How far do you tow?

Well lot of good advice, and I will add mine.

First I am a driver and enjoy it. I have done a lot of long drives pulling trailers. Currently I pull a 28 ft. Airstream. I am planning a CA to DW drive for 2021. Plan is 5 days. I have done the DW to CA in 4 and half days. (for those keeping track its a 50 hour drive.)

If you like driving you can do it. However, if you feel yourself getting tired, its time to find a campground and rest up. ( I have also done this, some days you just don't feel it.)

Leave early. On my big drives I pull out around 3 or 4 in the morning. (this also stops the family running around trying to do last minute things and delaying me even more, they are still asleep and just crawl into the truck and go back to sleep.) I will go to bed the night before about 8 or 9 so that I have a good 6 or 7 hours (my usual) sleep.

Watch out for traffic and weather. Both can take a plan to drive 800 miles down to a drive of 400 miles. If this happens, go with it. Have the number of the Fort and any place else you are staying so you can give a quick call to say you were delayed.

Have fun.

John

P.S. As a younger man, not pulling a trailer, my brother and I drove from Marco Island FL to Philly in 19 hours. We traded of the driving.
Mad John and others. One reason we dont leave real early or drive after dark coming from the far west is the possibility/probability of large animals on the road. We counted 93 dead deer on one section of I-10 in Texas. One of those on the front of our motor coach could ruin a trip.
 
PPS - be careful taking towing advice from Teamubr - he flies low-to-the-ground and has hundreds of hours in the cockpit. I hope to attain his level of experience in my remaining lifetime. :)
:worship:

Ed jokes, but I do have many many miles towing things all over the Eastern half of the country. If I read my post correctly, I think my suggestion is the same as Ed's.

Looks like he may actually be attaining the tow master status.

Silliness aside, it looks like you have a lot of great advice. Let us know what you finally end up doing and if it worked for you.

j
 
Well just got it back from the shop. It tows a lot diffrently from the pup. I have to get used to it. Its not better or worse just diffrent. I thought i had the breaks set corectly, but when i got home my TV breaks were hot and the trailors were not. So ill have to make ajustments. I think i replaced the battery in the TV after i set up the controller, so thats probably the problem, didnt think avout it untill i got home. It goes nice at 65 to 70 mph. And im not going to go faster. I will take it out for a test run in a week or so.

Now back to the disney trip, sorry got distracted! I think it will be easy enough to leave a day early, to be honest i was leaving on a monday, i just need to get some time off from work and then leave on sunday, it will be a more relaxing ride. The TT takes no time at all to set up! So thats a plus. Its not a race but its good to know i can be backed in , stabs down and ellectric and read bed slide out in like 15 min. I will mostly play it by ear, it it goes well i can come home sooner, if not whats a few more days......
 
we generally do about 400 miles (New Orleans to Tallahassee) then drive the next day to Orlando. With the kids, that's about as much as we can do, as it takes 8-9 hours.

I did a 600 mile trip with only DW in a single day. That was a bit too far for me.
 


we generally do about 400 miles (New Orleans to Tallahassee) then drive the next day to Orlando. With the kids, that's about as much as we can do, as it takes 8-9 hours.

I did a 600 mile trip with only DW in a single day. That was a bit too far for me.
Good thing about getting old is that you have time. Once we get past Texas we stop in Lafayette then Mibile then Regan's RV (old Jellystone) then Ocala Sun then the fort. Takes us 10 days if driving straight through from Tucson. We only average 300 or less miles a day. Some days way less.
 
Ive think i decided, first day 8.5 hour drive to luberton koa, then from there to Jacksonville north about 5.5 hours then to the fort 4 hours. I will leave on a sunday, and sleep in a bit. So on the road at 6 am instead of 4 am. The lumberton koa looks like all pull through sites. We will relax at the Jacksonville north one. So a bit of rush then relax. Hopefully it works out, ill book in the am. Thanks to everyone here.
 
Ive think i decided, first day 8.5 hour drive to luberton koa, then from there to Jacksonville north about 5.5 hours then to the fort 4 hours. I will leave on a sunday, and sleep in a bit. So on the road at 6 am instead of 4 am. The lumberton koa looks like all pull through sites. We will relax at the Jacksonville north one. So a bit of rush then relax. Hopefully it works out, ill book in the am. Thanks to everyone here.
Safe travels and have a wonderful vacation!
 


Ive think i decided, first day 8.5 hour drive to luberton koa, then from there to Jacksonville north about 5.5 hours then to the fort 4 hours. I will leave on a sunday, and sleep in a bit. So on the road at 6 am instead of 4 am. The lumberton koa looks like all pull through sites. We will relax at the Jacksonville north one. So a bit of rush then relax. Hopefully it works out, ill book in the am. Thanks to everyone here.
Sounds like a good/safe plan. You should not be wasted when you arrive at the fort.
 
Sounds like a decent plan with a newer rig, and there's a lot of good advice on here already. For those who may read this in the future, I will add a few additional points. Like some others have mentioned, 600 miles is generally the long end of a day for me, and I never like to do too many of those in a row. We can easily do 800-900 in a car, but I'm the only one who drives while we are hooked up, so that limits us a bit. The longest I've ever done is Pigeon Forge to the Fort, at about 720, which was a haul - but really went pretty well.

The most important factor, for me, is planning. When I'm trying to cover heavy miles in a day, I know every stop before we leave. Our 35' bumper-pull makes some parking lots and gas stations problematic. I know, before I ever leave, where my gas and food stops are. That way, I don't spend any time looking for a good place to stop, and it significantly reduces overall travel time.
 
We do 1600 miles in two days. Disney and Gulf Shores are the same distance for us. We plan on an 8 hr day by google, takes about 12 with bathroom breaks for the dog, DW and I.
One Disney trip we did home to Jacksonville North KOA, about 14 hours on the road, long day. We always try to leave early to help get around large cities. But each of us has our own limits.
 
Lol, my problem is the 8 year old, a little more unpredictable then the dog! I pull out of a rest stop, and ahe has to go to the bathroom. This might be a big plus for the TT! Pull off the road, and use the toilet! Ha! I got this now......
 
Lol, my problem is the 8 year old, a little more unpredictable then the dog! I pull out of a rest stop, and ahe has to go to the bathroom. This might be a big plus for the TT! Pull off the road, and use the toilet! Ha! I got this now......

When we got our new TT, we learned that the longer slide blocks the path to the potty when towing. And if I let the kids climb to it, I’m inevitably going to have to retrieve them from the bunks.
 
We tow from northern Michigan to the Fort, which is about 1,355 miles one way. It takes us about 2 1/2 days of solid driving to get there, but I'll throw in a caveat by saying we have a mini camper, so not one of the big boys. (We get passed plenty by those big boys, so I don't know if that makes any difference).

We have a few things we commonly do--but we're older folk with no children, so your milage may vary:

1) The first day is our longest, so we start off as early as possible. We've packed, gassed our TV and hitched up the day/evening before, so all that's left is to get ready to leave the next morning. We pack snacks and stop for BR breaks, only stopping for dinner when we get to our first nights stop.

2) If we're stopping for the night at a campsite we're unfamiliar with, we usually do so before nightfall. I've learned from experience that if we've made reservations, and the campground (if at a private one) office is closed, you may find yourself at a site that is totally unacceptable. That happened to us at a South Dakota KOA, and I was thanking my lucky stars that the office during the summer was open until 10 pm. If at a campsite we're familiar with, we usually can trust the office to put us where we request--close to BR's, for example.

3) For whatever reason, it always seems to take longer to get from northern Florida to the Fort than one would think. We usually come in from I75, but we used the eastern route on our first trip and it seemed the same.

4) For us, driving more than 12 hours was too much (I don't drive with the camper hitched, so there's only himself driving). We tried to do it in two days and arrived at the Fort over tired and out of sorts. One day we tried driving from Atlanta to the Fort, and it took us nearly 3 hours just to get from the northern outskirts of Atlanta to just north of Macon. Now, we usually try to stop south of Atlanta.
 
Ive think i decided, first day 8.5 hour drive to luberton koa, then from there to Jacksonville north about 5.5 hours then to the fort 4 hours. I will leave on a sunday, and sleep in a bit. So on the road at 6 am instead of 4 am. The lumberton koa looks like all pull through sites. We will relax at the Jacksonville north one. So a bit of rush then relax. Hopefully it works out, ill book in the am. Thanks to everyone here.

I'd be interested in your opinion of Luberton (or any Florida KOA). We've been looking at traveling the eastern route to by-pass Atlanta, but I've got no clue as to the quality of the campgrounds along that route.
 
When I estimate my drive time towing I use the 50mph rule if it's mostly interstate. That accounts for bathroom, fuel and food stops. Then I look at how long it will take total trip and how long I am comfortable driving. I know by 10-12 hours on the road I am ready to stop for the day. I plan around that, so last trip in July to Disney from Haymarket, VA, we left around 6am heading down US15 to US17 to I95. We stopped at Savannah South KOA around 5pm that day and it was a good stopping point for us as the kids where just getting restless and I could use the break from driving.

The kids got to run around and swim, we ordered dominos and that was it. Next morning we left around 9am and got to fort wilderness about 20 minutes after I got the text saying my site was ready. By 5pm that evening we were grilling and chilling at our site.
 
WOne day we tried driving from Atlanta to the Fort, and it took us nearly 3 hours just to get from the northern outskirts of Atlanta to just north of Macon. Now, we usually try to stop south of Atlanta.

Our mileage is very similar (1,270-1,300 depending on which route we take), and we end up with 2.5 days down for much the same reason as you note. We could do it in two 650 mile days, but that would have us starting day 2 with a mid-morning rush-hour impacted drive through Atlanta. We find that it's best to get the first 200-250 miles with an afternoon departure on day (even after work, if need be), then we can get close to the FL/GA line on our one long day. The following day can be an early start that has us at WDW before lunch.
 
I'd be interested in your opinion of Luberton (or any Florida KOA). We've been looking at traveling the eastern route to by-pass Atlanta, but I've got no clue as to the quality of the campgrounds along that route.
Ill definitly post a review after im there.
 
When we got our new TT, we learned that the longer slide blocks the path to the potty when towing. And if I let the kids climb to it, I’m inevitably going to have to retrieve them from the bunks.

This is why we won't buy a trailer without two doors. Bathroom access while on the road if need be, or even a lot of times when we stop at a rest area.
When shopping for a trailer, it had to have access to the bathroom with all slides in, or it was off the list.
 

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