We spent the night in a Walmart parking lot. The bus bed is much more comfortable with the new mattress topper on it, but around 4-5am we both started tossing and turning. We got up as soon as we saw daylight.

I’m not entirely sure what the Walmart camping etiquette is, the 6 or 7 other campers in the parking lot were big trailers or motorhomes, which are completely self-contained. We chose to get the camp stove out and make our coffee and breakfast right there on the asphalt.

I heard a weird noise, at first I thought it was a car having trouble starting, but I looked around and saw someone scraping frost off their windshield. Frost. I haven’t seen that since it snowed in Charleston last January.

We debated today’s route. If we took the backroads, we were going through some seriously winding ups and downs. If we took the freeway, the ups would be taller and the downs would be longer, but overall a much smoother route. However, then we’d have to contend with fast cars and semis. We took the freeway, but we switched drivers pretty frequently since the driving was a little more intense and required quite a bit of concentration. We were both a little anxious about crossing the mountains, and I think most of that is because Charleston is incredibly flat so we almost never have to deal with elevation changes. We’re just not used to it.

We discussed yesterday’s failure to make it to the campsite before dark, we had gotten a late start and also stopped at the brewery for a while. We had aimed for a 5:30pm arrival the day before, today we wised up and aimed for a 4:30 arrival! What we didn’t take into account was the time change, which meant the sun would set an hour earlier.

I’d been texting a friend and she mentioned they needed a couple high chairs from IKEA. Knowing IKEAs are only in really urban areas, I’d dismissed that without really considering it. However, after looking at a map I realized there was an IKEA only 15 minutes from our campsite! Plus we’d never gotten them a baby gift for the twins, so it worked out perfectly. So now we are carrying a welder, a wedding dress, and two high chairs. Normal road trip gear.

After IKEA, it was just a short ride to the campground – however, on the way we passed a neighborhood with phenomenal fall colors. I’d been looking for a scenic spot to grab some shots of the bus, and I didn’t even have to ask Kyle to turn around, he was already on it.

The campground we stayed at was a large state park, it would have been fun to stay for a couple days to explore it. We arrived with the last vestiges of daylight, because we forgot about the time change, so I gathered up firewood while Kyle walked up to drop our registration off in the mailbox (offseason, no staff at the office).

Kyle cooked up some dinner and we enjoyed spaghetti by the fire until we ran out of firewood. It was a perfect night for a fire, cold and crisp. As the fire died, we both started working on our laptops, a few drops of rain chased us both into the bus.

We got up with the sun, Kyle cooked up a little breakfast while I posted on social media and took more photos. We had just set up the tripod and I set the timer for a photo when someone pulled up to chat about the bus. Kyle is talking to the guy, just off-camera, in this shot.

We haven’t had a single stop on this trip without someone coming over to chat – although one guy just wanted to tell us that we were leaking a lot of fluid under the bus! Oh yeah, there was almost a quart of gasoline on the ground!

So it looks like that gas smell from two days ago was coming from the cover on the top of the gas tank. The seal on it had been worn, so we tried to make a new one out of some sealing material in Ken’s shop, but it was clearly not sealing at all because when we filled up, gas was spilling out. A previous owner (bless his heart) hacked a hole above the gas tank to access that cover, so it’s a really easy to get to. We’ll have to take a look at it.

We’ve been making our own meals on this trip, besides those amazing burgers the first day. We grabbed sandwich stuff to whip up a quick lunch during stops at rest areas or local parks. Pretty standard road trip tactics for us – it helps keep our costs low. If we were meandering I would make a better attempt to try out the local diners.

Mid afternoon, we arrived in Cadillac, Michigan. Since we were now carrying two high chairs, we first stopped at Bob and Rachel’s to drop those off. It was just a quick stop, and we made plans to hang out later in the week. After that, home to see Mom and Dad!