Ontario Canada to Key West Florida | Ep. 49

2630 KM from Ontario to Key West (That’s 1609 miles for our American friends) in 3 days: In this episode, we kick off our epic four-part series detailing our unforgettable summer road trip from Ontario to Key West and back! Join us for the first leg of the journey as we navigate a chaotic border crossing during Independence Day weekend, share our overnight stay at a cozy Cracker Barrel in Meadville, PA, and weigh the pros and cons of taking I-79/I-77 versus I-75.

We’ll also recount memorable stops along the way, including Carowinds Campground, Orangeburg Memorial Gardens, and Sunshine Travel RV Resort in Vero Beach. Plus, we’ll share tips on planning fuel stops, detouring to Fort Lauderdale Airport to pick up family, and prepping for the scenic drive through the Florida Keys.

Whether you’re planning your own road trip or just love hearing about RV adventures, this episode is packed with stories, lessons, and our Weekend Warrior Tip of the Week!

Listen now and hit the road with us on this incredible journey!

Support the show

Get $10 off Roadtrippers Premium, just use code RVCanucks21 at Checkout!

Like what you hear? Please leave us a review wherever you listen!

Don’t Forget to follow us on TikTok and Instagram @RVCanucks

You can always reach out at hello@rvcanucks.com – we love hearing from you!

https://linktr.ee/Rvcanucks

Transcript

Melina (5s): Hello everybody and welcome back to the RV Canucks podcast. It has been a while but we are back with episode 49 and today we are going to begin our epic summer road trip from Ontario, Canada to Key West Florida. From a chaotic border crossing to a very peaceful cracker barrel stay and the scenic yet challenging I 77, I 79 roots join us for all the highs, lows and lessons from the first leg of our adventure. And this adventure I think is gonna be about a four part series where we detail this RV Connects road trip for 2024. Dan (39s): Yep. Welcome back everybody to the RV Canucks podcast. I’m Dan. It’s been a while. I think it’s been since almost like April, 2023 since we released one. Things have been busy and anyways, we’re not gonna give you excuses. We’re just gonna crack right on into it. Melina (54s): Okay, great. For those of you who listen to us on audio only, you may see a difference going forward. We’re trying to incorporate video into our podcast so if the audio is a little bit different or there’s a little more banter or the audio maybe contains a little more filler words, then you are used to it because we are also trying to incorporate audio and keep the editing down to a minimum. But we will still endeavor to make sure that it’s an entertaining show for you. Dan (1m 21s): It is like the good news is we’re still married. The podcast takes about 45 minutes for you to listen to. Probably takes another 90 minutes for Melina to edit and upload. And so we’re trying to do this and learn a few things and have some fun. Maybe I wanted to call it like RV Canucks run unedited but molina’s a little better on the fancy stuff. So let’s dive in on this big trip ’cause we learned a lot. Sounds Melina (1m 43s): Good. Yeah, so we usually try to take one big trip a year. This year was to Key West and back. We did make the decision to leave a little bit early. We decided to leave of an evening and it was just after Independence Day, so I think it was July 5th that we actually left. So it was a Friday night getting to the border in Fort Erie. And if you’ve gone especially on a long weekend from Ontario to New York state, especially in Fort Erie, it can get a little bit hectic but I’ll let Dan get into the details ’cause we have never actually experienced a border delay or a border experience quite like this one before. Dan (2m 16s): Yeah. So for, for everybody who’s tuning in and maybe you’re from a little further away. Fort Erie is near Niagara Falls, Canada, it’s near Buffalo, kind of in that stretch. Usually I’d say we haven’t had a rough time trying to cross the border and we did cross the border a couple of times this summer and it seems like the waits were a little bit longer. This particular day, you know we got away from home about an hour and a half late we got to the border and it was chaos. People were making their own lanes. There were no lanes, there was lane jumping, kind of did the rough math ’cause you could see that there was only one RV lane for us to go through and it was probably gonna take about an hour and a half to get through. Dan (2m 57s): And so eventually I think at one point we just flagged over, there’s a marshal just a, a fellow wearing a high visibility vest trying to like bring order to the impossible and we flagged him over ’cause like we weren’t moving because people were just cutting the line in front and he kind of established some lanes ’cause there were no lanes. It was a big free for all and you know the border inspector was taking a long time at the RV lane. All the other ones were through in like less than two minutes. This was taken like six minutes and you could see where you had to go and he was not going inside the RVs. Yeah, Melina (3m 29s): I think part part of the problem is is that they do the the RV slash auto lane, right? So you can go through in a car, you can go through it in an RV and I think the number of RVs that we’re trying to get through on this particular evening was a lot. And the way that they funnel traffic in, when Dan’s saying there was no lanes, it’s literally no lanes. You come from like four lanes down into like you, you have to get all the way over to the right to the RV lane. And so we had gotten over to the right quite early because we could see that was the only RV lane open to us. So while we had gotten over all of the way to the right, there was still like a bit of a shoulder situation and because there was no cones, there was no dedicated lines, there was nothing. People just kept hammering up the shoulder and like zipping in in front of us and we probably sat for 45 minutes and we didn’t move. Melina (4m 11s): And that’s when we kind of flagged the marshal who we kind of explained, hey listen, this is what’s going on. Everybody wants to cross cool but there’s like six other car lanes, how do we move inch ahead ’cause we haven’t moved. And that’s when he was like, oh I see what’s happening. And then he went and got some cones and created a lane and that’s only when we started to see some movements. So I would say though we’ve been through the border on really busy times and I haven’t seen chaos like that in a long time. Dan (4m 37s): No. And this is the second time that summer we crossed the border once into the US there was a marshal once coming back into Canada, there was a marshal so it’s not really country specific. And both times we just had to say, Hey sir, I got a quick question and then you have a play chat and it all works out. I’d like to set the broader context of this trip. Molina and I were traveling just as a pair solo kid less and, and the girls were gonna meet us in Fort Lauderdale. So we had a deadline to get to Fort Lauderdale to pick ’em up at the airport. And so the plan was to put a couple hours down on Friday after work. So if you’re sitting in your car saying why didn’t these people leave on Saturday morning, like maybe four o’clock in the morning, you might be right. But the goal that night was to get to Pittsburgh and you know, the two hour delay and the, you know, little construction here and stuff like that. Dan (5m 24s): We probably came up two and a half hours short of our goal that day. But like it all worked out Melina (5m 30s): And we’re okay with night driving. Like I think at this particular time in our night, in our life we’re okay doing the evening and the and the night driving. I actually don’t mind it Dan can you just feed him coffee and he’ll go 24 hours without stopping. But we’re probably getting to the end of that lifespan the older we get. But you know, I don’t mind traveling at night and that’s why we decided to kind of leave in an evening. We didn’t make it to PI Pittsburgh, we drove until we kind of couldn’t drive anymore and we stopped in a place called Meadville, Pennsylvania, which was just short of Pittsburgh. But that was okay because going through Pittsburgh first thing Saturday morning was, was a breeze there, there was no traffic. But because we had to be like we had to be in Fort Lauderdale by noon on Monday to make sure we could meet the girls’ flight. Melina (6m 12s): It was important to us to kind of lay down as many miles as we could so that like the, the following days we could actually spend some time sightseeing and and pulling over and just you know, having a bit more of a leisurely drive down. Dan (6m 24s): Yeah, so Meadville, we stopped at a Crocker barrel maybe a mile and a half, two miles off the main exit. So it was really easy to get into. Parking lot was wide open when we got there. I think the actual RV parking was maybe a bit small for a 29 foot trailer would you say? Melina (6m 41s): Yeah, normally. So Pennsylvania, if you’ve driven through Pennsylvania and we’ll talk a bit about this, we did the I 77 79 route down, which is very hilly. Pretty mountainous. You go through tunnels, there’s a lot of curves, there are a lot of bends and when you get into Pennsylvania, like a lot of the shops and like the targets and the Walmarts and the cracker barrels in this case are like really up really steep grades, right? So there’s not a lot of room for parking in general as you would see, you know, a Cracker Barrel on the side of any other interstate to stop. So the parking lots are a little bit smaller and while they did have dedicated RV parking, there was no way like it was angled parking. Like we were way too long. So we kind of parked along the back end of the parking lot. We were the only people there. Melina (7m 21s): We, there was not a single soul in sight. We arrived probably about 11, 11 30 I would think. Like it was pretty late. Oh Dan (7m 27s): I think it was after midnight. I was it after Melina (7m 29s): Midnight. Dan (7m 29s): Just like if you’ve ever pulled into a parking lot at Cracker Barrel at midnight, just like so you know there’s nobody in the parking lot so it was really easy. Melina (7m 38s): Pull in Dan (7m 38s): And do a big circle. Melina (7m 39s): Yeah there was no other RVs. Yeah. But there it was very clear if we had tried to park in an RV spot we would be blocking cars getting in for their Saturday breakfast. So Dan (7m 49s): Like day one lessons are kind of stuff we should already know. Like we crossed the border into the US nothing in the fridge, no food, you know, might’ve had a cup of coffee and some water up front. All our documentation was in order. We had all our like reservations lined up easily to show if they asked. We had our license plate number so that like when we did get our turn we got zipped through pretty quickly when it was our turn. Like Melina (8m 10s): The license plate number of the trailer? Yeah, not just the truck. ’cause they do check that and I’ll put in the show notes, I don’t have the exact episode but we did do a, a distinct episode on crossing the border from Canada to the US and, and vice versa because there are some distinct differences. We never go with groceries for a reason. They’re they’re pretty stickly. They’re sticklers. Dan (8m 30s): It’s just like don’t like figuring out what you can and can’t bring is too confusing. So just get it all when you’re down Melina (8m 35s): There. But coming back it’s, Dan (8m 37s): Oh coming back, Melina (8m 38s): Coming back. It’s almost a free for all. Canada’s pretty liberal with what you can bring back in the amounts aside from alcohol, from like from a food perspective. So we bring a lot of stuff back but going to, we have found even with the exchange rate being what it is, we’re never worse off because groceries tend to be a little bit cheaper anyway. So even with the exchange rate it’s, we’re never worse off getting groceries down there but because we knew we were stopping at Cracker Barrel and you know, because we didn’t have food, that means we get a delicious Cracker Barrel breakfast as you do and as you should If you are staying there for free you should go in and and be a paying customer the next morning. Dan (9m 14s): Oh for sure. Like the coffee was amazing probably ’cause we really needed it badly. But the coffee was the best coffee I’ve ever had in my life. A hundred percent guaranteed. And the staff was super helpful. Like it was overall like kind of for a bit of a bumpy start the night before, I kind of think it was a good reset to get us on the road and refreshed and ready to go for the rest of the another long day. Melina (9m 34s): Yeah and I think, you know, once we, once we essentially woke up it was like okay, vacation is starting that next morning once I had had a little cry that our kids weren’t with us and this is the first time we’ve embarked on a trip, just the two of us. And I know they came and they flew down to meet us, which was lovely but it was definitely a different foray for us going on such a long trip by ourselves as empty nesters as it were. Dan (9m 56s): It was good. Who doesn’t wanna be an empty nester? Melina (10m 1s): He, he’s being brave for the camera and Dan (10m 3s): Microphone. I not being brave. Melina (10m 4s): Not the camera. He misses them too. So day two we, we Dan (10m 9s): Like talk about the I 79 i 77 75 loop. Yeah set ’em up for that. Melina (10m 15s): So essentially I like to travel in loops. Like I hate going on a trip one way and then you come back the same way. Like I, I always like to make our trips a loop. Even when we did route 66 we weren’t straight there straight back, we went one way on route 66 and then we looped back, you know, so we could see some different things. There’s different sites to see, there’s different museums to see like we’re always about getting in and and seeing small little towns and really kind of getting into the heart of America, north America when we travel. So I hate doing forward and back kind of on the same route. Anybody who goes to Florida on a regular basis from Ontario was like, do not take 77 and 79, take I 75. And we know this especially with a trailer and we have done this trip before, we have gone to Florida before, we have gone to Myrtle Beach before on this route. Melina (10m 58s): And so we knew what we were getting into. Like we, this was a conscious decision as in okay it’s like not snowy, it’s the summertime, you know we, we know the places to stop to kind of get gas. So look we we, we didn’t go into it blind but it definitely is a more challenging route, especially if you’re towing a trailer and you need to be really more cognizant of like how much gas you have left in the tank and the grades that you’re going into and how much you’re gonna burn. And that’s probably the biggest consideration. Dan (11m 27s): Yeah like I know our range is about 400 kilometers to a tank of fuel so I know that like every two and a half or you know, four hours we need to gas up and forgive our American friends. You know, I don’t know what the conversion is off the top of my head from 400 kilometers to miles. But going through there this time we were quite a bit, the range was reduced even more. It was more like three 50 sometimes probably ’cause we’re driving a little bit fast. This was the part of the trip where you know, more than once we had to get off, you know, partly ’cause we’re getting you know, the creeks and the squeaks out of our, so to speak out of our, our travel and get ’em back up to speed. We had to get off the highway not use truck stops and kind of wiggle into gas stations. Dan (12m 10s): I know at one point we, you know, tried to get gas at a Walmart gas station which was kind of new to us and it was tight to squeeze in there and then you know, we went across the road and had sheets for lunch and then of course you know, I’m sure you can imagine all the joke kids make in the back, we’re gonna go have a sheets. But that was new to us, kind of a family tradition to try something new. But the food was good. We had to wiggle into that. We had to wiggle into one just north of Pittsburgh, like the whole way down you’re kind of wiggling in for gas and because you’re going through more gas, you’re doing more wiggling. Melina (12m 38s): Yeah. And so we have long, I mean there’s apps that can help you and and you know we have RV navigation with our Road Tripper app which luckily for all of the US now you can do RV specific navigation in the road trippers app. But when it comes to gas stations, usually one of us, whoever’s driving the other person will go ahead and they’ll say okay we we’re gonna need some gas soon. So they start looking ahead. But we actually use Google satellite view and we’ve done this for years just to kind of see the ins and outs, look at the grade going in and out of the gas station, see if there’s an end pump that we can use without like getting ourselves stuck or inconveniencing other people or or blocking the egress into or out of the gas station. So that’s kind of been our go-to and that works really well. Melina (13m 20s): But I would say because this series of highways, like when you go on I 75, it’s, it’s made for truck travel, there’s truck stops, there’s a lot more, you know, 18 wheelers on the road. So like the amenities are made for longer vehicles and we’re, you know, 50 feet at least from toe to tail really. So it is challenging I would say the Walmart gas station in Pennsylvania and that was the only time I was driving and I had to get out and let Dan, I had to do like the walk of shame around the truck ’cause I could not make this turn into this gas station. It was so embarrassing. Dan (13m 51s): I don’t know, I feel like upon reflection I should have let you do it and I maybe was a little quick to putt you out of this driver’s seat and jump in. But we made it there and we were still married Melina (14m 0s): And actually some, some guy was not too happy with Dan in the gas station ’cause he said hey she was doing fine, you should have let her do it. Dan (14m 8s): I was wrong, I was wrong. Melina (14m 10s): Which I’m comfortable driving but it was like high pressure, it was like busy. There was a lot of people and I was like I just don’t wanna get in people’s ways. Like I don’t want people shaking their fists at like these stupid RVs who don’t know how to, you know, operate their their vehicle. So I just let Dan handle the tricky stuff and I’m getting there like Dan (14m 26s): And you know what like I’m just happier to have people mad at me. I don’t really care what people think. So you know what like so I will say, and this started with a trip we did, you know to take our younger daughter do a highland dance competition, I’m gonna put in a plug and I’m not being re reimbursed for this, I’m putting in a plug for the Flying J app. The Flying J app does a couple of good things. First you’re gonna get some discounts, maybe you’re gonna collect some points like you can go online and you can research that stuff. But for sure we got discounts on snacks. They honored the Canadian military veteran status so we got that discount as well. Here’s the big one for Canadians, like if you’re a Canadian and travel in the US you know that you have to pull up to the pumps and then it wants you to prepay, which is a hassle and then you know it wants your zip code. Dan (15m 12s): But in Canada we don’t have zip codes. You have postal codes and there’s some confusing replace your your your letters with zeros and a like sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Some Canadians say put in 9 0 2 1 oh and it’ll give you gas like it’s a pain in the butt If you’re a Canadian to prepay in the US for fuel this you can load your credit card into the app, you pull up to the pump, you say begin fueling and it charges your credit card, it gives you a little code that you punch in and you fill right up. Easiest thing I’ve ever done, I am not being reimbursed for this. Molina’s says I talk about it too much but if you’re from Canada, look into the Flying Jay app ’cause it makes fueling up a whole lot easier. Melina (15m 51s): Well Dan is like part Scottish and he’s super, super cheap. So if you mention free snacks to Dan, like you have a customer for life and that is part of why you love that app so much. Dan (16m 2s): It is. I got some free snacks in there too. Maybe we’ll get to that. Maybe we won’t. Who knows. So, Melina (16m 7s): So on this route we went pretty far that day We went 853 kilometers. So we traveled about 530 miles to car winds, which is for those who who aren’t aware of what Car winds is. Car winds is an amusement park. But it’s kind of like I would say a blend between Canada’s Wonderland here in Vaughn and Darien Lake in New York State because they do concerts and things in a way that Canada’s Wonderland doesn’t. But it’s kind of like a day park and it’s like right on the border of North Carolina and South Carolina. Dan (16m 34s): Oh yeah. Like we went into South Carolina, back to North Carolina, into South Carolina, back to North Carolina. I didn’t know what state we were in and that, but that’s just I guess the nature of traveling in the US sometimes. Melina (16m 44s): Yeah, what I would say is we stayed at Carins because it was right on the highway. It was a busy weekend and there wasn’t a lot of option for us. We didn’t pre-plan any of our stays on the way down there. We used RV parking, we used Road Tripper to help us find places to stay. And Carins had an availability. I would like to give a shout out to Carins because they actually stayed open late for us because we were running a little bit late called and just said, Hey, you know, we’re gonna be there. I think it was about 20 minutes after the, the office had closed and he’s like, no worries. He’s like, I’m gonna stay here for you. So you know, you know everything’s okay. You know where to go and you know, otherwise if if, if you’re any later than that because we had had some construction delays, I’ll leave the package outside but because we had never been there, we were coming from Canada, he was super nice and he stayed for us and opened up the store and allowed us to like grab a beer so we could share a beer after this long travel day. Melina (17m 40s): And it was so lovely taking us to our site and just showing us where to park. So it was, it was a great place for an overnight I would say it surprised me a little bit because I expected the campground to be a little more like like a KOA where everything is very paved and this was a little more like natural like you’re in the Carolina Pines and it’s gravel and while it’s like full hookups and everything it just, it gave a little more of that like wilderness vibe that I wasn’t really expecting. Dan (18m 6s): Yeah, definitely gave us a little of, sorry the, I guess we’re just gonna tell you, we told the kids to be quiet and they’re upstairs and now we’re gonna hear everything that they’re saying. Nothing bad. But yeah like I would recommend it definitely for an overnight stop. We didn’t get to see much in the daylight but I would definitely use it again just based on the level of service and the dude who stayed late to make sure we got settled. Okay. Melina (18m 27s): Yeah, no it was great. It was very convenient like to the highway to just kind of get us on the road and get going because the next day was also a really, really long day. Dan (18m 36s): Yeah and you know what we were a little bit smarter on on that. Molina had the road trippers out when we were planning the trip and we stopped at the Orangeburg Memorial Gardens, which was a good spot. So a couple things, it was a Sunday parking lot was wide open and empty so it was easy for us to park the trailer and we probably walked around for what a good 45 minutes kind of through a bit of a natural gardens. I wouldn’t say it was a botanical gardens but you know, you learned a little bit about the people of the area and you know, some of the trees and local vegetation. So it was kind of cool, which was good ’cause you got to get out and stretch your legs ’cause you’ve now been in the, the truck for a couple of days putting down some miles. So that was, and it was free like yeah, free’s good, right? Dan (19m 17s): Because I’m Scottish Melina (19m 19s): Free is always good. It’s, and this in Orangeburg, South Carolina so it wasn’t, we got there about lunch lunchtime one o’clock after we left on day three. And so it was a great place to, to stretch our legs and I, I purely found it just by filtering through road trippers. Like when we had done our initial trip plan, I just filter to like places of interest, like good spots for photos, historical sites and this came up. So I really, really love, I would, I would say we’re widely traveled in the United States but there’s so much stuff to see and so many neat little historical things and places of interest that you would never know. And sometimes we find some really great off the beaten path, ones that aren’t very busy but like have a really amazing rating and we really enjoyable to do in this, I would say with one of them. Dan (20m 4s): Yeah, just stretch your legs. I remember like there’s some really cool trees there and it talks about the tree roots and stuff like that so you know, if you’re into tree roots it’s a spot to go. Melina (20m 15s): So on day three we were aiming for Vero Beach and we wanted to stop a little bit short of Fort Lauderdale, the airport. And this was like a great place to stop kind of in advance of that. Again, it was another pretty long travel day. It was 869 kilometers, so 560 miles that we laid down on day three to get to Vero Beach. So again, we got there after dark and so for us it wasn’t necessarily, we weren’t concerned with amenities beyond a good place to stay overnight. Yeah Dan (20m 45s): But you know, I had a good walk around the park, you know it’s an RV resort but I probably wouldn’t spend my vacation there. I don’t think it’s maybe a resort as most people would define that. But like super clean pool was clean, like there’s no garbage. The pet area was clean, taps and hookups were functional. So like it was good that way. It was nice and quiet even though you’re right near the interstate. That was awesome. I won’t say it’s right out the gate but like only a matter of feet. And there’s a gas station on one side and a McDonald’s on the other side so you could gas up real easily. I, I think I probably unhitched and gassed up just to make it a little bit easier. But you could go in and get like some breakfast sandwiches like it was a good American sized convenience store to do that stuff and you could get coffee and be on the road. Dan (21m 30s): So it was a really nice stop that way. I’d recommend that as well. Melina (21m 33s): And this was the Sunshine Travel RV resort in Vero Beach. And it reminded me actually a lot of the RV resort that we stayed on the side of the highway on our Route 66 trip just outside of St. Louis. It was on the other side of St. Louis and it had the same vibe. I’ll have to look up the name of that one, but like definitely 10 outta 10 for, for an overnight or even If you were there for a day to go see Vero Beach, like it’s just a great place to sleep, super clean. So Dan (21m 59s): Yeah. And so there’s, you know, obviously transient people are welcome ’cause we were there, there’s some people there that are obviously like year rounders and then there was also a spot and we didn’t get into this area when we camped but it was there. I walked into it as a newer area where they’re obviously putting in some nice new sites and concrete pads and stuff like that. So they’re putting money into the place Melina (22m 19s): For sure. So the next day was, was the day to pick up the kids and, and head all the way to the keys. So we were a little bit early for the plane, which was kind of by design because it was the morning of this. So this would’ve been Monday that we stopped and got groceries. So what we did is we got our bearings figured out where the airport was, found a grocery store that had a parking lot that would be sufficient for grocery shopping and parking because, Dan (22m 46s): And then, and then the garbage truck parked right in front of us. So we had to wiggle our way out like the entire parking lot for this fella to park and he parked six inches off our front bumper like, oh that’s just, come on man, Melina (22m 56s): Because we saw our trailer was so pretty and he wanted to look at it. But in any case like the, it’s, it’s a very built up area around the Fort Lauderdale airport. So like finding a grocery store with a parking lot big enough was a bit of a challenge. But we did and we, we stocked up on a lot of great stuffs. Probably more snacks than we would normally get seeing as we had three teenagers coming off the plane to meet us. And then what we did is just about a three minute drive from the airport itself is the Bass Pro. So we stopped at the Bass Pro shops, we decided not to unhitch or drop our trailer there and I just took an Uber to the airport to meet the kids and then bring them back in an Uber to the truck. And then we hit the road Dan (23m 35s): And I bought some fishing lures and a new T-shirt. Melina (23m 38s): Thanks Dan. Dan (23m 41s): Hey like if you’re from Canada, there’s some fishing lures there that like we don’t have up here. So that’s important for the my fellow anglers. Melina (23m 48s): Well is that because the variety of fish can’t be found up here? Dan (23m 51s): Well it’s completely different but I would recommend that my fellow anglers stop and stretch their legs and get a t-shirt in a few lures. Melina (23m 58s): Okay, that’s fair. So picking up the kids again, pretty straightforward. We hit the road getting outta the city was busy. It was, the traffic was insane and especially as, as the closer you got to Miami, the traffic was really, really busy. So we decided to take the Florida expressway, the, the toll road which was much, much better to get down to highway one and the start of the keys. Dan (24m 20s): Yep. So we stopped at the Snapper Creek Service Plaza. This is a really good plaza. RV friendly, I think there’s even a spot there for trucks. You can get some food. Washrooms are clean, easy to get. Like we have a 29 foot trailer and a F-150 crew cab. So it was like easy for us to get in. One of the, we, we actually stopped there once going in and once going outta the keys and I forget which one it was, but I obviously, and it was my fault, missed a turn and it was enough for me to like do a loop around to get pointed the right way so we didn’t have to go down the highway in the wrong direction. Staff was super friendly, like if you’re gonna stop, make it easier on yourself, let’s gas up, use the washroom right there because you know, depending on the size of your, your rig going down to the keys, it might not be that easy to stop. Melina (25m 4s): Yeah and I would say there are places definitely in the keys to gas up like while you’re connected to your trailer but Snapper Creek is like located just around Homestead Florida, which is kind of the last place you pass before you get into the keys proper and the service center’s kind of in the middle of the throughway. So you’ve got lanes on one side going south lanes on other side going north and, and that’s kind of what Dan meant like is when we had to loop back around we were facing the wrong direction so we had to find a spot to turn around. But overall it’s a really good like typical service center, like an on route in Canada and great place to like fully gas up ’cause you will make it to anywhere in the keys that you need to go without having to pull in with your trailer hooked up. And I would say it isn’t so much the availability because there are a lot of like trucks with boats that are gassing up at gas stations throughout the keys. Melina (25m 50s): But the way the keys are structured, when you keys hopping, you’re going from key to like bridge to key to bridge. The gas stations tend to come up pretty quick and a lot of them are, they don’t have a lot of pumps and If you pull up to one and there’s already somebody there who’s gassing up like you, you would have to wait on the road, which isn’t feasible either. So just gassing up before you get there is great. And then once you’re parked and unhooked, then you can gas up to your heart’s content anywhere in the keys. Dan (26m 15s): Yeah. And that and if you’re, you know, so you can get from, from the plaza or or homestead to the keys in, in one tank of gas if people need to stop and like use the washroom, that was easy to pull off. There’s long stretches where you can kind of just ease off to the side and if they want to use the trailer, they can use the trailer. If there’s a convenience store they can scoot in. So driving down that whole, the Florida Keys is actually a pretty smooth drive. It actually went way better than I thought it was gonna go. Yeah. Like it was actually actually pretty relaxing. Melina (26m 44s): Yeah it was And yeah, it was relaxing. It was beautiful. Super hot. We’ll talk about that in the next episode. Canadians like it’s next level hot and we’ll talk a bit about that and how we kind of dealt with that heat when we detail actual KOA Sugarloaf key that we stayed at and going into Key West. So Vero Beach to Key West, all in all was about 380 miles. So 600 and change kilometers to get down down there. So it was a reasonable, like we were there, we were set up before dinner. Dan (27m 13s): Yeah like, like, like cheers for you and me. We did pretty awesome If you ask me like we managed to, we, you know, Molina scooted over to the airport, helped the, helped the kids out. I went into Bass pro shops, we got groceries, we got into the campsite with lots of good time. The sun was still up. Like what I’m trying to emphasize is at the end of that day we did not feel exhausted. Like you were ready to have a little bit of fun and it’s, you know, you got the energy of finally wrapping up the big part of the trip. But it was a good trip like, like getting down there and seeing this and that for a couple of days, you know, whether it’s a Cracker Barrel or the gardens is is kind of cool. Yeah. Melina (27m 49s): And I would say listen, like, I mean our trips are morphing. The more and more we travel, the older we travel when it’s just us versus when we have the kids and like in this, in this particular trip, I wish we had more to talk about on the way down there, but like, like I said, I was more happy to know that the kids were able to come with their work schedules and meet us. So I was happy to just bean it down there as quickly as we could to pick them up because it meant we got to spend some time with them in a vacation setting as opposed to like if, if Dan and I were just heading on this trip, just the two of us, we would probably would’ve taken a week to get down there and just kind of meandered around. So it was a little bit different for that purpose but I think it still worked out really well. So with that I think we’ll end this episode here. Dan (28m 29s): Yeah. We’ll end here, come back for part two. We’re gonna talk about the sugar loaf, KOA probably squeeze, squeeze in a, an alligator story. We’ll talk about some ghost cars on the highway. Yep. And you know, we’ll kind of finish off the rest of the trip I think. Melina (28m 44s): Yeah, so I think we’re gonna start ending our episodes with a weekend warrior tip of the week. And I would say for this one what I would say is pre-planned your gas stops, like we’ve talked about, use whatever methods you find helpful. We find Google satellite view super helpful to figure out. But when you’re in a tricky situation, there’s nothing more stressful than being in a situation where you are caught and can’t actually gas up. You’re running out of gas, the stress levels in the in the car get a little bit higher. So pre-plan those stops, make sure you’re checking long before you actually are in a position where you, where you need that gas and you will have smooth sailing. Dan (29m 17s): Yeah, and I would recommend the Flying J app. Like if I’m being honest with you, it made it easy to pay. There was a couple of times it wouldn’t connect. Right. You know, you get some discounts. There are some things I’d change about the app that could be a bit better. But overall it was a win for the guy who does all the gassing up and the pang of gas and figuring out his ones and his zeros and his zip cards. So I’d recommend it for Canadians. Melina (29m 38s): Great. And If you are new here and you like this episode, leave us a review on wherever you’re listening to your podcast. We certainly do appreciate it. And you can follow us on Instagram and TikTok at RV Connects. And with that we will talk to you next episode. 0 (29m 52s): Have a great day.