K. D. Lunneborg - The Travel Times

January 1, 2024

Once upon a time… A club died. You might have expected me to dive into the mythical beginnings of a road trip. But no. Rather, I find it more important at the moment to detail the death of a club. Odd, right? But it gets your attention. You see, this club had a newspaper. And it was printed on newsprint paper, too! But the entire weekly paper was written by the club’s president, and my good friend, A. C. McCall. I quite enjoyed reading that newspaper, and Sunday mornings were the highlight of my week, when I was able to get the newspaper from Asher. But eventually, it started growing sporadic, and thoughts of discontinuing it were being thunked. I would have none of this! So, I begun an article series which I called “The Travel Times.” This series outlined a large road-schooling trip that me and my family took back in 2021. Most of these articles were quite short, but since the death of that club, I have now edited and expanded them. With that, I hope you enjoy the Travel Times – Remastered!

To start out with, I will here give an account of our adventures before we started the trip. My grandma owned a 27 foot fifth-wheel, and kept it at our friend’s ranch in central Florida. The plan was to use that on our trip. Yes, it needed some work, but we could go down early and fix it up before we left. Upon arriving in Florida, however, we learned that it needed more than “some work.” Everything from the toilet to the tires was converted away from our purposes – giving the camper the abilities of a park-model. When it was apparent that we could not fix it and leave for our trip in time (reservations for some of the campgrounds were hard to come by), we decided to go shopping; camper shopping. Bumper-pulls and truck-bed-campers were a no go. Motor homes were too expensive, and didn’t give us what we wanted. So, a fifth-wheel it was. We looked, and looked, and looked, at so many different camper dealerships it was unbelievable. However, we eventually decided on a camper from Lazy Days. “Lazy Days,” we joked, while waiting to fill out papers, “that is, until you actually want to buy a camper from us.”

The camper we chose was a 40 foot Sprinter. It has four slide-outs. Two on either side in the back for the kitchen/living room, one in the middle on the port side, which we used as an office for my dad. Above this room there was a loft which me and my siblings occupied on the trip. Just fore of the office, bunk, and entrance (located on the starboard) the restroom was located. At the very front of the camper was my dad and mom’s bedroom, which had a slide out on the port side.

For a while we stayed at Peace River Campground in Zolfo Springs, Florida. This campground had especially nice hiking and biking trails, which I often rode. My mom and my siblings loved to go down to the freshwater river that lined one end of the campground and sift the riverbed for mammal fossils, fossilized shark’s teeth, stingray barbs, and alligator scutes (scales). About an hour downstream from the campground, someone found a 50-pound mammoth femur. The campground also had a pool, for those who didn’t want to chance the river. Alligators are up and down every river, and in every pond, in Florida. And that is how and where our trip began. The time was May of twenty-twenty-one, and the place of origin was Sebring, Florida. From there, we headed up and over, towards Tennessee.