Our Biggest Travel Mistake (And How You Can Avoid It)

We should have known better. After almost 15 years of living the RV lifestyle, we forgot our number one rule when traveling across the country: Time Your Travels!

We didn't follow our own advice, and we paid the price. It was hands down the single worst day of driving we've experienced since we started this RV Lifestyle way back in 2012.

I'm writing this from beautiful Okaloosa Island, Florida, where Jen and I will be spending the next 10 days with our daughter Wendy and her family. Beach time and much-needed rest are on the agenda after a crazy busy few months that saw us host two rallies (Nashville and Northern Michigan) and juggle more special projects than we can remember.

The Setup for Disaster

You can see why Jen and I were anxious to hit the road. Besides, we had our brand new 2025 Cape Cod motorhome to test out—what could go wrong?

Our hard-earned “Time Your Travel Rule” tells us that you should plan your trip to travel through big cities on weekends whenever possible. Traffic is lighter, construction crews are off duty, and rush hour doesn't exist.

We left on a Friday.

When Everything Goes Wrong

Everything went smoothly until we hit Indianapolis. Then we were snarled in gridlocked, stop-and-go traffic for almost three hours.

THREE HOURS!!!!!!@#%$#

Here's what I've learned about Indianapolis over the years: The roads are always under construction. The work is never done. Year after year for over a decade, the major roads leading into and around the city are a maze of closed lanes and construction zones.

Our GPS—both Apple Maps and Waze—went haywire trying to route us around the traffic. They weren't very successful. In one of the worst heat waves to hit in years, we sat at a standstill or crawled along at a snail's pace.

The dashboard temperature read 109 degrees. That wasn't accurate, of course—the heat was bouncing off the asphalt and intensified by the overheated exhausts of hundreds of idling vehicles. The real temperature was about 95 degrees, but it felt like an oven.

The traffic continued to worsen as we approached the full-blown Friday rush hour. We should have been through the city on I-65 by 2:30 PM. Instead, we didn't clear the mess until well after 5:00 PM.

The domino effect continued. By the time we reached Louisville around 6:30 PM, their rush hour was winding down, but just south of town near Shepherdsville, we hit another 30-minute traffic jam.

We finally rolled into our overnight spot at the KOA in Bowling Green, Kentucky, close to 9 PM—well after dark. We were tired, beaten up, and more than a little grumpy.

And it was entirely our fault for not following our own rule.

A Perfect Song to describe this part of the trip…

Just after I finished this blog post, I received an email from a reader James Dukleth, who “wrote” a song with the help of AI and a song-writing platform called Suno about RV Travel Days. What AI came up with fit our situation perfectly, capturing the frustrations and celebrations of just getting to our destinations on a travel day.

Listen along, James gave me permission to share it.

Our Hard-Learned Travel Tips

To save you from this misery, here are our proven strategies for timing your travels:

Travel through big cities on weekends or during off-peak hours (mid-morning or after 7 PM). We've found Sundays are the absolute best days to travel.

Don't travel more than 330 miles in a day, and try to stop by 3:30 PM. I know this isn't always possible, but your health, mood, and stress levels will thank you when you make this your standard policy.

Never arrive at a campground after dark. Finding your site in the dark is incredibly difficult. Those campground maps that seem simple in daylight become impossible to navigate when you're squinting at site numbers with a flashlight and waking your neighbors.

Be proactive with route planning. Your GPS will usually show where traffic jams are building and suggest alternative routes. Listen to it. The system won't be 100% accurate, but it'll do better than your gut instincts at avoiding road blockages.

The Proof Is in the Saturday Drive

We woke up in Bowling Green and set off bright and early Saturday morning for the remaining drive to Florida. Because it was Saturday, we breezed through every city with only the slightest delay—maybe 10 minutes in Birmingham, Alabama.

Due to appointments and schedules, we only had two days to make this 1,000-mile trip. It would have been much more manageable spread across three days, but we could have simply left on Saturday instead of Friday.

It would have been an entirely different experience.

Your Turn

Do you have hard-learned travel rules of your own? We'd love to hear about them in the comments below. After 15 years on the road, we're always learning new ways to make this lifestyle smoother and more enjoyable.

Remember: Time Your Travels! Your sanity depends on it.

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Currently soaking up the Florida sunshine and recovering from our travel adventure. Sometimes the best lessons come from our biggest mistakes.