When you read this...if all goes well...my little family of four will be on Day 3 of our RV Spring Break Trip. As I am writing this, we are gearing up for departure. With two sick kids. It's Spring Break, Schaffer-style, folks!

 

How did we decide that a week in a RV with a seven-year-old and a four-year-old was a good idea? Well...when Steve and I were newlyweds we moved to Florid to try something completely different. We ended up in Gainesville and discovered that there was nothing like that first home football weekend, when we saw the town come alive right before our eyes.  Before we knew it, we were dressed, head to toe in Orange and Blue, yelling, “Go Gators!”

 

 As we got to know the ins and outs of our new home, we couldn’t help but notice a unique area given very special attention on campus during football weekends.  Upon closer investigation, we realized the area was reserved for RV campers.  We're talking large recreational vehicles that have the capabilities to do just about everything - I think a helicopter could have probably landed on one.  It was hard not to admire people for their extreme dedication to both the school and their love of food, drink, and the game of cornhole.

 

I had a running joke that Steve and I would hop in an RV one day and visit all the Southeastern Conference (SEC) universities and their football stadiums.  Well, fast forward almost 15 years, and even though we haven’t had an RV until this trip, we’ve had a blast with our kids, using our spring break vacations to visit SEC college towns. We’ve taken the following trips:

 

2012 - Alabama and Auburn (we snuck to Kentucky later that year too)

2013 - Ole Miss, Mississippi State, and Louisiana State

2015 - South Carolina, Georgia, Clemson and Duke (ACC schools are creeping in)

 

It should be noted that Jack was taken to the University of Florida within 4 months of his birth and Anna was taken at age 2 (picture below). These very early college tours have led to Jack cheering for Alabama and Anna being convinced she belongs on a beach in California. Since they've done well on our trips, we figured this year was our year to try an RV!

We rented a 30-foot RV from CruiseAmerica.com.  We will be driving to Tennessee to focus on visiting Vanderbilt in Nashville and University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Steve and I have done lots of research on driving routes, campgrounds, public parking lots for large vehicles, and recommended packing lists for RV campers.  Hopefully, our research will pay off and we don’t run into any issues (yeah, right!).  We even watched the movie, “RV” to learn what not to do. 

 

 

I will definitely post a blog after we return from our trip so that I can share pictures and lessons learned.  So, we’ll see if our “try new things” trip works next week and we’ll see you in the blogosphere soon. Happy Spring!