Day 1 – Leaving home!

Today is the first official day of Phil’s sabbatical. We had been planning to leave yesterday (Friday) afternoon, but there was some severe weather that we wanted to avoid. So we left before 6 am today. After about a half hour of driving, Emmett said “mama, we here now?”….

Unfortunately, we had trailer issues right after that. Phil went to a truck scale to weigh the camper, and the mobile app didn’t work, which was really annoying at the time because then Phil had to get out of the truck and go inside. But when he got out, he noticed that the camper wheel bearings were loose. He jacked up the camper in the parking lot to take the tires off and fix it, but after driving 20 more minutes, they were loose again.

We ended up finding a trailer mechanic about an hour away from there. Fortunately they opened at 9 am and could help us right away. I walked circles around the parking lot with the kids while we waited, playing “I spy”, commenting on the various random things outside the mechanic’s garage, and eating snacks.There was a candy store next door that opened at 10 am, and the kids and I were excited to be there long enough to check it out. They had candy and snacks for 2/3/4/5 for $1 deals. I told the kids they could pick an aisle to spend their $1, and they had fun shopping with a basket. They each decided to get 2 big bags of gummies for $1, while Phil and I picked different snacks and treats. We had quite a haul for only $6 cash, and the funny thing is afterwards I realized this rural candy store was so cheap because everything is past the sell by date. I had one 20¢ package of cookies from January 2024 that I had to throw away, but everything else is from early 2025 and still edible.

We stopped in Casey IL briefly to check out the “world’s biggest” teeter-totter, rocking chair, wind chime, mailbox, pencil etc. There are a lot of BIG things in that town. We would have liked to stay longer, but it was a fun, very short stop to stretch our legs.

We had a couple others problems that made this day feel heavy like bumping a curb which damaged a tire – hope it doesn’t blow out! – and forgetting a backpack with important things at home. But other than that, travel went smoothly the rest of the day. The kids did REALLY well in the truck with tonieboxes, my Mary Poppins activity bag, and watching a couple hours of shows on the tablet at the end of the day. Their favorite activities were travel magnatiles, water painting, and crazy suction cup toys that stick together. Plus ALL the snacks. I made and refilled snackleboxes which they really enjoyed.

With all the problems we had, we were about 5 hours behind schedule. The kids fell asleep in the truck around 8:30 pm Central Time, and we drove in blissful quiet for about an hour and a half until they woke up. Then they screamed and cried for the last half hour driving to our campsite in Salina KS…