On paper, this was the easiest travel day on our calendar: two hours from our Hipcamp farm outside Tampa to Orlando. Then the wind showed up overnight and bent the banana trees sideways, sent a chair flying across our site, and had Fabiola's phone noise meter reading levels it labels "hearing damage." So much for chill.
Saying goodbye to the farm
This is part two of our Florida boondocking stay, and leaving was harder than we expected. The Hipcamp farm had been a great spot: quiet, cheap, and full of animals. But Orlando was waiting, so we started the pack-up routine, and this time we filmed the part nobody shows: unplugging from 50-amp shore power, step by step. It sounds trivial until you realize how many ways there are to do it wrong, and a 50-amp cable is not something you want to learn about by trial and error. Breaker off first, always.
The wind problem
While we packed, the gusts kept building, and we had a real decision to make: is it actually safe to tow a 40-foot fifth wheel in 20 mph winds? We did the research and share what we found in the video. The short version: sustained wind speed matters less than gusts, direction matters a lot (a crosswind hits a fifth wheel like a sail), and every rig has a different threshold depending on weight and profile. There's no single magic number, which is exactly why we walked through our reasoning on camera instead of just saying "we sent it."
We waited for the sky to clear, drove slower than usual, and kept both hands on the wheel through the gusts. Boring driving is good driving on days like this.
The mistake we made AGAIN
If you watched part one of this Florida trip, you already know where this is going. Right before pulling out, we did our walkaround and discovered the entry stairs were still down. Again. The same mistake, two travel days in a row. We're sharing it because this is what full-timing actually looks like: you build checklists precisely because your brain will skip the same step twice in one week. The stairs are now item number one on ours, in capital letters.
Instant Pot beef stew, the travel day dinner
We rolled into Orlando tired, hungry, and completely over gas station snacks, which is the exact situation Fabiola's easy beef stew recipe exists for. She makes it in our 8-quart Instant Pot: brown the beef, throw in potatoes, carrots, garlic, and a seasoning packet, seal it, and let pressure do the work while you set up camp. By the time the rig was leveled and plugged in, dinner was ready. It has become our default travel day meal. Minimal dishes, no babysitting a stove while the RV is still in chaos, and it makes enough for leftovers the next day.
The walkthrough is at the end of the video, and the whole thing is written up with quantities as the travel day beef stew recipe.
Wind, stairs, stew, and all, we made it to Orlando in one piece. That counts as a win around here.
Watch the whole windy travel day and the recipe 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.