We often have weekends off or we are "Pre-assigned on a Monday load". Our weekends are sometimes spent doing the boring clean up the truck routine, get laundry done, and go grocery shopping and other times we luck out.
Sometimes two or three months can go by before we see our home, every once in awhile an opportunity arises and we take advantage of a chance to relax. Over the years we have been able to see some pretty interesting sites and get to experience adventures we would only have dreamed about before trucking.
The term paid tourist is often bandied around when applied to expediters and often this could not be further from the truth. We run a business the same as any owner operator and it does not pay well for us to run around in our truck seeing tourist attractions. On the other hand being a paid tourist fits all of trucking as we get to see the changing of the leaves, the amazing sky scrapers in most of the large cities, we have seen the Devils Slide in Utah and the list goes on and on.
Over the years every once in awhile it works out that we stay in an RV park. We do not do this often due to the expense and some parks do not allow commercial vehicles. Three RV parks and the activities associated with these parks stick out in my mind.
One of our first experiences with using an RV park was in San Diego at a KOA. We met some friends
at the park and had a wonderful evening sitting around a campfire enjoying each other’s company. Before we knew it though the evening was over and we went our separate ways to pick up our next loads with a smile in our heart.
Another time we stayed at a campground near Rapid City, SD that had bus tours of Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. We spent an enjoyable day on our bus tour and came back in the evening to participate in a dinner theater. We were glad we were the passengers on this day as we saw some amazing country and it would not have been possible if one of us had been driving.
In the last month or so we had a delivery at Cape Canaveral on Friday morning and did not pickup our next load in Orlando till Monday morning. We had a dilemma as I needed to get laundry done and we needed showers and the trucks stops are few and far between. We could have picked a hotel but that is always our last choice.
With the type of truck and sleeper we have a hotel is often not as nice as our accommodations. I saw a sign along the interstate for The Christmas RV Park and I thought what the heck lets give them a call.
This is the off-season for the RV parks in Florida and they had plenty of room. We had just finished a couple weeks of hard running and we were near the point of exhaustion. This place had everything! We were greeted when we pulled in with a friendly hello, and when they heard I needed to get laundry done we were told I have the perfect spot for you.
We were placed near the laundry room, near the shower room, and near the community kitchen area. We had our own tree as well as picnic table. We plugged in our shore power and we were set. After catching up on some much needed sleep we were able to get the laundry done and get the truck cleaned up. Each afternoon we headed for the pool and spent a couple hours floating around. By the time Monday came around we were ready to get back to work!
While relaxing at RV parks is not the norm for us when the opportunity arises we grab it. The RV Park near Orlando worked out perfect for us and we will use the Christmas RV Park if we are in the area again with a weekend layover.