Saturday, 23 August...Drove the last few hundred miles into the Boston area today. Stopped in New Jersey for gas...did you know that in the state of New Jersey you can't pump your own gas? I hadn't had anyone pump gas for me in 30 years, so we almost didn't know what to do. Christopher told Cathy to make sure the guy atually worked there and wasn't just a bum trying to get a few dollars tip! haha
We got into the RV camp (in the military they are called Famcamps) at Hanscom AFB around 5 o'clock. (I am taking note that the Air Force camp seems to be a lot cleaner and neater than the civilian camps we stayed at on the way here...so I don't know if we just found some really grungy places, or this is the rule on the road...I'll let you know.) Marie and her kids and grandkids, and Ellen and a couple of her kids, came up to visit...we took pictures but Chris left with them and the pictures are on his camera so I don't have any to post. Little Jack (he's about 2) totally loved the RV....he loves big, loud trucks, so he especially loved it when Cathy blew the air horn. It was fun watching him.
We are leaving for Maine in the morning. My sister Ellen belongs to Outdoor World and got us a place to stay up there somewhere near Moody Beach. Ellen says it is only a few minutes from the ocean and I think it is only about a 1/2 hour from Brian's cottage. We will spend 2 weeks up there before returning here to Hanscom for another 2 weeks. Can't wait to see everbody!
22 August 2009
Maiden Voyage 5
Wednesday, 19 August---Relatively uneventful day…we basically drive the length of Tennessee and end up in the mountains at an RV camp that is nice, but crowded. It has also been raining a lot, and we are starting to realize that you can’t trust the GPS machine Hallie gave us when you are in tight quarters. The machine obviously doesn’t realize that we are in a 40’ rig, not a Volkswagen….it took us into some ridiculously tight spaces and turns in those mountains. Christopher had banged his head 3 times today…it seems to be catching on.
Thursday, 20 August---Fine day, evening from hell! Drove from Knoxville, TN to some small town in Virginia. Most of the day it was raining off and on, but the view was pretty, so it was alright. We thought we were starting to get the hang of it, so we pre-planned where we would stay for the night, called ahead to make sure they had a spot for us available, and checked to see what time we had to be there by. We were actually going to arrive early for the 1st time, we figured about 5 or 5:30 we would be totally set up, get a decent meal, and just chill out for the night. Most nights we have been setting up around 8-9 PM, so we were looking forward to having an early night. It just wasn’t meant to be. The GPS machine got us again, and this time it meant to keep us! What happened was that we missed a turn, so the GPS had to recalculate, and when it did, it decided to take us 6-8 miles thru the woods. We were on a winding dirt road in a 40’ long, 96” wide RV. This ever-shrinking road could not have been any wider than
90”, and we have the scratches from the tree limbs on our RV to prove it. At one point we came to what looked like a hand-made concrete bridge that had a warning sign not to exceed 5 tons…as I recall, that is 10,000 pounds, and our RV weighs 30,000 pounds. My stomach is still in a knot just thinking about it. When we finally broke thru to civilization again, the RV staff gave us a sight that we couldn’t use our air conditioners and that we had to back into, as opposed to a pull-thru like they promised. So we initially had to un-hitch our car, and then re-hitch it when we realized we weren’t staying. Once we left, we were probably at least 300 yards down the road and about to enter the interstate when we realized the car still had the emergency brake on…so we stopped to fix that…the smell of burning rubber was horrendous…I just hope we didn’t totally mess up the car. In the end, we ended up probably 20 miles away, again in a Walmart parking lot. And it was 9:30 PM, and we were all exhausted. The stress of this “easy living” is killing us!!!
Friday, 21 August---Thru Virginia and into Pennsylvania today, weather still rainy off and on. As I am typing this it is almost 6:30 PM, and we have just lucked out at finding the Tri-state RV Park in PA. Although this is the earliest we have parked for the night, we really need to plan better once we get to the Boston area.
Thursday, 20 August---Fine day, evening from hell! Drove from Knoxville, TN to some small town in Virginia. Most of the day it was raining off and on, but the view was pretty, so it was alright. We thought we were starting to get the hang of it, so we pre-planned where we would stay for the night, called ahead to make sure they had a spot for us available, and checked to see what time we had to be there by. We were actually going to arrive early for the 1st time, we figured about 5 or 5:30 we would be totally set up, get a decent meal, and just chill out for the night. Most nights we have been setting up around 8-9 PM, so we were looking forward to having an early night. It just wasn’t meant to be. The GPS machine got us again, and this time it meant to keep us! What happened was that we missed a turn, so the GPS had to recalculate, and when it did, it decided to take us 6-8 miles thru the woods. We were on a winding dirt road in a 40’ long, 96” wide RV. This ever-shrinking road could not have been any wider than
90”, and we have the scratches from the tree limbs on our RV to prove it. At one point we came to what looked like a hand-made concrete bridge that had a warning sign not to exceed 5 tons…as I recall, that is 10,000 pounds, and our RV weighs 30,000 pounds. My stomach is still in a knot just thinking about it. When we finally broke thru to civilization again, the RV staff gave us a sight that we couldn’t use our air conditioners and that we had to back into, as opposed to a pull-thru like they promised. So we initially had to un-hitch our car, and then re-hitch it when we realized we weren’t staying. Once we left, we were probably at least 300 yards down the road and about to enter the interstate when we realized the car still had the emergency brake on…so we stopped to fix that…the smell of burning rubber was horrendous…I just hope we didn’t totally mess up the car. In the end, we ended up probably 20 miles away, again in a Walmart parking lot. And it was 9:30 PM, and we were all exhausted. The stress of this “easy living” is killing us!!!
Friday, 21 August---Thru Virginia and into Pennsylvania today, weather still rainy off and on. As I am typing this it is almost 6:30 PM, and we have just lucked out at finding the Tri-state RV Park in PA. Although this is the earliest we have parked for the night, we really need to plan better once we get to the Boston area.
Maiden Voyage 4
Tuesday, 18 August---Up early again, but still it is after 10 AM when we hit the road. Cathy and I make some adjustments to how we had the bikes on the rack, and they are more secure this time. We actually make it thru Arkansas and into Tennessee today. In Arkansas we stopped a little in the town of Hope, which we all know is the birthplace of Bill Clinton. We went to his boyhood home…I don’t think the town really promotes this place. (The US flag outside the house was held in the post hole by silver electric tape.) The gentleman in the visitor center told me that they had had 61000 people visit since it opened…in 1999! In Tennessee, we actually stayed in an RV park on Elvis Presley Blvd…less than a half mile from Graceland. By the time we got there it was late and everything was closed, but I was just happy to be there. We will go back another time when we have more time to do it right! We notice while we are at the RV park that someone stole the extension to our sewer hose, so they must have stolen it back in New Braunfels, or at Walmart…is nothing sacred!? Cathy is also complaining a lot because she keeps banging her head, both inside and outside the RV…at least a dozen times already.
Our Maiden Voyage 3
Monday, 17 August---this is it….we are all up early, packed and ready to go, but we still had to go to the cable company, the Verizon store, the bank, and back to Hallie’s house before we can truly consider ourselves “on the road”. It is 1 PM before that happens, and the stress is taking its toll. We had hoped to do around 400 miles a day, but right from the get-go we are exhausted, and only go about 275 miles the 1st day…we are not even out of Texas yet. Actually we were just north of Dallas, in Mt Pleasant, TX. I forgot to mention: about an hour into our 1st day’s trip, Jabba threw up in the RV…I guess she was stressed too! Anyway, this was a live and learn situation: we didn’t know that most RV camps actually close early in the evening, and by the time we decided we had to stop, we couldn’t find a place to go to…so we ended the evening of our maiden voyage at the good ol’ Walmart parking lot. I didn’t sleep well that evening at all. Between the noise of the generator, which seemed particularly loud that night, and my concern that our bikes may be stolen from the rack on the back of the car, I was pretty stressed and just couldn’t stay asleep.
Our Maiden Voyage 2
We sold the truck our on Saturday (talk about the last minute, but thank God for Craig’s List), and did a lot of running around both Saturday and Sunday…getting ready to take off on Monday. On Sunday afternoon we went to Hallie’s house to pick up some stuff she was holding for me, and to hook up our bikes to the back of the car with the bike rack she gave us. It doesn’t really look that secure, but Hallie assured us she thought the same thing when she used it, so we must trust her (haha). The 2 nights we did spend in the RV park were really uneventful, like I said before, just learning about the different hook-ups…we were so tired by the time we got home each night, we basically went straight to bed.
Our Maiden Voyage
So this is my 2nd attempt to type on the blog my friend Barb made up for us. If this doesn’t work, it will be back to the regular e-mail. In the meantime, these entries will take us up-to-date for the week since we sold the house and then hit the road. From here on there will only be one or two entries a week, I guess. I am splitting these up because I am trying to attach pictures, and this seems the easiest way for me to do it right now. So, here goes!
We sold our house on Friday, August 14, exactly one week ago. The day before, we had dropped off our car and our RV in New Braunfels at Camping World, so that they could put a tow bar on the car and outfit the RV to tow it. So after we sold the house, we thought we would be spending that night at an RV camp in New Braunfels, sorta getting used to the RV and learning somewhat how to hook up the sewer, electric, water and cable Instead, we ended up spending Friday night in the Camping World parking lot, because by the time we got there to pick it up, there was no one working that could brief us on how to operate the new towing stuff safely. (This may have been my 1st clue that the next few days would have a few bumps along the way.)
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