We took a little vacation to Disney World in early December. We left on the 4th of December and returned on the 16th.
Word to the wise. If it's snowing on the day of departure, climb back into bed, pull the covers up and hope for better weather. In the 10+ years that I've been towing a trailer I had never pulled our 30 ft. trailer in the snow. Everything started out reasonable, I took my time and left plenty of room between my truck and the car in front. Traffic started to thin out once we got east of Denver and that's when trouble started. Those of you old enough might remember the ticket books that you used to get in Disneyland. The best rides were the E ticket ones. Well, I had an F ticket ride about an hour east of Denver. There I am minding my own business running between 60 and 65 dealing and dealing with the wind gusts that were coming from the north. All of a sudden as I cross over a bridge my trucks rear tires lost traction and I was hit with a side gust. My truck decided it wanted to go Northeast on a East/West road and the trailer felt it should go Southeast. All I can say is thank heavens for an empty road and my being a hooligan when I was a teenager. Gumball Rally is my favorite movie, Dukes of Hazard was the best show and I tried to drive like those folks. Well, I counter steered while backing off the throttle and my truck came around, over corrected just once and got the vehicle under control. By then I was doing only 45MPH and put the truck in four wheel drive. My wife was white as a ghost and requested that we stop in Limon for the night. No, make that demanded that we stop. I didn't argue too much.
The rest of the trip to Florida was pretty uneventful, though we did miss the turn in St. Louis to keep us on I-70. Kind of strange having to turn off of I-70 just to stay on I-70. We ended up on I-55 going south until I spotted an off ramp with a corresponding on ramp in the other direction. The cool thing about this slight detour was that the off ramp that I choose dropped us off right in front of the old Budweiser Brewer plant. That's a neat old building.
Anybody who's got an RV should take a trip to Disney World and stay in the Ft. Wilderness campgrounds. I couldn't believe just how inexpensive it was to stay there. We paid just over $400 for the 6 nights which means the per night stay was around $70. Since we often pay around $50/night at KOA's and such the price at Ft. Wilderness is very reasonable. I wasn't watching the cost because I was there to have fun and I can quite often be a tightwad. This time I said to hell with it and had a blast. To give you a couple of examples of what a special place Ft. Wilderness is I list the following:
(1) While backing in my trailer I hit one of the small lights that are used to light up the road in the campground. It was repaired the next morning before I had a chance to tell anyone.
(2) There are pine needles on the ground in between the RV pads. Trouble is there were no pine trees in our section of the campground.
(3) Disney sweeps all of the roads. Wednesday morning before we headed into the park there was a street sweeper that came along and clean things up. The only thing it was removing was some leaves that had fallen from the trees.
(4) One morning I noticed the shower curtain was starting to mildew. A brand new curtain was in place the next morning.
Only Disney would worry about and care enough to watch these details.
The way home we took the southern route hoping to avoid any weather. No such luck. In Oklahoma the winds were so bad I could only go 55MPH. Not because my truck would tow any faster. It was just plain dangerous considering how much my truck and trailer were being moved around. Another indication of how bad the wind was could be seen in my fuel economy. On most tanks I was averaging 12MPG (Dodge 2500, Diesel, 6-speed manual). A couple of tanks dipped to around 10MPG. That tank across Oklahoma was reduced to 8MPG. Heck, I averaged 12MPG on a tank where have of the time was spent in four wheel drive at 55MPH. Which brings me to the last part of the trip. We didn't escape the weather in New Mexico. The storm started brewing and we hoped the snow would hold off. No such luck. We made it to Las Vegas, NM and decided to stop since the roads were covered in snow, the plows weren't keeping up, and it was expected to get worse.
All in all we had a great time and plan on going to Florida again. Next time I'm going to have a long conversation with the man upstairs and see if we can't come to some sort of agreement. ;D
Word to the wise. If it's snowing on the day of departure, climb back into bed, pull the covers up and hope for better weather. In the 10+ years that I've been towing a trailer I had never pulled our 30 ft. trailer in the snow. Everything started out reasonable, I took my time and left plenty of room between my truck and the car in front. Traffic started to thin out once we got east of Denver and that's when trouble started. Those of you old enough might remember the ticket books that you used to get in Disneyland. The best rides were the E ticket ones. Well, I had an F ticket ride about an hour east of Denver. There I am minding my own business running between 60 and 65 dealing and dealing with the wind gusts that were coming from the north. All of a sudden as I cross over a bridge my trucks rear tires lost traction and I was hit with a side gust. My truck decided it wanted to go Northeast on a East/West road and the trailer felt it should go Southeast. All I can say is thank heavens for an empty road and my being a hooligan when I was a teenager. Gumball Rally is my favorite movie, Dukes of Hazard was the best show and I tried to drive like those folks. Well, I counter steered while backing off the throttle and my truck came around, over corrected just once and got the vehicle under control. By then I was doing only 45MPH and put the truck in four wheel drive. My wife was white as a ghost and requested that we stop in Limon for the night. No, make that demanded that we stop. I didn't argue too much.
The rest of the trip to Florida was pretty uneventful, though we did miss the turn in St. Louis to keep us on I-70. Kind of strange having to turn off of I-70 just to stay on I-70. We ended up on I-55 going south until I spotted an off ramp with a corresponding on ramp in the other direction. The cool thing about this slight detour was that the off ramp that I choose dropped us off right in front of the old Budweiser Brewer plant. That's a neat old building.
Anybody who's got an RV should take a trip to Disney World and stay in the Ft. Wilderness campgrounds. I couldn't believe just how inexpensive it was to stay there. We paid just over $400 for the 6 nights which means the per night stay was around $70. Since we often pay around $50/night at KOA's and such the price at Ft. Wilderness is very reasonable. I wasn't watching the cost because I was there to have fun and I can quite often be a tightwad. This time I said to hell with it and had a blast. To give you a couple of examples of what a special place Ft. Wilderness is I list the following:
(1) While backing in my trailer I hit one of the small lights that are used to light up the road in the campground. It was repaired the next morning before I had a chance to tell anyone.
(2) There are pine needles on the ground in between the RV pads. Trouble is there were no pine trees in our section of the campground.
(3) Disney sweeps all of the roads. Wednesday morning before we headed into the park there was a street sweeper that came along and clean things up. The only thing it was removing was some leaves that had fallen from the trees.
(4) One morning I noticed the shower curtain was starting to mildew. A brand new curtain was in place the next morning.
Only Disney would worry about and care enough to watch these details.
The way home we took the southern route hoping to avoid any weather. No such luck. In Oklahoma the winds were so bad I could only go 55MPH. Not because my truck would tow any faster. It was just plain dangerous considering how much my truck and trailer were being moved around. Another indication of how bad the wind was could be seen in my fuel economy. On most tanks I was averaging 12MPG (Dodge 2500, Diesel, 6-speed manual). A couple of tanks dipped to around 10MPG. That tank across Oklahoma was reduced to 8MPG. Heck, I averaged 12MPG on a tank where have of the time was spent in four wheel drive at 55MPH. Which brings me to the last part of the trip. We didn't escape the weather in New Mexico. The storm started brewing and we hoped the snow would hold off. No such luck. We made it to Las Vegas, NM and decided to stop since the roads were covered in snow, the plows weren't keeping up, and it was expected to get worse.
All in all we had a great time and plan on going to Florida again. Next time I'm going to have a long conversation with the man upstairs and see if we can't come to some sort of agreement. ;D
