Our journey finally began on October 29th, 2022 as we pulled out of our temporary home outside of Johnston, Ohio and headed south towards New Orleans. Our first stop on the way down is just outside of Louisville, KY at the Buffalo Trace State Park campground. The campground is actually located just across the border into Indiana and has been referred to as the Indiana Parks and Rec director’s pride and joy.
The trip to Indiana was one that was full of adventure and could not be defined as fun in any sense of the word. We got a late start due to cleaning up our long term site so we didn’t get to hit the road until almost 1PM. Our travel rule that we are looking to complete in the future is “300 miles or 3PM” to be done driving for the day. We didn’t arrive in Indiana, a 4 hour drive, until nearly 7:30PM. During the way we experience a few interesting design choices on the highways. As we crossed over from Ohio into Kentucky, we hit a bump where the road transitioned immediately with a 6 inch difference in heights.
This bump led to a lot of our items being bounced around in the house but the main issue was that it hit hard enough that it ripped the eight lag bolts, that were holding our mini-split condenser, out of the studs. Angel called me and I pulled everything over. I walked to the back of the house and the condenser was hanging onto the house by the copper supply line, power cord, and about an inch of a lag bolt caught in the siding.
We tried to figure out what we could do on the berm of the road and the only solution that we can could come up with on the spot was to throw it into our storage area, belt it down, and hope for the best. We finally got to the park about 7:30 and then we had to take 4-5 times of backing in to get into the spot (cut me a break, I’m new). We got in and started setting up and finally were able to walk around in the house without stepping on anything by abut 8:30.
The first trip that should have been about 4 hours ended up taking almost 7 hours but we made it safely and that is really all that we can ask. We learned a lot on this trip and we have a plan that will make the condenser much safer for travel. Overall, the day was stressful but we are living for the next 2 weeks in a stunningly beautiful location and I couldn’t be happier.
Keep following along and stay up to date with our travels as we make our way down to New Orleans for the winter.
