Nine hours and 20 minutes. That's what the map app says it takes to drive from our carport to the campground on St. George Island, and it's guessing at car speed. With the camper behind the Pilot I hold it to about 62 miles an hour, we stop for gas more often, and every stop takes longer because I'm hunting for a pump I can pull straight through. Realistically, it's ten hours on the road. With a seven-year-old in the back, it's more.
We leave for Thanksgiving in about six weeks, and I've spent a few evenings at the kitchen table with the trip log and a map trying to make that day shorter.
What June taught us
Our summer loop gave us a pretty clear rule. The good driving days were five or six hours of towing: Miami to Ron and Linda's in Ocala on the first day, Chattanooga to Grayton Beach after the aquarium, and Grayton back to Ocala at the end. The bad day was day two, Ocala to Vogel, which was long on paper and became three hours longer when a screw in a camper tire turned into a shredded tire and a dry-rotted spare outside Tifton. We set up in the dark by headlamp, everyone hungry, Nico asleep on Dana's shoulder.
So the rule now: about five hours of towing a day, six at the most, and roll in with at least an hour of daylight left. A long day with a flat tire becomes a very long day. A medium day with a flat tire is just a story.
The day we can't shorten
Thanksgiving breaks that rule on the first day. The kids and I have school on Friday, November 20, and Dana's November schedule went in last week. She traded every shift that week except that Friday. So we leave Saturday morning, November 21, and our four nights on the island start that night. We looked at the options:
- Leave Friday night and sleep in Ocala. Dana gets off at 7:30 p.m. We'd pull into my parents' driveway around 1 a.m. with two sleeping kids. No.
- Camp one night in the Big Bend. Another fee, about 40 minutes of setup and teardown for a single night, and we'd reach the island a day late, giving up a night at the park we booked eleven months ago.
- A hotel lot, like Chattanooga. Another $150 or so and a parking puzzle to save maybe two hours.
- One day, cut in half. That's the plan.
One day, two drives
- Friday night: camper hitched in the side yard, chains crossed, Maya calling out the lights, cooler packed except for ice, and the spare tire checked by hand. That line is on the door list now in capital letters.
- 5:30 a.m.: kids carried out in pajamas. Nico will be asleep before the Turnpike, as always.
- About 7:30: gas at a Turnpike service plaza and breakfast burritos we wrapped in foil the night before.
- About 10:30: Ron and Linda's driveway. Lunch at a real table, the kids running laps in the yard, me flat on Linda's couch for 20 minutes with my cap over my eyes. Wheels rolling again by 12:15.
- Afternoon: northwest to the coast, gas in Perry, then the long, quiet stretch of US-98 along the Big Bend, where stations are farther apart and the tank never goes below half.
- About 4:45: across the long, low bridge onto the island, with sunset around 5:40. The island stays on Eastern time, so there's no bonus hour like the drive to Grayton.
That's about five hours of towing before lunch and four and a half after. It's still one long day, and I'm not pretending otherwise. The lunch stop is the whole trick. It's halftime: everybody out of the Pilot, real food, some running, and a reset before the second half.
The backup plan is simple. If a flat or traffic leaves us more than two hours behind when we reach Ocala, we stay the night and finish Sunday morning. That costs us one campsite night, about $42, and nobody sets up a camper in the dark on a barrier island in November.
Coming home is already split
The return is the easy half, thanks to the turkey. On Wednesday, November 25, we tow from the island back to Ocala, about four and a half hours, and the camper spends Thanksgiving in my parents' driveway. Friday is a rest day. Saturday, November 28, is the five-hour run home down the Turnpike. Two medium days with a holiday in between is how every trip north should work, and it took us two summers of long drives to see it.
Nico, who has a calendar on the fridge with the days crossed off in red, asked me last night whether the long day counts as one day or two. I said one. He said it should count as two, because there's lunch at Grandma Linda's in the middle. I'm starting to think he's right.
