Tag Archives: cross country

Montgomery, Alabama

“Sweet Home Alabama”

We finally made it to a new state!! We left Clemson this morning and did some errands before we started driving. We took 85 South through Georgia and drove 284 miles into Alabama for the night. We are only about 150 miles from the beach but we are hoping to still get the springs rebuilt in Montgomery.

For those of you who don’t know, Montgomery is the state capital of Alabama. Montgomery is also the capital and the birthplace of the Confederate States of America. The Confederate flag was designed and first flown in Alabama in 1861. Jefferson Davis began the civil war in Montgomery by giving the orders to fire on Fort Sumter. It is known for large plantations, quaint living, and heavy accents; aka we are really entering the Deep South full of Alabamians (yes that is actually the appropriate word to describe people from Alabama.

So hopefully tomorrow we can start taking some pictures to show everyone. Our goal is to spend the afternoon in Montgomery and then head to the BEACH in Mobile for some much needed R & R.

Costs for the day- $115 gas, $50 new dirt bike tire, $12 Chick-Fil-A dinner, and hopefully $17 to park and plug in for the night.

Chris and I are both very happy to finally be on the road and we are now in the Central Time Zone. Those of you who know us well, realize that this is much more conducive to our sleeping patterns. Much love, Adios!!!

Touring Montgomery, AL

On Tuesday morning, we woke up from our first night of staying in a campground/RV park. I sweet talked the 95 year old man that ran the place into giving us a 20% discount making our stay cost right around $26 dollars. I went for a run and to look around while Chris ran Illstreet from the RV. The place we stayed was called Capital City RV Park. It was very clean and secluded, not too crowded either. There was also a pond nearby and a swimming pool. After we packed up, we headed over to the spring place and then took the dirt bike into Montgomery.

chris-working-2

The sweet old man from the rv park told us to go to the visitors center for information and to catch the trolley. For $1 per person, you got to ride 2 different trolleys that had 20 minute routes that took you to all the sightseeing in the city. Chris and I lived up to our post-college graduate status and dug out $2 in pocket change (we aren’t used to having to carry cash yet, we literally used pennies).

We rode the trolley and by this point, we were starving. Every restaurant that we could see was closed, so we asked the trolley driver if anything was open and he said he would take us to a nice hot dog/hamburger joint. He drives out of his route to drop us off at Chris’ Hot Dog Stand, in honor of Chris of course. After going in we realized that the hot dog stand opened in 1920 and they had to turn it into a restaurant because it was so good that it blocked up traffic. Well Chris and I tried both the hot dogs and hamburgers with the secret chili sauce and it was AWESOME.

chris-hot-dog-standchris-famous-hot-dogs

Overall, Montgomery was “eh” in our opinion. There was NO one there. Literally half of the real estate was empty and no one was to be seen in the streets. We feel like we saw everything there was to see there in 3 or 4 hours.


We finally left

Hey everyone, last night our journey finally began after 3 long months of hard work, noise and mess. (Shout out to Kathy, Dennis and Kellie for allowing all that to happen!! Thanks again guys) Although we only made it about an hour down the road to Clemson for the night, we are packed and ready to head out tonight (maybe). We bought our first $75 dollar tank of gas (we realized that most gas pumps will not let you charge more than that in one purchase) and filled up our spare 5 gallon tank (since the gas gauge on our cool ride doesn’t really work). We also had to go get four new tires for the back thanks to some lovely dry rot that occurred during the restoration. We cracked open a bottle of champagne on the front (yes we know it is not a boat but it was still really cool) and backed down the driveway only to realize that I had left my camera at the house. Thankfully the whole Osborne/Zellner clan met us up at Ingles so we didn’t have to turn around our house.

 

The driving went well last night; Chris drove the first 45 minutes of our trip and I finally got a chance to drive the rv for the first time during the last 20 mile stretch to Clemson. I am sure my family is shocked considering that I would never even drive our old conversion van because it was too big. Even though Chris already changed the shocks, he still wants to try and make the rv wiggle less (I don’t know the technical term) when trucks pass us or the wind blows. Chris just went to the Advance Auto in Clemson and they couldn’t get the spring we need until tomorrow so we have been calling at least ten other places to see if anyone has something in stock. If he can get the springs, then we will leave here the second he is done installing them.

We have almost exactly six weeks now to complete our trip before we have to be back in Clemson to move out and before law school begins for me. I hope everyone can send us a few prayers so we:

a. Don’t break down

b. Don’t run out of gas (remeber, gas gage doesn’t work)

c. Don’t get a speeding ticket (which at this point is pretty impossible since we haven’t taken the rv over 55 yet)

d. Have a safe trip with no sickness or injury

 

We will try to keep up to date with the posting and pictures as much as possible. Please leave us comments and feedback, we would love to hear from you all on the way!!

 

Ps. Kellie try not to make fun of my spelling and grammatical errors because it is the summer, I am on vacation, and I have not yet figured out where the spell check is on this thing 🙂


We Finally Started to Plan our Trip!

As of today, we actually sat down, after being inspired by the travel channel, and began to plan our route. The RV is started to look finished so we figured that it was about time to choose destinations. Thanks to AAA internet trip tix our main destinations will be:

Click here for a PDF of our path across the country

  • Mobile, Alabama
  • New Orleans, Louisiana
  • Hot Springs National Park, AR
  • Dallas, Texas
  • Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico
  • Santa Fe, New Mexico
  • Four Corners
  • Arches National Park, UT
  • Canyonlands National Park, UT
  • Zion National Park, UT
  • Grand Canyon, Arizona
  • Sedona, Arizona
  • Pheonix, Arizona
  • San Diego, California
  • Mexico
  • Los Angeles, California
  • Sequoia National Park, California
  • Yosemite National Park, California
  • Napa, California
  • Crater Lake, Oregon
  • Bois, Idaho
  • Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
  • Black Hills, South Dakota
  • Badlands National Park, SD
  • Omaha, Nebraska
  • Kansas City
  • St Louis, Missouri
  • Spartanburg, SC

So it total we are looking at almost 8,000 miles and over $2000 in gas. I am sure the route will change, but as of now this is the best we have.