through the U-Haul. I don't know. So, we might be overreacting and know it's just going to be okay and we're just being stupid about it. But, it's literally like $50 worth of uh coffee creamer and and dairyfree milk that I take with me to Baja. So, but hopefully not too much longer. Chris's mom is uh making us breakfast and then we are going to get out of here because we got to get we got to get on the road. Talk about it. No, remember that creamer I talked about. We're going to find it. Just a game of Tetris that I freaking perfectly won and now I have perfectly win again. It's like redesigning the program. Hey, do we ever do anything once? You know, we measure once, measure twice, measure a third time, and then we still have to redo it. Man, look at how beautiful this looks. Oh, you did such a good job, babe. And because they're heavy, I put them in the front 40% of the camper. Oh, we weren't thinking about freezing weather, that's for sure. And here, I thought we were going to leave on time today. We're not We're not in a rush. So, but I thought we were going to be out of here by now, but that's all right. Always a silver lining. Well, we found one box of creamer. [Music] Now we got to find the other. We see it. So it's just behind some heavy stuff. So his butt. We got it. A giant box of creamer. Now to pack it all back in. never smooth. And the poor dogs are slightly freaking out. I think they're about as stressed as we are. They have no idea what's going on. So, but they'll be happy when we get to our new home. Everybody beat up. Beat up. Why? Cuz we done just left Florida. We don't take none of Florida. Out of Florida and into what? Well, in this case, Georgia. We don't take it in Alabama either. It's kind of hard when you're flying. You don't know when you're actually leaving Florida, but but symbolic. You lift your feet up when you leave Florida because Florida belongs in Florida, even though we're taking it everywhere else. When you come back in, you lift your feet up cuz you don't bring no crap into Florida. Yep. Especially none of that Georgia crap. Especially none of that Georgia crap. Our very first rest stop. Yeah. I'm gonna go. Um I think it's probably better that I use the bathroom at the rest stop instead of in the trailer. Yeah, I don't think I don't think the U-Haul has a toilet. Uh doesn't have a toilet. It is so weird traveling without a place to stop and just walk in the back and go pee. Yeah, but exciting where we're going. Yeah, it's definitely odd. Um, I don't mind using the rest stop bathroom, but I'd much prefer to use my own toilet. So, it definitely is weird traveling without our home on the road, without our RV. Uh, yeah. And we're going to have to start booking hotel rooms. That's a little strange as well. So, and then we'll have our RV and we won't have to do it again. Yay. No more packing and unpacking and using toilets that aren't ours. Tell me, what's your least or your most favorite part about driving through Georgia? I can tell you what our least favorite is. Peaches. Peaches. Peaches. I don't like peaches. I mean, yeah. I want to say I don't like them, but it's not like a fruit I buy. Oh, I don't like them at all. Why? I've never liked them. You've never liked peaches? Never liked peaches. Have you tried eating peaches? Yes, I have. fuzzies outside. That's all. I mean, they seem like really juicy, but I've never I guess I'm weird. I've never had like an actual peach, but I'm weird. Anyway, so our least favorite part about Georgia, driving in Georgia, is driving through Atlanta. And I feel like there's no way around it. Like at Atlanta is like almost the whole state of Georgia. It's kind of how Atlanta keeps a big day. That's the whole highway. This is I mean look at this. Like it's 3. Okay. It's 4:00. Look on a Sunday. 4:00 on a Sunday. This is why. Oh, and uh look familiar? If you watched our breakdown video where we left our motor home in Atlanta, it happened right over there. Yeah. So, we just stopped for the night um and just outside of uh Chattanooga, Tennessee, and um looked up a few hotels on the way here. Um a couple of them wanted a deposit um for the dogs, which we really didn't want to have to pay upfront. So, there are a bunch of other hotels literally next door to this one. So, we just found a quality in um good price and don't charge a deposit. And it seems like there's not a weight limit. Chris is in there now. So, hopefully it's decent. We get in here and there's free breakfast in the morning. Um we get our room for the night and we leave in the morning after we have our coffee and it's snowing. It's snowing. Literally just had a snowflake hit me in the face. It is cold. It is, I think, below 30° right now. It's [Music] freezing. And we have to bring a bunch of stuff inside. So, that's going to be fun. So, we are in our cozy hotel room for the night. I'm cozy. Don't show Chris cuz he got really cozy. And uh it's weird traveling without the RV and because it's freaking freezing cold outside. Yeah, those are my plants because they're warm weather plants. They can't handle freezing cold. So, we had to bring all of them in. Brought a lot. And we left the our portable freezer outside without the power station cuz I figured, well, it's going to be 20°, so everything in there should stay frozen, right? I don't think it will hurt the the freezer. I mean, it's ruggedly built. It's built for tent camping and all that. So, I think it'll be okay. And uh we had to bring in like brought in all everything, you know, that freezer free the freezing weather could hurt my plants. We brought in my my um dairyfree milk and um all of our cooler stuff but which I put in the fridge which I didn't think I guess that could have stayed out there too and would have been but but we had our dinner in there and the dog food and um yeah so I guess it was smart that we that we brought it in. But yeah, we brought in all the important stuff, computers, cameras, we brought in a lot of stuff. It was not fun bringing that in just for the night, but it is what it is. And uh we got to pack it all back up in the morning and do it all over again tomorrow night, too. So, cuz it's going to be even colder. I think it's going to be in the negatives tomorrow night, which is going to be fun. So, there were um some snow flurries coming down. Chris said the dogs had no idea what to do with the cold. He said they kind of ran around at first and then they basically said, "Screw this. We're ready to go inside." I don't blame him. So, we are going to chill out. We're going to eat our um Mexican food that we got for dinner last night. I got delicious carnitas. And uh got beans. Chris has beans. And we are going to call it a night. [Music] [Music] I paid $75 for this bowl of cereal and I got the room for free last night. It's a pretty good deal. What do you think? I should not be eating this. You shouldn't. You eat that. But you won't eat a waffle. So it goes. She only lived once. Oh my gosh. Oh, it's freaking freezing out there. It's cold. All right, let's do this thing. There's our today. Go ahead and pray. Jesus, thank you for today. Thank you for your love for us. Thank you for choosing us and calling us into your family. I pray that you would protect us as we drive, as we go further north into the cold and the unknown of whatever ice might be on the road. Lord, I pray that you go before us and protect us from that, from whatever there might be. Lord, I just ask that you would bless this time that we have and traveling north and this opportunity that we have in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Good truck. So, we woke up to 11 degrees. I didn't look at that. I didn't go to the driver's side of the truck to see that puddle that was completely frozen over. Lots of frost and the grass, but the roads look good. Um, there's people out here driving, so I'm not too worried. And Indianapolis is our goal, give or take. give or take for tonight. And then it's just a short three hours to Elcart, Indiana. In case you didn't know, Elcart is the capital of I don't know, RV manufacturing. That's the best way to put it. It is literally the capital. Pretty much almost every manufacturer of RVs is in Elcart. Um it's right at the um Michigan Indiana border and it's just east of Chicago, Illinois. And today is Monday and our trailer starts to be made today which is exciting. So they're going to start working on it today and it will be the build it will be finished being built on Thursday but we won't get it. It has to go through um like a I don't want to call it a PDI because that's what they do at the dealership, but it's almost like an inspection that the factory does um just to make sure everything is in tip-top shape and working order and then we get it. So that's exciting. We will be there um by tomorrow afternoon hopefully. So Tuesday afternoon. If you have watched any of our other videos, you know that we have been um very loyal to Lo's Travel Stops. Well, now we have decided to make the switch to um Pilot Flying J. Um, only because we are going from a motor home towing a car, which honestly was not that hard to go through just the regular gas lanes um at travel stops. And we're now go moving on to a big truck towing a fifth wheel. Um, so and we have a gas truck, so we can't use the diesel lanes. I know there are a lot of people out there that they only want a diesel truck because they can use or they tow a massive fifth wheel. They have a diesel truck and they can use the um the big wide diesel lanes that the semi-truckss use. Um but because our truck's a gasser, we can't do that. But we've learned that Flying J has um or certain not I don't think all of their travel stops have them, but um a lot of them have um basically separate lanes for RVs that have gas pumps and Loves does not do that or at least we've never we've never seen that in any of the Loves we stopped at. But Pilot J does or Pilot J Flying J Flying J does. If you download the Flying J app, you um can save I think like up to 10 cents off your fuel. Maybe more, maybe less, I guess, depending on the um travel stop. But, you know, we save that money. It's easy to get in and out of our uh 7.3 gas engine. Um we're getting about towing we're we were getting about 12 and a half miles a gallon. We on highway miles, we have gotten up to 15 miles of the gallon not towing with this engine. In city, we get a lot less. We get around 12 12 to 13 if we do a lot of city driving. And because we have a long bed pickup truck, we have a bigger fuel tank, which is really nice on travel days because we can go a long ways um without stopping for fuel cuz it's a pretty big tank. I think it's 45 gallons. I might be wrong, but I think it's around 45 gallons. Um I think it's about 10 gallons more than if you were to get a short bed uh 7.3 gasoline engine and the um we have an F350. So we can go quite a ways, a lot we can go a lot longer than we did in our motor home that had the V10, the Ford V10 engine, and we only got like 7 to 8 miles the gallon. And we literally had to full fill up every 300 or 350 miles. And you know, once we get this fifth wheel and we see what mileage we're going to get, you know, with this little trailer, we're getting 12 and 1/2. I'm thinking it's going to be less with the fifth wheel. It's not a massive fifth wheel. It's under 30 ft. Um, so who knows? We might get 12 and 1 half miles. We might get a little less. Um, hopefully not under 10. And a crazy thing with polar vortex. It has It's kind of given us It's actually a good thing, which is kind of weird. It's kind of given us a break. Um because last week, was it last week or was like the week before going into last week, a crazy snowstorm hit where we're going to now in Indiana. And um and now pushing behind that crazy snowstorm is this polar vortex that's causing um basically record record setting um wind chill and and temperatures. So it's like literally I think where we're getting to in Indianapolis the low tonight is going to be in the negatives. But because that polar vortex is pushing those really arctic cold temperatures in, it's not bringing a lot of moisture with it, which is good for us because honestly, like I will take the crazy cold temperatures over there being snow and ice all over the roads, which makes it super unsafe to drive. So, this has actually turned out good for us that that the weather is going to be so cold. And then the the this polar vortex is also pushing um this storm system super south of us like it's hitting Louisiana and Florida and Texas where we're going to end up um later next week. And um we're missing that because we basically just drove north past it. It'll probably be the heaviest uh in Mobile around 2 or 3 p.m. That's when it's really going to get started over there in the panhandle of Florida. We'll see places like Atlanta, Georgia maybe get in on a couple of flurries uh around the 5:00 p.m. time frame, but it looks like this storm is going to be very suppressed to the south. We just missed it by a day. Literally, they're going to get hit tonight um with like a few inches of snow, which is insane. So, like Louisiana's flipping out because they hardly ever get snow. And I'm sure the panhandle of Florida is flipping out because they never get snow. And um we might even get snow where we're from in Jacksonville. We'll have to keep updated with Chris's parents. But the last time it really snowed in Jacksonville was 1988, 1989, and I was like 2 or 3 years old. I just gave away my age. old enough. Old enough to slightly remember the snow. Remember, in almost seven years of doing this, I've never said how old Lindsay is, but she just told you. Yeah, we're we're going through a mountain pass right now. And the rocks on the side of the road are covered in ice. I'm going to flip the camera around. Covered in ice. Look at that. That's all ice. Icicyles hanging off the rocks. And our truck says that it is 11° outside. I don't know what elevation we're at. It's not super hot. Yeah. Yeah. Chris says maybe 1,800 ft. Cock's like, "What is this?" You've played in it before. You okay, buddy? You want to play in the snow? Huck over here, buddy. I don't think he wants to play in it. Huck. [Laughter] Hid. He's like, "This is freaking cold." Huckleberry, get out of there. It's not really snow. It's really hard pack. Yeah. Oh, don't slip. [Laughter] You having fun? She's slipping. [Laughter] I don't know how anyone can complain about heat because I hear so many people say that living in the cold is a whole lot better than living where it gets really hot because if you're in the cold, you could just put layers on, right, and get warm. But if you're in the heat, you can't really cool off. But let me tell you something, man. This cold is freaking painful. It freaking hurts. My face feels like it's on fire. My hands feel like they're on fire. Like this is not fun. You look like you're on fire. Like this is painful. Painful. So, I don't know how you northerners do it. How do you do it? Leave a leave a like a tip in the comments. No. No. We're not coming back to this crap ever again. This is like the second time in my entire life on this planet that I've felt this kind of cold. You can have it. And yeah, I don't care about your tips. Our tips for winterizing is get that to Baja. Get the Yes. Oh my gosh. This is ridiculous. It's not even It's in the teens. It's 16°. This isn't even negative one. No, thank you. We have made it to Indianapolis for the night and we got a hotel room. I think we got a really good deal on a nice hotel room um at Country Inn and Suites. We actually stayed at a country in in um Minnesota and um when we broke down on the way to Florida in our motor home and um it ended up being like a really nice stay, like really good breakfast in the morning and uh very dog friendly, just a very nice hotel room, good price. And I found one here in Indianapolis that um we got a really good deal on. Um, so looking forward to spending the night here. Um, unfortunately we did have a casualty. One of my plants definitely bit the dust. Oh, sorry. So, they um rode in the back of the truck today. I had them in the hotel room last night and they were fine then. And then I thought, you know, oh well, they'll be covered in the truck, but it was just so cold today. And they're house plants, you know, they can't really handle 15°, so they didn't pair so well. Hopefully this little guy pops back. I don't know, though. He looks pretty sad. Couple of my other plants look pretty sad, too. But I think they'll be okay. This guy's definitely seen better days. Oh well. So, we are all settled in for the night um in our hotel room here in Indianapolis. Uh we ate dinner and we are going to get ready to watch the college championship game, Notre Dame and Ohio State. Um I think we're pulling for Notre Dame. So, kind of um I mean, we're in Indiana, so kind of appropriate to root for Notre Dame, so I'm going to go ahead and um call it a night. She's talking football, just just a tiny bit. It's every man's dream. And we're we're going to close out this video. Um but tomorrow is a very very very exciting day. Um, we did another 7 hours um of driving today and tomorrow is just the home stretch to Elcart, Indiana. It's just a three-hour drive and we are going to pick up a new video um on the way there or in the morning and um we are hopefully going to set eyes on our new home for the first time. Well, what's built of it. So, they just started building it today and um not sure where it will be at tomorrow, but maybe we'll get to get to take a peek at it, which is going to be really exciting. We're going to end this video right here and catch us next week when our next video uh comes out when we're going to finally um get to see our new RV. Yes.