2,500 Miles in 10 Days: Our RV Road Trip from California to South Texas

Sometimes RV travel is slow.

You park somewhere for a few weeks, explore on the weekends, find a local gym, learn where the grocery store is, and start to feel like you actually live there.

This was not one of those trips.

We needed to get from the Sequoia area of California to South Padre Island, Texas. Along the way, we had an orthodontist appointment in San Diego, two national parks we wanted to visit, and roughly 2,500 miles to cover.

So we did what any reasonable full-time RV family would do.

We crammed it into about 10 days.

By the time we reached South Padre Island, we’d dealt with 118-degree temperatures, a 105-degree RV, electrical problems, campground disappointments, closed attractions, broken pieces of our RV, and a GPS that routed our fifth wheel down a private road ending at a locked gate.

We also walked through Petrified Forest, trained jiu-jitsu under a coral belt in Albuquerque, explored Carlsbad Caverns, watched bats fly beneath a full moon, listened to our first real thunderstorm in what felt like years, and somehow made it all the way to the Gulf of Mexico in one piece.

It was exhausting.

It was also a pretty incredible 10 days.

Quick Links

Sequoia to San Diego

We started this trip at Sequoia Resort & RV Park near Badger, California, after spending several days exploring Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

Early Thursday morning, we packed up and headed south.

Our first destination was Thousand Trails Pio Pico in Jamul, outside San Diego.

This wasn’t really a sightseeing stop. Our girls are doing Invisalign through their orthodontist in San Diego, and one of the realities of traveling full-time is that regular life doesn’t stop just because you move around the country.

You still have dentist appointments.

You just occasionally have to tow your house hundreds of miles to get to them.

The drive took us around four hours with normal stops, and we settled into Pio Pico for two nights.

Thousand Trails Pio Pico & Our San Diego Detour

Friday morning, we woke up and drove into San Diego for the girls’ orthodontist appointment.

Except when we arrived, our orthodontist wasn’t there.

There had been a scheduling mistake at the office, and somehow our appointment hadn’t made it onto his schedule.

I was not thrilled.

We had specifically routed ourselves through San Diego for this appointment, we were leaving the next morning, and full-time RV travel doesn’t exactly give us the flexibility to just come back next Tuesday.

We spent the day running errands around San Diego and eventually got a phone call from the office. Our orthodontist was incredibly apologetic and offered to meet us at 7 PM that night.

The office was about an hour from Pio Pico, so back to San Diego we went.

The girls had their expanders removed and ordered another six months of Invisalign retainers.

Was it a pain?

Absolutely.

But Phillips Orthodontics has been incredibly accommodating of our traveling lifestyle, and once my initial frustration wore off, I had to remind myself that we’re all human. People make mistakes.

The important part was that he was willing to come in that evening and make it right, and we were able to get everything done before pulling out Saturday morning.

And pull out we did.

Very early.

Because we were about to cross the desert. In August.

San Diego to Phoenix: 118 Degrees

There are probably better months to tow an RV through Yuma and Phoenix.

We drove east through Yuma and toward Phoenix as the temperature climbed.

At one point, the truck read 118 degrees.

When we finally reached our campground, the inside of the RV was around 105 degrees.

Our three A/C units were fighting for their lives. The refrigerator was struggling. Willie couldn’t comfortably spend much time outside because everything was so hot.

We even had cans of sparkling water left under the shade of our rv popping from the heat.

I’ve experienced plenty of hot weather. We’re from Florida.

This was different.

It was the kind of heat where you’re not really looking for something fun to do. You’re looking for somewhere with air-conditioning or water and trying to keep everyone—including the dog—safe.

Fortunately, our campground delivered on the water part.

Eagle View RV Resort

We stayed at Eagle View RV Resort on the east side of the Phoenix area near Fountain Hills.

This was one of the biggest campground surprises of the trip.

We paid around $50 for the night and had a large concrete site with 50-amp full hookups.

The campground was clean and well maintained, with a nice office area, grass, bathrooms, a pool and a hot tub.

We also had access to the larger pool area across the way at the neighboring resort/casino, which had cabanas, food and more space for the kids to swim.

We didn’t eat there, but we definitely used the pool.

After towing through 118-degree heat and opening an RV that felt like an oven, watching the kids splash around while we cooled off was exactly what we needed.

For around $50, Eagle View was easily one of the best-value overnight stops of the trip.

We would stay there again.

Preferably when Arizona isn’t actively trying to cook us.

Phoenix to Petrified Forest

The next morning, we were very happy to leave Phoenix behind and head north toward Holbrook.

We arrived at Sun Valley RV Resort around 11:30 AM.

Our plan was simple: hook up, eat lunch and head into Petrified Forest National Park.

Our RV once again had other ideas.

We couldn’t run all three A/C units without tripping the breaker.

We spent some time trying to figure it out before eventually accepting that we weren’t going to solve the problem right then. We reduced our electrical use, ate lunch and headed for the park.

We reached Petrified Forest around 1:30 PM.

We entered from the south and worked our way north, which allowed us to explore the park without having to backtrack toward our campground.

And Petrified Forest completely surprised me.

We explored Rainbow Forest Museum, Giant Logs, Crystal Forest and Blue Mesa, stopped at the Route 66 area and finished near Painted Desert Inn.

The kids completed their Junior Ranger books, we learned far more about petrified wood and geology than I expected, and Blue Mesa ended up being one of my favorite landscapes of the trip.

We were finished around 4:30 PM.

Only about three hours—and we felt like we’d experienced a surprising amount of the park.

Petrified Forest isn’t somewhere I think you need to spend a week, but I absolutely think it’s worth stopping for if your route brings you anywhere nearby.

Holbrook to Albuquerque

The next morning we packed up again and headed east toward Albuquerque.

At this point, we’d fallen into the rhythm of this trip:

Drive.

Hook up.

Do something.

Sleep.

Repeat.

We stayed at Enchanted Trails RV Park, and after getting settled we realized we had enough time left in the day to do something our kids genuinely love doing when we travel:

Find somewhere to train.

Training in Albuquerque

Our first stop was The War Room.

Forest took one class, and the girls trained together in another. Both classes had brown-belt coaches, there were plenty of kids on the mats, and everyone was very kind to us.

For our girls, though, the classes leaned more beginner than what they currently need.

So later we headed to Carlson Gracie Coyote.

That experience was completely different.

The girls joined the gray-belt-and-above advanced class taught by Daniel Souza, a coral belt.

It was their first time ever training under a coral belt.

The facility itself was enormous, with a full gym upstairs containing seemingly every piece of workout equipment you could imagine. More importantly, the girls found good, tough training partners and had an excellent class.

Everyone was incredibly welcoming to our family.

Both gyms generously allowed our kids to train for free.

One of my favorite things about traveling full-time has been watching our kids walk into unfamiliar rooms all over the country, meet new coaches and partners, and simply get to work.

Albuquerque ended up being a memorable training stop that wasn’t even really part of the original travel plan.

Enchanted Trails RV Park

Enchanted Trails was a perfectly decent overnight campground.

We had a large pull-through site that made getting in and out easy with our setup.

The campground had some fun personality, too, with antique cars and vintage RVs around the property.

It was very exposed, though, without much shade, and there was quite a bit of road noise from the nearby highway.

There wasn’t a dog park.

There was a pool, although it was relatively small and shallow. The kids could have used it, but we spent our extra time training and really only returned to the campground to sleep.

For what we needed—a convenient overnight stop with a big pull-through—it worked.

Albuquerque to Carlsbad

We got out of Albuquerque a little later than planned the next morning and headed south toward Carlsbad.

We were staying two nights at Carlsbad RV Park, somewhere we’d actually stayed before.

A year earlier, we’d come to Carlsbad intending to visit Carlsbad Caverns.

And the caverns were closed due to the government shutdown.

So this was attempt number two.

Carlsbad RV Park itself isn’t one of our favorite campgrounds. It’s next to the highway and can be loud. It has an indoor pool, but during this visit the pool was closed because it had been over-chlorinated.

Still, it works as a practical place to stay while visiting the caverns.

And after waiting a year, we were finally going to see them.

Mostly.

Because naturally, the Natural Entrance was closed during our visit.

At this point, Carlsbad Caverns seemed to have something personal against us.

Carlsbad Caverns

We left the campground around 9:15 AM and reached the visitor center at approximately 9:45.

There was essentially no line.

Because the Natural Entrance was closed, we took the elevator directly underground and walked the 1.25-mile Big Room Trail.

It was incredible.

We’ve visited quite a few caves and caverns around the country, and our family loves them—as long as we’re not crawling through tiny holes.

I’m also claustrophobic, so giant cave rooms are very much my preferred variety.

Carlsbad delivered.

We saw stalactites, stalagmites, draperies, cave popcorn, the Bottomless Pit and formation after formation as we slowly made our way around the Big Room.

The 1.25 miles took us around an hour to an hour and a half because you don’t walk through a cave the same way you’d walk 1.25 miles around your neighborhood. We were constantly stopping to look at things.

Even better, we encountered almost no one.

It felt like we had huge sections of the cavern to ourselves.

Afterward, the kids completed their Junior Ranger books, and I discovered that adults could complete a ranger booklet too. I did mine and earned a little metal pin.

Then we discovered there was a separate Bat Junior Ranger program.

So naturally, we weren’t finished.

Watching the Bats Under a Full Moon

We returned that evening for the Bat Flight Program.

The ranger had already warned us that conditions weren’t ideal. It had been dry, many bats had moved elsewhere, and the extreme heat could affect when they emerged.

We were also late.

We’d planned to leave around 6:45, but the girls had made a little friend at the campground who was deaf, and it took us longer than expected to get her back to her RV before we could leave.

We arrived around 7:20 PM.

Thankfully, the kids still had time to turn in their Bat Junior Ranger books and earn their badges.

Then we waited.

At first, there were only a few bats.

Then a trickle.

Then groups.

We never got the enormous tornado of bats Carlsbad can sometimes produce, but there were several larger bursts and probably a few hundred bats altogether.

And above us was this enormous, beautiful full moon.

Sitting there, I had one of those moments when the entire week suddenly felt different.

Because this trip had not gone perfectly.

Not even close.

We’d had an orthodontist scheduling mess. Extreme heat. Electrical problems. Closed pools. Closed entrances. Long driving days. And there were still hundreds of miles ahead of us.

But it was Wednesday night.

We were sitting outside Carlsbad Caverns with our kids, watching bats fly into the night underneath a full moon.

They’d spent the week learning about petrified trees, geology, caves and bats. They’d trained jiu-jitsu in Albuquerque. They’d met people they never would have met if we’d stayed home.

This is school.

This is family time.

This is our life.

Full-time travel doesn’t mean we don’t have problems.

We absolutely do.

Sometimes a lot of them in a very short period of time.

But sitting there that night, I remember thinking:

I’d rather have my problems on the road.

Carlsbad to Medina Lake

Thursday morning, we packed everything up again and headed into Texas toward Thousand Trails Medina Lake.

And then something incredible happened.

It rained.

Actual rain.

After spending so much time traveling through the dry West, I honestly couldn’t remember the last time we’d experienced a real thunderstorm.

We heard thunder.

We saw lightning.

Everything looked greener than I remembered.

It was wonderful.

After the rain stopped, we headed to the campground pool around sunset.

Medina Lake has a large pool with cabanas and a hot tub. The kids practiced their dives and splashed around while Eli and I sat in the hot tub—even though Texas was still arguably too hot to justify voluntarily sitting in hotter water.

The campground also has a huge herd of deer that wander around the property. They’re very accustomed to people because campers feed them, so you’ll regularly see them hanging around the sites.

It felt like a peaceful ending to a very long week.

Obviously that couldn’t last.

Because then we noticed pieces of our RV were broken.

The Garmin Incident

Somewhere along this journey, a roof vent had broken off.

There was a small branch stuck in the roof.

Part of the protective shell around our awning had also broken.

Putting roughly 2,500 miles on an RV setup in such a short amount of time, as it turns out, may not be particularly gentle on it.

And we had a pretty good suspect for at least some of the damage.

On our way to Medina Lake, we missed a turn.

We use a Garmin truck/RV GPS specifically because we’re towing a very large fifth wheel and want routing appropriate for our setup.

Garmin recalculated our route.

And sent us down a private road.

Once we’d gotten far enough down it, we couldn’t turn around.

So we kept going.

We slowly maneuvered around tractors, equipment and other things sitting along the road, trying desperately not to hit anything.

Eventually, we reached the place where Garmin believed we could reconnect with the main road.

There was a gate.

It was locked.

With a chain.

We were stuck.

We couldn’t turn our setup around.

At one point, we were seriously considering cutting the chain and leaving cash to replace it because we genuinely didn’t know how else we were going to get out.

Thankfully, the property owner eventually appeared.

And he could not have been nicer.

He helped us get through and back onto the road, turning what could have been a truly awful situation into another bizarre RV travel story.

But I was mad at Garmin.

Avoiding situations exactly like this is the entire reason we use a truck-specific GPS!

Thousand Trails Medina Lake

We spent Friday using Medina Lake as our base while we ran errands in San Antonio.

And honestly, that’s another part of full-time travel that doesn’t make the highlight reel very often.

Not every day is a national park.

Sometimes you need groceries.

Sometimes you need supplies.

Sometimes you’ve been dragging your house across the Southwest for a week and everyone needs a day where nothing educational, scenic or Instagram-worthy happens.

So we ran our errands, came back and prepared for one final travel day.

Finally Making It to South Padre Island

Saturday morning, we left Medina Lake and headed south.

After California, Arizona, New Mexico and a very large portion of Texas, we finally made it to South Padre Island.

And that is where this trip ends.

South Padre became its own adventure, but for the first time in what felt like forever, we were going to park the RV and not move it for seven entire days.

After approximately 2,500 miles, I was very ready for that.

Final Verdict

Would I recommend moving an RV roughly 2,500 miles in 10 days for fun?

Probably not.

This wasn’t our normal travel pace. It was a relocation trip—we needed to get from California to South Texas, and we decided to make the most of the route rather than simply driving interstate after interstate until we arrived.

And I’m really glad we did.

Petrified Forest turned out to be considerably better than I expected. The girls got an incredible training opportunity in Albuquerque. We finally made it underground at Carlsbad Caverns after missing it the year before. We watched bats fly beneath a full moon. We experienced an actual Texas thunderstorm. And somehow, despite everything, we rolled into South Padre Island together.

There were also plenty of moments when this trip was simply hard.

The heat alone made parts of it miserable. Moving that frequently was tough on the RV. We had electrical issues, things broke, plans changed and there were several days when we barely had time to settle before we were packing everything up again.

I wouldn’t want to travel this way all the time.

One of the reasons we live this lifestyle is so that we don’t have to rush through America.

But sometimes you need to cover miles.

And if you do, I think this trip reinforced something we’ve learned over and over again: you don’t have to choose between a travel day and an adventure.

Sometimes you only have three hours for a national park.

Sometimes you have one free evening in Albuquerque.

Sometimes the bats aren’t putting on their best show.

Go anyway.

Because life on the road isn’t perfect.

It’s still life.

There are appointments, errands, broken things, wrong turns and days when everyone is tired.

But there are also nights when you find yourself sitting under a full moon with your family watching bats fly out of a cave.

And given the choice, I think I’d still rather have my problems on the road.

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Want to explore two of the national parks we visited along this route?

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