1 Week on the road... what we've learned.

So we've made it through our first week on the road and the kids are still alive, my ears aren't bleeding and Cathy hasn't killed me yet. Looking back, here are some things we've learned.

Everyone has a job and everything has a place. Cathy gave me a hard time about buying a label maker before we left but was glad I did when she needed a certain cable!

Don't pour a cup of coffee in your power strip. They tend to not work when you do that and often cause the entire RV to shut down.

Things break down. An RV is just like a house (on wheels) and things break down. We had to call the RV repair guy already as our generator went out and we were having electrical problems (again, coffee and electricity do not mix). Plus midway through the week the A/C in our Jeep stopped working so I spent the better part of the day in the repair shop.

We've made a pact not to eat twice at the the same restaurant and avoid chains. There are tons of great places to eat and we tend to find ones that we like and stick with them. We did this during St. Augustine and vowed not to do it again.

Use free wifi whenever possible. We use Verizon and ATT mifis, but we put the girls on the free campground wifi whenever speed permits.

Don't take your ice maker for granted. It's hot here (it's summer in the south for Christ's sake!!) so air condition is your friend. We tend to venture out early in the mornings and late in the afternoons and spend the middle parts of the day inside or at the pool/beach.

It's hard to workout while on the road. Besides it being so hot, it's hard to find places to run or bike while traveling. I was hoping apps like MapMyRide or MapMyRun would provide me with some local routes but they didn't help much. I guess I could run back and forth in the RV park 1000 times?

Four nights at a location is the mininum and don't drive more that 4 hours a day. This is marathon and not a sprint. Some days you just have to do nothing. Don't try and do too much in one day. We found ourselves getting tired as we were moving from city to city and trying to cram too much into each day.

Early to bed and early to rise is how we roll. We'd like to sleep in but the sun rises around 6am and the girls are up and playing around 7am. Kira of course sleeps in as much as she can but we bought Hali and Lexi sleep masks. It's tough to stay up at night as after we put the girls to bed we hang out in our bedroom watching TV and doing other stuff. Falling asleep comes easily.

Make sure when pulling a Jeep behind an RV and you pull into a gas station you have enough room to turn around. Not to throw Cathy under the bus (or RV) but we had to quickly unhook the Jeep at a gas station when she didn't have enough room to get out.

Be logs. We tell the girls all the time to "be logs" and go with the flow. You have to be patient, flexible and easy-going when in a small space with five people.

The last thing we learned this week is that trees in South Carolina are gorgeous...just like our family!