Hello fellow wanderers!
We did it! We became full time RVers!
This was an unintentional decision. The house we purchased in Northern Nevada (Lake Tahoe area) was an investment property that we purchased to flip, and that time had come. During this time, we found that our kids were moving back to the Florida Keys with military orders.
Our plans were to sell the house and purchase property in the Florida Panhandle and an investment property somewhere in Southern Utah (two of our favorite places). But then life happened, and we decided to follow the kids back to the Keys so we could spend more time with our granddaughter.
We had intentions on purchasing another house and renovating while we were in the Keys near the kids. However, interest rates rose at an insane rate and there is nothing on the market in the Lower Keys within our price range that we were/are interested in buying.
Lucky for us, the kids bought a house on Big Pine Key and our fifth wheel fits in their front yard! We quickly installed 50-amp power and connected to their water and sewer and here we are living full time in our fifth wheel in their front yard with full hook ups... AND... we get to see our granddaughter on a daily basis!
Now... let's get down to the nitty gritty of our move from Nevada to Florida. We had consolidated our belongings to our fifth wheel and an 8x16 box trailer. We made two trips back and forth between Nevada and Florida.
First trip was early March 2022 as we put our house on the market. We decided to drive the fifth wheel down and the Jeep on our first trip. Chris pulled the fifth wheel with our F350, and Brandi drove the Jeep with our youngest daughter and two cats. We stayed in KOA's the entire time (we are KOA VIP members).
From Nevada to Florida, we spent way too much on fuel with the gas and diesel prices at an all-time high (so we thought).
3,100 miles from Gardnerville, NV to Big Pine Key, FL
F350 diesel cost us $1,350 (we averaged $4.25 a gallon - today diesel is almost $6 a gallon)
Jeep Wrangler gas cost us $615 (we averaged $4.11 a gallon - today gas is almost $5 a gallon)
6 nights at KOA's cost us $465.28 (an average of $77.55 night)
Our total cost to drive from Nevada to Florida in early March is $2,430.28 not including food or random expenses.
We stayed at 5 different KOAs along the way and had a great in and out experience at all of them except one. This one bad experience has us crossing that KOA off of our list, we will never stay there again. But more to come on that below.
Day 1:
We drove from Gardnerville, NV to Kingman, AZ. We hit rush hour traffic in Las Vegas and Northern Las Vegas has a lot of highway construction going on. This caused a slight delay in our day.
We stayed at the Kingman KOA Journey for the one night. We had a pull through spot (spot 112) with full hookups for $54.44. We arrived after hours as it was almost dark out. We had a KOA escort to the spot as one of the work campers were still around the office when we arrived. We got hooked up and settled in for the night. The next morning, we quickly toured the park and started day 2 of our trip.
This KOA was set back off of the highway which is unusual for a KOA Journey. So, you did not hear any road noise at all, but they are tucked back in a residential area. We hooked up Wi-Fi for the fire stick and had no problems with that. Good cell service. We did run to Denny's for food, but it was packed so we hit the Sonic drive-thru instead which both were located close by within a few minutes of the park. It was a great spot for a quick one-night stay.
Day 2:
We drove from Kingman, AZ to Tucumcari, NM and stayed one night at the Tucumcari / Route 66 KOA Journey. This KOA is located right off of Highway 40, but we did not hear any road noise. We arrived again after hours but had a work camper follow us to our spot (spot 37) to tell us that it was going to freeze that night, so we had until 11pm to fill tanks and shower because he was shutting the water off. Again, we had a pull through site with full hook ups for $54.43, but we ended up hooking up to clean up and shower and then we unhooked the water and sewer before going to bed, leaving only the electrical hooked up. We hooked up the Wi-Fi for our fire stick and had no issues. Good cell service. We have T-Mobile. The sunset was beautiful. We quickly toured the park the next morning and then started day 3 of the trip.
On our drive from Kingman, we were delayed due to crazy weather the entire way to Tucumcari. We drove through high winds into Flagstaff, on top of snow. We then hit high winds again entering New Mexico and smoke from the Las Vegas, NM wildfire and we drove by a brush fire literally on the side of the highway within feet of traffic.
Day 3:
We drove from Tucumcari, NM to Lake Conroe, TX which is about an hour north of Houston. This was a long push for us but everything between Amarillo and Houston was fully booked when we reserved at the last minute. We pulled into the Lake Conroe KOA Holiday completely in the dark and left the next morning in the dark. We had a pull through spot with full hook ups for $65.80. No Wi-Fi or cell service issues. The park looks pretty nice, and we wish we could have stayed a little longer.
Our drive from Tucumcari to Amarillo was an interesting one. Again, we had wildfire smoke and high winds in New Mexico and then in Texas we had snow, sleet and freezing rain. Brandi even lost control of the Jeep doing about 35 mph. These weather conditions slowed us way down on this day making our already long haul even longer.
Days 4 & 5:
We left Lake Conroe, TX and headed for Pensacola, FL for two nights. We had to stay an extra day here to spend some time working as Brandi works 100% remote. We stayed at the Milton / Gulf Pines KOA Holiday in an executive site (spot F3) with a patio and BBQ for $183.02 for 2 nights. It rained the entire time we were there. The park was nice, and the Wi-Fi was great for working and streaming TV. We would definitely stay here again for a longer period of time. We did meet fellow Instagrammers at this park - Bucketletstravel. Check them out.
We had a decent drive from Lake Conroe to Pensacola. No crazy weather, finally. But I will tell you to plan accordingly along Highway 10 in Louisiana. You are driving mostly over the bayou once you leave Texas and head toward New Orleans and it is not easy to pull off the highway and get fuel in a big rig. We also recommend hopping off of Highway 10 onto Highway 12 and drive around the North side of Lake Pontchartrain. It is a much better drive for big rigs and then you reconnect with Highway 10 in Slidell prior to entering Mississippi.
Day 6:
We left Pensacola and headed for Orlando to meet an old friend who happened to be in the Orlando area. We stayed at the Southwest Orlando KOA, and we will never stay here again and recommend against anyone staying here honestly. We arrived and checked in in the early afternoon (only KOA that we actually got to check in during business hours). We got an escort to site 50 with full hook ups and pull through for $107.59. This park is full of snowbirds that stay months at a time. Our escort took us the wrong way through the park to our side and had us make a 180 turn to get into our site and we hit a neighboring car. Now, I understand that we have full control of our rigs, but we got too comfortable with allowing work campers escorting us and trusting their route, so this is partially our fault and will NEVER happen again. We show the full incident in our video on YouTube. The issue that we have here is that this park is old and not designed for big rigs and when we hit the neighbor's car, the work camper threw his arms up and said, "I will let management know" and he left.
After dealing with the neighbor and giving him our insurance info (the ladder we strapped on the back is what scraped his car), we went down and talked to management. Well, really, there was no management on site at the time. So, the work campers made us fill out a report for them to send to KOA Corporate and said nothing. We got absolutely nothing from these people. No customer service. No follow up. No nothing. As a VIP member who stays at KOAs quite often, I feel there should have been a little more customer service during this issue. But we got nothing from them. They charge way too much for their sardine packed sites and very narrow roads. We will never stay here again.
On the way to Orlando, we had to pull over and reattach the fifth wheel fender. For some reason, it was wanting to fall off. Chris pulled out his tools and made his own bolts and washers for the repair. Thankfully, this was the only issue we had with the RV while driving during this entire trip from Nevada.
Day 7:
We finally headed down into the Florida Keys. We took Highway 27 from South Orlando down into the Homestead / Redlands area and hit the 18 Mile Stretch to Overseas Highway in Key Largo and made our way down to Big Pine Key. We avoided tolls on this drive as we did not have a Sun Pass set up yet and to save money with the number of axles that we had. Highway 27 is a nice drive for big rigs so if you want to avoid the turnpike and tolls, this is a great alternative.
The Florida Keys is over 100 miles long with 42 bridges that connect the Keys from Key Largo to Key West. Big Pine Key is at mile marker 30 with the road ending at mile marker 0 in Key West.
The most famous bridge being the Seven Mile Bridge. These bridges were built over 100 years ago as part of the Flagler Railroad that used to connect the Keys. The Railroad was wiped out in the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 and these bridges were eventually turned into vehicular bridges. In the 1980s, a new Seven Mile Bridge was built to accommodate larger vehicles and the amount of traffic, not to mention, the old bridge was falling apart. All of the railroad bridges were eventually replaced with new ones and most of the old bridges are still open to pedestrian traffic only for walking and fishing. Check out our video of the Seven Mile Bridge and Pigeon Key on YouTube.
Big Pine Key is a nature preserve and home to the federally protected Key Deer. They roam the streets, eat your plants and raid your trash cans but they are cute as heck. This spring has given us quite few babies roaming around as well.
Our second trip for this move happened when our house closed end of April. We took the F350 back up to Nevada to empty the house out and pull our box trailer back to the Keys. We drove Highway 10 all the way to Tucson this time and then straight up through Phoenix, Las Vegas and back to Gardnerville. We stayed at hotels during this trip. Once we left Gardnerville for the last and final time, we pulled the box trailer down the same route as the RV... Highway 40 to Amarillo and then we headed over to Shreveport and down to Highway 10 and over from there. This round trip was about 6,200 miles total and cost us $2,670 in diesel and $2,079 in hotels for 11 nights total round trip.
Our entire move with both trips driving over 9,300 miles cost us $7,179 in fuel, KOA and hotel expenses. This does not include food or other expenses. But to see both of our daughters and son-in-law every day and our granddaughter is all worth it!
If you do not know our story, we lived in Islamorada on Plantation Key from 2014 to 2020 so we are not new to the Keys life but living in the upper Keys is totally different from living in the lower Keys. Life is definitely different down here (we do miss Islamorada and that is our favorite place in the Keys), but we are super happy to be a 40-minute drive to Key West which is also a favorite for other reasons. We do not know how long this will be home base for us. The kids' military orders are short term so we will see where they end up after the Keys.
For now, we fit in their front yard and are still planning on looking at property in Northern Florida for a future home base.
We are planning on taking off from the Keys in August 2022 for 2-3 months to go explore and do the RV thing.
We hope you join us by following us on Instagram
@wanderedoffchris and @wanderingbrandi
and please check out our videos on YouTube. Link is on the website and on our IG pages or search YouTube for Wandered Off.
Our entire move including the tours of the KOAs mentioned here are in our "house sold" video as shown below. Check us out and please like our videos and subscribe to our channel. We would truly appreciate your support!
Thanks so much!!
Wandered Off
Chris & Brandi
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