There's a saying in our rig: the travel day starts going sideways before you leave the campsite. After months parked in one spot, we finally hitched up for a full travel day, and everything that had gone soft from sitting still (our systems, our checklist habits, our patience) got tested at once. The destination wasn't even glamorous. We were taking our house to Walmart.
Watch the full video on YouTube.
Packing up after months of sitting
When you move every week, pack-up is muscle memory. When you haven't moved since fall, it's archaeology. Things had migrated to counters and corners that have no business being on counters and corners at 60 miles an hour. Finishing the packing took longer than planned, hitching took longer than planned, and the to-do list grew while we worked through it, which is a special kind of demoralizing.
Dumping tanks and getting out
Before we could actually leave we had the full dump-and-flush routine, and this is where a long stay bites you: everything takes twice as long when the gear has been stowed for months and you're re-remembering your own process. By the time we pulled out of the campsite, the "quick morning departure" was already afternoon.
Crossing the Mackinac Bridge
The drive itself was the easy part, including a crossing of the Mackinac Bridge, which never stops being a little thrilling with a fifth wheel behind you. Five miles of suspension bridge over the Straits, wind advisories posted, and a truck that suddenly feels very tall. It went fine. It always goes fine. Our heart rates disagree.
The Walmart parking drama
Then we arrived at Walmart, and this is the part of the video where you get to watch a real married couple communicate under pressure. Parking a 40-foot fifth wheel in a lot designed for sedans, at the end of a long day, with each of us confident the other one is wrong about the angle, is the closest thing RV life has to couples therapy. There were miscommunications. There was a reset or two. There was the moment we both remembered we're on the same team, which sounds cheesy until you've been the couple gesturing at each other across a parking lot.
Here's what we've learned about travel-day stress after a few years of this: the argument is almost never about the parking. It's about being tired, hungry, and out of practice. The fix isn't a better hand signal system (though that helps). It's stopping, taking a breath, and remembering the other person is not the obstacle.
The reward: groceries without leaving home
The upside of taking your home to the grocery store is genuinely great. We grabbed Subway, did a full Walmart shop, and carried the groceries about thirty feet to our own kitchen. No coolers, no ice packs, no "will the frozen stuff survive the drive home." The next morning we woke up in the parking lot, made coffee in our own kitchen, and rolled on.
If you overnight at Walmarts, we'd honestly love to hear your parking tactics and how you keep travel-day tension from boiling over. Every couple we know who travels full time has a version of this story. The ones who claim they don't are lying or newlyweds.
Watch the full travel day, the bridge crossing, and the parking drama 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.