One week from right now, we will be in Savannah Georgia, more than halfway to Seffner, FL where we’ll take delivery of Rover on Monday April the 28th. It’s hard to believe, but we’re down to our final week of preparations here in Maryland!

We’ve finished all the inspections, repairs, furniture removal, and clean-up at our house in Virginia. That’s a huge weight of our shoulders, and we’re looking forward to completing the house sale next week. We’ve acquired reasonably affordable health insurance in Florida, as well as Florida full-timer’s RV insurance for Rover and auto insurance for Red. We’ve collected all the various paperwork needed to get Florida driver’s licenses—Florida doesn’t recognize Virginia licenses as a primary form of ID, so we have to go a bit overboard on proof of ID and residency.

2-inch Curt tow hitch installed under Red, to carry our bicycles.

Our bicycles have been tuned up after a year or two of sitting in the garage untouched, and we installed a tow hitch on Red to carry them after Phase 2. (More on phases later.) Red’s windows have been tinted to prepare for the hot southern sun, our tax return has been filed, dog daycare is arranged in Tampa for Max and Opie during our RV delivery and driver training, we’ve signed up for several RV campground discount clubs, and we’ve ordered some nice outdoor chairs and a portable BBQ grill for the RV. Whew! All in all, the last few weeks have been much busier than I expected!

Phase 1 items must all fit inside the Roof Bag to make the trip to Tampa next week.

We’ve started sorting through what’s left of our belongings, separating things into phases. Phase 1 will be the bare essentials that we’ll need for our first week, and will come with us on our drive to Tampa inside our Roof Bag. The back of Red will be mostly reserved for the dogs during the drive. Phase 1b items will be packed up in a box or two and shipped to my mom’s house—she lives about 90 minutes from Tampa, so it will be easy for us to pick them up shortly after moving into Rover. Phase 2 is the rest of our things, which will stay in Jen’s basement until we return here in a couple months and we can load them all into Rover. We also have a few boxes of “semi-permanent storage” items that will live in Jen’s attic until needed. Thanks Jen!

Phase 2 items we’ll pick up from Jen’s upon our return to the DC area with Rover.

After going through all our remaining things, we’re pretty sure that everything we have left (except for a couple pieces of furniture we’re keeping for a possible future home) will fit into the RV just fine. The trick will be taking the right things with us during Phase 1 (or shipping to Florida in Phase 1b) to make it through the six weeks or so until we arrive back in Maryland with Rover. Phase 1 will likely be a small selection of clothes, a subset of plates, cups, and utensils, a few bathroom supplies, lots of dog supplies, and of course a mountain of electronics.

I have a feeling the coming week will speed by as we take care of all the last-minute planning needed for our trip. We’re getting more excited every day, but we do have occasional moments where we look at each other and say: “what the heck have we done?”