How we RV Travel, Starlink Mini Testing, and BUSIEST Cracker Barrel EVER!

So not to complain about the weather in Florida, but for like the past month it feels like it's been in the 30s and 40s overnight, which is better than a lot of the rest of the country, but that's not the reason you go to Florida. And now finally it's getting just about perfect. The sun is shining 75 degrees and it's this is what you want in Florida. We've been getting really lucky and getting some of these really nice sights and no real big neighbors. It's been great, but today, today is moving day. We're out of Florida. We are very excited about it. We're off to a little bit of a late start, but that's okay. It's still early. It's 10 a.m. and we have the excitement. That's the number one thing. The interstate is calling our name hard. So we're going to talk a little bit about the no plan travel or the loose plan travel. You know, we don't 100% know where we're going tonight. We have an end goal in mind in a few days. Unfortunately, we're not going to be out of Florida today, which, you know, last night I was like, oh, we're going to leave Florida, but no, we have one more night in Florida. Yeah, it takes two days to get out. Florida is great, but we always miss going out west. It's dirty under here, isn't it? Yeah, the dogs like to just... Here, I'll take that. We're missing some stuff. The dogs like to perch up there when we're parked, so it gets a little dirty. That's all you, Lewis. Changed out a couple of my water filters today. This first one, which is a five micron, always catches that rust. It just, I mean, after a couple weeks, it looks like this. So I try to change this out every month and then we have a one micron and then there's a 0.5 micron in there. So I usually change these out sooner because they're cheaper, you know, three to five bucks per filter. And then the 0.5 micron filter is pretty expensive. I think that's like $15 per filter. So I do that like every other month. Well, we are just about ready to pack up. I'm going to shut the power off. So in this bay here, I keep the cord reel. I then put in our triple water filter, slides in there, and then our 50 foot water hose. I just kind of shove in there too. And then that big blue box on the right that takes up half the bay, that's our Starlink. And y'all know we don't love Starlink that much. We've carried it for four years. I actually just went back and saw this dish four years ago was almost $700. So that was just a backup system that, you know, when you need it, you need it. But this weekend we got something new. All right, shutting all three valves and then the sewer hose just gets stored on this side. I really do wish there was like a tray or something I could probably find and put in here to, you know, make it any cleaner just in case something happens. But it all sits in here pretty good. I just keep the freshwater stuff in that bay. That's about it. But now time to get on the road. We're not quite cutting it super close to 11 o'clock checkout. But we are. Yeah, it will be by the time we actually get out of here. And yeah, right behind Chris's head there up in the window, that's the new toy we're playing with. It looks like a drone trying to fly out of here. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. So that's the Starlink Mini. We'll talk a little bit more about that. But so far what we're doing now is testing it in motion as well as how that $5 a month plan works. And we're going to need that Starlink Mini this year. What does the $5 per month plan actually get you? Well, they call it standby mode. It gets you like super low speed internet, like unlimited low speed. The question is, what can you do with that low speed? All right. Yeah, fire it up. I'll get the slides in. It's about that time, right? What do they say? Wheels up? You know what? We're a little rusty because it's been such a slow moving holiday winter season for us. I can't tell you how ready we are to change that. It is time to get the wheels up. We need to change the landscape. We do. A big change of landscape. Sounds like a tea kettle back there. Sounds a little rusty. It's whistling. Clear in the Bronco. Better not forget that. All right. Goodbye, Florida. Another two-door Bronco owner there. Decent little park here. A little small, but not bad. All right. Here we go. Hitching up one more time. We've been having a little bit of trouble with our lights for some reason where when we first plug in, they're not transferring back to the Bronco. We don't know what the problem is. It's hard to tell in the sunlight, but the right side's working. The left side's not, and then it'll come on as soon as we start driving. Are you getting the forward air still? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. The left light turn signal lamp is- It's not working. Still not working. That usually clicks in and starts working once we start driving. I know. That's what I was just saying. It's really weird. It is really weird. Maybe we need to get out of the humidity. Okay. Here we are. 72 miles per hour. We're going to test the InMotion satellite. That's part of why the Mini is appealing. I'm seeing all these people putting them on the dash, putting them on the roof of their Teslas or whatever. They have internet while driving, which that's what we need. Because so many times we are driving through desolate areas where there is no service. Yeah. Think about all of the national parks. Just in the boonies. I just picture driving through dead areas of California where you're going through the Mojave Desert or something creepy. Yeah. We have the T-Mobile. We have the Verizon. Oftentimes in random areas throughout the country, both will be out of service, which is where the Starlink comes to play. Starlink is our backup. It's our tertiary backup. But we had the one that did not work in motion. You had to set it up and tear it down each time. I can think of another couple of examples where we have lost a service like that using our regular providers. Then for whatever reason, our Google map will lose its map directions. If you don't plan ahead and have those offline maps downloaded, you can be in a pickle. You have to just go off memory or pull over and ask somebody until your service kicks back in. Okay. So I'm playing a YouTube video and it is working perfectly fine. Really? Yep. Just going off of Starlink, driving down the road, popped right up. Like I said, speed tests, I'll run one just for the fun of it. But people run a speed test and it's like, oh, that's great. But can it actually open up a website and use it? So this thing's getting a hundred megabits per second down megabytes, megabits. Is that good? Yeah. So plenty of speed. Now the big caveat, I want to test the $5 a month plan, which when you activate a new Starlink, you have to do one of their traditional plans, which is either $50 per month for a hundred gigs or $165 for the unlimited. So I had to do the $50. That's why we got charged $20 prorate. Okay. And then I had to switch over to the $5 a month plan, which won't start until that $20 one expires. Yeah. Which is like a 10 days from now or 15 days. So we're going to have to come back and test the $5. By the time we're that many days away, we're probably going to be somewhere where you need to turn it back onto the big one. Oh yeah. Two weeks. We're going to be in the middle of, I don't even know where. A couple spots, I hope, in my mind. Yeah. So the test so far worked good. Great. I'm impressed. Exactly. Fairly uneventful travel day today. Just driving up old interstate 75. This stretch of 75 is uneventful. Yes. And we talked a little bit how we're going to share how we travel loosely, I guess is the word for it. Our go-to is Cracker Barrels. It has been on travel days ever since we first started. And we learned in the van that Cracker Barrels were a thousand times better than a Walmart. Oh yeah. They're all along the highways. They're easy to get to. They're welcoming. You can go in and get whatever you need to get. They feel safer. Yeah. I mean, the bigger the cities you get to, the weirder they can get. We like to have a couple picked out so that you have a, okay, if you get stuck in traffic or you don't make it as far as you want, then you have option A. But if you get to option A really early and you still have a couple hours left in you to drive and you feel like you want to really stretch it, then you go to option B. So a lot of it too depends on, you know, your route, where you're trying to go. Like if you have a minimum mile that you need to hit today in order to stay on track tomorrow, like that all goes into the entire weekly itinerary. But where we're headed to after that is a new town, a new city that we've never been to. Mobile. Mobile? Alabama. Yeah. Is it Mobile? Mobile. This is going to be something new that we've been wanting to see for a while. Birthplace of the Mardi Gras. Yeah, they got propane, babe. Oh, great. They got propane. Oh, it's an RV's, it's an RV loves truck stop too. We've never stayed at one of those. Still haven't stayed at one of those. I, and I don't think we ever will. Well, not when there's a cracker barrel five minutes away, right? Right. Propane has always been one of our least favorite RV chores. This looks like the world's busiest truck stop. Yeah, it's super busy right here. I think you can go around him. There's enough room to pump there. Yeah. This is a busy truck stop. I'm really surprised we got into a spot right away like this though. That's lucky. We heard a little bang a few miles back, got out at the truck stop here and our microwave piece fell again. We talked about that a while ago. It was actually when we got into Florida, it fell and it's just the bracket that holds this microwave on, but you can see that's not good to be going down the road or the whole thing's going to fall out. So I just did some temporary screws in it and I was trying to be careful because I, you know, putting them in blind here, I didn't want to put a screw through that exterior wall, but now I can kind of see how far it went through, which wasn't very far. I think it was like this. Oops. Okay. So you hold that. Okay. That should be good to hold it. And then I'll get that back one. Okay. Great. It's always fun to bust out the power tools. Pretty easy. We'll have to get this permanently fixed when we get back to the Midwest, huh? Yeah. It's good as new. Hopefully. Good. Thanks for fixing that. Okay. Should we go get a propane, the dreaded propane task? Yes. Might as well get it all done within one swoop. Yeah. Might as well get all the painful chores out today, right? Only one person staying at the truck stop tonight at the loves truck stop. I should say the paid part. It is still early yet though. Yeah. I would imagine these fill up late. It's going to be, it's going to be an unbuckle and reach kind of a reach. Can we get a propane fill please? Are you here to order? Are you here for propane or for RV fill? It's an RV fill for propane. Did she say anything? No. Roger. Thank you for choosing Lowe's. Are you here for propane? Yes, please. Well, we'll give a minute. We don't know if she's here. Do you have to hold the button? Press and hold the button to talk. Are you doing that? Are you holding the button to talk? Well, I was holding it until it beeped and then like it kept, that was the release button to listen. Yeah. See that time I let go and it's not pressing. Hold the button. That time I held it in and it wasn't working. Just press to talk. It says, you know, like a walkie talkie, you got to hold the button down to talk. You let go to listen, hold the button to talk, let go to listen. I pressed and held the button. She still couldn't hear you. Yeah. Maybe it was broken. I'm not a hundred percent saying it was user error, but I got to hold the button down. I got to take the dogs out and the humans out. Make sure everything shut off. Okay. We'll be happy. We did this. It'll be worth it. Come here, Lou. Come on. Okay. All right. Let's test our luck out here. I see a whole bunch of RVs already. RV and bus parking. Straight forward. I saw a big parking lot, but there is a lot of people here. This is more than usual. Yeah. This is a very large RV parking spot. All right. So am I going to go wrap around? Yeah. Can I clear that guy? I must be able to, right? Yeah. I think that's not really cool. That guy to park right there. Is that to go to the right? We can always, we can always pull back and take a left up here. Yeah. It's a tight corner with those trees. Yeah. These are big double wide spots. You're saying whip a left into these? Yeah. Loop around that way. We could pull in either way. We'd be petting the cat backwards against everybody. Yeah. That's okay. Busy. Yeah. Very busy. We are in luck though. There's a few open spots. Did we determine if we hang out of these or not? Or are the lengths always the same? Well, this is a completely different cracker barrel than any other one. I think we should just take this double thing right here. I can't see if that tree is... This is the busiest cracker barrel ever. It is, yeah. All right. Which spot are you feeling? This one right here? We've got to kick our slide out. I think what we'll try first is just going in one of these spots and see if we fit. And then if we don't fit, then we just... Then we'll detach if we don't fit. We'll just do this one right here. This spot. I don't know if we're going to fit or not. We're going to find out. I think we just might fit. Looking good. Looking good. Okay. Let's see. We're close. I'd say we're in. Yeah. Every RVer's popped out, giving us help, saying, you can go here. You can go there. Sure. Put your slide out. So friendly. This really is the most... Automatically, we've talked to several fellow neighbors here. It's very... There's a lot going on at this one. This is the most interaction we've ever had at a cracker barrel. Busiest cracker barrel ever. Ever. Slides out. This is the biggest cracker barrel ever. This is. I feel like we're in an RV park. I know. This is crazy. Like a truck stop. Lake City cracker barrel. There's about 10 rigs here. Okay, Lulu. He is not happy with today's travel day. I know. Today, it was a good one, but for some reason, it felt rough, even though nothing bad happened. Did we say that he puked at 2 a.m.? No. We haven't talked about the sick dogs. Yeah. He's having a little rough travel day. Yeah. At 2.30 a.m., we puked in the bed. In the bed. We had to strip it down. Of course, that stuff on the eve of a travel day is never fun because you want to be well-slept and well-rested on a travel day. And so, Louie's sick, and then as soon as we pull up here, June gets sick. So, I don't know. I think the last spot we were at had too many rabbit turds that they were eating. I'm not sure. So, as we've said numerous times in our tour videos, this bed is the folding bed so because the slide needs to be out for the bed to be able to be made, this is what we kind of got to deal with. And most of the time, it doesn't affect us at all, like literally 99% of the time. This is actually the first that we've kind of had to like... This is the first incident we've had to actually go talk to the neighbor before putting it out to make sure. Yeah. This is like 300 nights of straight camping. So, that's how little of a problem it is or how little of a big deal it is. Luckily, the neighbor was super nice. She was just a sweet woman. Her RV has the same feature where she can't use her bed without the slide out, so she gets it. She was very happy, very pleasant. You know, on our end, we just need to make sure we wake up early and zip it in right away so she can pull out without any issues. Yeah, these spots are longer than most cracker spots, I think. Unless like, hey, we might just fit... I know they're wider. I know that for a fact. Yeah, I think they are. I think they're a little bit longer too. Oh, these have the Costco lines, the double Costco lines. That helps, yeah. I think they are longer because there's been other... there's been other... My brain is fried. I almost just said, we've gone to other Costcos and we haven't fit in those RV parking lots, but we have pulled into them before and they don't fit, and we have then therefore gone to the curb to park on the curb, so it's busy. It'll be interesting to see how many people are here when we wake up tomorrow. Doesn't this feel like a truck stop? The highway noise kind of adds to that feel. And the close proximity parking? Yeah. It's been a while. And then it feels like an RV park because we've chit-chatted with both the neighbors. Excellent. And these are good wide spots with those double width lines. Yeah, right. Yeah, this is a very busy Cracker Barrel, and it's five o'clock. I believe we're at the Ocala location? Lake City. Ocala is many miles away. That's what happens. I have no idea where I am. We're at Lake City, Florida. Definitely the busiest Cracker Barrel we've ever been to, and it's just going to get busier. Oh, and extra point for the Starlink Mini. It's working. It's set up. I didn't have to do anything. I mean, obviously we have our Verizon that we have, but if we were somewhere that that wasn't working, I mean, it's kind of pointing at trees right now, but it still gets a good signal. Does the blue light mean it's signaling? Just on. Cool. Yeah, it's nice. It's pretty slick so far. Ever wonder where the name Irene Iron Travels comes from? It's actually named after my online fitness and nutrition coaching business, Irene Iron Fitness. I help people move better, feel better, and eat better with strength training and real food. No fad diets, no harsh restrictions, no counting calories, and absolutely no processed food in a package. If you want to get stronger and feel better at any age, check the description below for the links with my new client special, or join in on our next and upcoming group challenge.