YELLOWSTONE 2016 - INTRODUCTION

July 4 - 21, 2016. We rented a Class C motor home from Cruise America to drive from our home in Florida to Yellowstone National Park. This trip will be myself, my husband, our son, our daughter and our past exchange student (2012) who flew in for the experience! We are meeting up with my in-laws - it will be MIL, FIL, SIL, BIL and their 4 kids! I spent a long time doing research and working on lists of stuff in preparation for this trip. The trip was 14 days and approximately 4,000 miles!

I bought a very detailed USA map and we spent a lot of time mapping out options for routes. 

I made a packing list and checked everything off as I loaded it into the RV.  Now my packing list became a sort of inventory list - it helped to know what we have and it helped to keep track of stuff along the way. 

I staged everything right by the front door and as soon as we got the RV home, we made a line of people carrying stuff and loading it up. 

Funny enough, we did not make any campground reservations at all. The only reservation we had was for our spot in Yellowstone. We had paper maps and all the apps needed to navigate this massive trip!

One thing that is super nice about a Class C motor home is that everyone can sit around on all the furniture while it’s driving. The kids snacked and napped a lot! I made “cowboy caviar” to snack on for the ride. 

When the RV is driving, the refrigerator isn’t running, so we bought a cooler to keep stuff in.  We bought a cheap cooler, and that was a mistake. It needed ice replenished often. Eventually, we splurged on a quality cooler and that made a huge difference. 

Also, when the RV is driving, the AC units in the RV aren’t running. And it got very hot, very fast. Eventually we bought a box fan to direct AC from the truck cab into the RV. 

Our RV had some very lose steering and the steering wheel shook and vibrated a lot, making it super hard to handle. I only drove it for about an hour. I would say if you’re thinking of renting an RV, be sure to drive it for a bit to make sure you can drive it easily.