Florida to Arizona: 2162 miles! (States #19 & #20 & some repeats)

Post-Georgia, we drove one day to spend the night in Jennings, Florida and then another one day drive to spend a week in Winter Haven, Florida. My mom winters in the nearby town of Lake Wales, so we drove down for a quick week! It's funny...when we previously planned a vacation it was usually for a week, but now, we consider a week a "quick visit". I guess it all depends on your perspective.

A quick breakfast at IHOP before our departure. Chad, Ruth, & Ann

Mom treated us to a home cooked meal at her place of yummy bbq ribs and scalloped potatoes. We enjoyed meals out for breakfast/lunch/dinner a few times. I also had a nice day chatting with mom while we worked on a puzzle. It was a nice visit and fun to reminisce and hear some stories from my youth.

One afternoon, we connected with Chad's Aunt Patty and Uncle Steve in Lakeland. We met up at a brewery with a food truck and live music, and then took a stroll around downtown. It was great to catch up. They split their year between Montana and Florida, so we caught them on this half of their year!

Us, Patty and Steve - Lakeland, FL

A few work and family events were filling in our December  calendar in the Salt Lake City area. We debated about parking the rig somewhere and flying back, but our 12 year old labradoodle kind of cramps our ability to fly anywhere these days! So, like any good RV owner, we decided to drive our home on wheels across country.

Since we knew we were headed west, we booked an alignment and chassis maintenance appointment with Freightliner in Chandler, Arizona for December 5th. We plugged the route into our Garmin and began the journey of 2162 miles to get back in time for that!

The website we use for travel planning is called RV Life Trip Wizard. This screenshot shows where we ended up staying each night from Florida to Arizona, so you can see we averaged 350-470 miles each day after leaving my mom's place on November 24th.

How did we do it? Chad drove for a couple hours to start the day, we would stop for fuel and I would drive for a couple hours, and Chad would finish the day to get us to our destination for the night.

2162 miles in 6 days. Whew.

We are thankful that we had good driving weather and Interstate 10 was in good condition. There are a few drivers out there that still don't know how to merge onto a freeway, but outside of that, it was pretty uneventful.

Next leg...to Utah.