Halfway through our 15-day boondocking challenge, it was time to move. We packed up and pointed the Brinkley toward Hampton Tract Campground in Central Florida, and like most of our travel days so far, the plan lasted about an hour before reality started editing it. This one had a water problem, a scale, a safari, and a milestone: Fabiola driving our Ford F-350 for the very first time.
Watch the full video on YouTube to ride along for the whole day.
The potable water problem
When you're boondocking, you arrive with all the water you're going to have, so we planned a fill-up on the way. Love's Travel Stop was supposed to be the easy answer, and it wasn't. Between spigots we couldn't use and staff who weren't sure what we were even asking for, we left with less water than we hoped and a new rule: never assume a fuel stop can fill your fresh tank. Call ahead or have a second option, because "we'll figure it out on the way" is how you start a dry week.
Finally weighing the rig
One thing did go right on the drive: we finally weighed our truck and trailer at a CAT scale. If you tow a fifth wheel, this is one of those tasks everyone tells you to do and most people put off. We put it off too. But knowing your actual axle weights is the difference between guessing you're safe and knowing it, and the process turned out to be simple: pull on, hit the button, pull off. Ten minutes, a few dollars, and we now know exactly what our F-350 is carrying.
Settling into Hampton Tract
Hampton Tract Campground is a Southwest Florida Water Management District property, which is a category of campground more RVers should know about: cheap, quiet, and genuinely off-grid. No hookups, no crowds, lots of green. Getting the rig level and set up went smoother than our first attempt two campgrounds ago, and we added a tripod stabilizer under the gooseneck that noticeably cut down the wobble every time one of us walks around inside.
Zebras, before lunch
The surprise of this stop was Safari Wilderness, a drive-through safari experience near Lakeland where the animals come to you. We fed lemurs, got inspected by camels, and watched zebras wander past like it was normal. Florida keeps doing this to us: you expect swamp and highways, and then something like this shows up twenty minutes from your campsite.
Fabiola takes the wheel
The moment this episode is named for: Fabiola drove the F-350 for the first time. For context, she learned to drive in Brazil in cars roughly a third this size, so climbing into a dually-adjacent diesel pickup is a real jump. She was nervous, she went slow, and she did great. If you full-time as a couple, both people being able to drive the truck isn't a nice-to-have. If one of us is ever sick or hurt on a travel day, the other one has to be able to get us somewhere safe.
We ended the day with a campfire, which is the correct way to end a moving day that mostly worked. Watch the water scramble, the weigh-in, the safari, and Fabiola's first drive on YouTube. We also send a short weekly newsletter about where we are and what broke this week. The signup form is on our newsletter page.