RV Driving School --- Day Two -- First Potluck

Today it was my turn to take the wheel first. I backed into the hitch and Jim did all the connecting and the watching. We connected first time with just a small snap, not the usual ker-chunk that we normally do. It was fast and easy. I hope we do that Wednesday morning when we leave the park.

We learned a LOT today! First we did more radius turns and square turns at the area we did yesterday with roads but no housing. I went on the highway and had to go around construction. When Jim took the wheel he went through downtown Ocala with lots of traffic.

We both drove down two lane highways watching for the "no shoulder" areas. Doing curves and winding around the countryside. This is horse country so there's plenty of horse farms. There was also some flooding from the recent past rains.




























Then we went back to our no housing neighborhood to learn how to back into campgrounds. Our 'RV site' was really a dead end road. We learned and practiced 4 different methods of backing into an RV site. We did a panic stop from 20 mpg, to know how it feels and how long it takes to stop. It also verified that our electronic trailer brake is set up right. We did a lot of backing up, both on straightaways and curves.

The truck has quite a few pieces of red tape for reference points. We're going to get small reflectors to place on the rig instead of the tape until we learn it well. We even learned how to turn around to go the opposite direction. Sort of a modified '3-point turn.' Quite interesting. We're feeling a lot better about driving, but we still need a lot more practice.



















Jim took my picture as I was backing into the 'campground'. We learned so much and now we have to practice it, and remember the key is GO SLOW. As the instructor said, people may get mad, but we'll never see them again. It's better than hitting them. Florida drivers are used to the horse trailers and RV's, so they usually give you room.










We got back to our spot in the park about 3:30. We said goodbye to Warner, he gave us a form verifying completion of our training. We'll get a formal completion certificate in the mail. I'd rather have him around awhile but he said we'll do fine and just have fun in our future travels.

At 5:30 we went to our first potluck dinner. There were only a few people but we met another full timer lady with her daughter. We also met a couple from Maine that's here for the winter and comes to this park every year. It's neat and we'll enjoy meeting up with more people as we go along. There's a lot more people out along the roads in the park tonight because the temps are in the high 70's and no wind. What a life!