New England Trip

The last 200 miles from Statesville, NC to Hartwell was an easy drive.  We got home about 12:30 PM and began the process of unpacking and cleaning the motor home.

The total miles traveled, not counting local trips with the Acura and ferry miles was 4,179.  Excluding the 284 miles from our last fill-up in Virginia to home, we used 487 gallons of gas at an average cost of $4.23 per gallon for a total gas cost of $2,059.  Our overall miles per gallon was 7.99.  While this was expensive, round trip airfare to Nova Scotia for the two of us could cost about $2,600.  Travel by car would have only cost about $800 in gas but meals and hotel rooms would have been much more expensive – and we would have had to board our cat and dog for a month (not an option). 

Steve went to his doctor in Hartwell this afternoon and the tentative diagnosis was Legionnaires Disease – most likely contracted on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.  We went to a somewhat incomprehensible attraction called “Niagara’s Fury – The Creation of the Falls” that included man-made mist/fog in a dark room filled with people – a prime means of bacteria growth and transmission.  The doctor prescribed a 5 day course of antibiotics.  It seems that Steve has been walking around with a case of pneumonia for the last month.

We hope you enjoyed our blog.  We will now look for some way to save it off line for our own memories.

Steve and Margaret

This morning in the campground we hooked up the Acura for towing, and had a visit from another camper interested in the equipment for towing and asking questions.  We spent a few minutes explaining the rig to him.  He and his wife and son were camping in one of the KOA cabins, but were interested in buying an RV and traveling to some of the places we had been, especially Nova Scotia.

We set out around 9:00 a.m., and had a wonderful drive through the valley, with mountains on both sides of the highway.   We stopped at a rest area to fix sandwiches for lunch, and enjoyed looking at some very cute puppies.  Toward the end of the drive there were some interesting passages where we had to use low gear on some steep downgrades, and we landed in Statesville about mid-afternoon at the KOA.  We had hoped to top off our propane tank here, but the woman at the registration desk could not leave the desk, and when she tried to call the person who could fill our tank, the phone number had been disconnected.  Traveling does have its challenges.

We will get an early start tomorrow, to be sure to make Steve’s 4:00 appointment with Dr. Stone tomorrow afternoon in Hartwell.  We are eager to find out what weird disease he is battling, and to get some medication for it if possible.

We took a scenic drive south through the valley and entered the Shenandoah National Park at its southern entrance station, Rockfish Gap, where the Skyline Drive travels north up the ridge, and the Blue Ridge Parkway heads south.  The National Park consists of the Skyline Drive (which travels 105 miles along a continuous ridge) and the slopes on either side of the ridge.  The elevation ranges from 2,500 feet to about 3,200 feet.  Every mile or so, there is an overlook with great views.  Unfortunately, today was hazy so we could not see far into the distance. 

The speed limit on the drive is 35 mph so it is hard to travel the full distance.  There are only four entrance stations at the following mile markers: 0 (northern end at Front Royal), 30, 65, and 105 (southern end at Rockfish Gap).  Today we only covered 40 miles to Swift Run Gap but it took 3 hours counting frequent overlook stops and a stop for lunch.

A couple of pictures from the drive follow:

 

We looked at the campground at Loft Mountain, which was only 25% full.  There were some large class A motor homes as well as large 5^th wheel campers in the campground, so it looked like we could fit in as well.  The campground has no hookups at the individual sites, but there is water and a dump station available along with a bathhouse that one would have a short drive to.   We may come back and use the campground in the spring or fall when air conditioning would not be needed as much as it is now.  Temperatures today in the area were in the high 80’s to low 90’s.  Although we have experienced higher than usual temperatures at various locations throughout the trip, we felt like we were back to the hot South today.

Driving back from the Skyline Drive to our campsite, we took Highway 340 North to New Market, and enjoyed seeing beautiful farms in the valley between the Shenandoah National Park and the George Washington National Forest; then doubled back south down I-81 to the campground about halfway between New Market and Harrisonburg.  We always enjoy taking local scenic routes near the places where we camp, and the scenic routes here were really special.  Several times we saw breathtaking views of the mountains across the valley, and wished we could have captured the view in pictures, but the beautiful wide expanse of mountains and sky just can’t be captured in a photo.

For dinner, we had planned to go out, but we were tired enough to try the convection microwave feature on some frozen fish fillets for a quick supper.  The convection microwave worked really well.  We have a lot to learn about how to use it for various kinds of cooking, but tonight’s experience was a pleasant surprise.

Tomorrow we have a long drive to Statesville, NC, where we will have just a one-night stay.  We called Steve’s doctor in Hartwell for an appointment to figure out what is causing his persistent cough, stiff neck and headaches, and were able to get an appointment on Thursday afternoon at 4:00 (Doc. doesn’t work on Friday).  That means we will have a very early start from Statesville on Thursday to make it to Hartwell in time.  It will be good to find out what’s causing all this trouble for Steve and hopefully get some medicine to fix it.

It has been a good trip, with lots of wonderful experiences.  We wish that Steve had not felt so bad so much of the time, and would like to come back to many of the places we visited to enjoy them again.

As always, it will be good to be home.

Today’s drive was mostly easy and short, bringing us into Virginia early enough for a lunch stop at the Welcome Center where we got directions to a scenic drive along US Hwy 211 and a visit to Luray Caverns.  At the Caverns, we left Pumpkin and Wicket in the motor home in the parking lot, with the vents open and fans blowing, while we took a guided tour of the caverns.  We had a hard time hearing the Munchkin tour guide’s explanations over the voices of babies and young children along for the tour, but gathered some interesting information about the stalagmites and stalactites.  The caverns are beautiful, and must have been really spectacular to the explorers who discovered them by candlelight without all the electric lights and brick-paved walkways that had been provided for our enjoyment. 

Photos were a challenge in the dim light with spotlights placed on the scenic highlights.  Focus was difficult since the camera was handheld at 1/5 second shutter speed and the lens was wide open.  If we used the flash, the colors washed out.  The best picture follows.

 

We made it to our KOA campsite around 6:30 p.m., and fixed a dinner of leftover spaghetti in the motor home.  We have found that some very simple dinners, frozen or leftovers, that can be prepared easily, really help to make the travel days easier.  We have found that KOAs generally provide some minimum level of quality.  Some of the independent campgrounds permit permanent residents in old campers and provide more of a “trailer park” ambiance.  While you will find some semi-permanent trailer installations in some KOAs, these are “seasonal” arrangements and the owners have other homes.

Tomorrow we will explore the Shenandoah Valley.

Today was a long travel day from North Stonington, Connecticut to Abingdon, Maryland (just off I-95 about 30 miles north of Baltimore).  We had dreaded this day because it took us down I-95 through or near New London, CT.; New Haven, CT.; Stamford, CT.; New York City; Newark, NJ; Philadelphia, PA; and Wilmington, DE. 

We had planned the day so that it fell on a Sunday hoping for little traffic.  During a rainy day in North Stonington, we researched our planned route and found that RVs with large propane tanks such as ours are not allowed on the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River, so we planned an alternate route over the Tappan Zee Bridge farther north.  We left the campground about 30 minutes later than planned because of a downpour.  It rained on and off all the way through New Jersey, but the traffic flowed smoothly, and there were no significant traffic problems.  The Tappan Zee Bridge from New York into New Jersey was beautiful, though a bit narrow, as is almost everything from our perspective.  About 15 miles into New Jersey, we picked up the Garden State Parkway south to the New Jersey Turnpike (. . . they’ve all come to look for America . . .. ) and on to I-95 south toward Philadelphia.  We skirted the west side of Philadelphia to cross the Delaware River just south of Wilmington and into Maryland.  To our surprise, after an easy drive around and through New York City and Philadelphia, we came to a crummy halt at the Delaware border. 

 First we had to line up to pay a toll over the bridge into Delaware.  Then we had to wait in bumper-to-bumper traffic to pay more tolls on the JFK Memorial Highway through Delaware into Maryland.  The tolls were around $8.00 for our four axles, but the worst of the drive was the long delay of traffic lines feeding multiple lanes of traffic from I-95, I-295 and other feeder roads into I-95 South to Baltimore, MD.  We spent an hour getting through about 25 miles of Delaware after covering well over 100 miles from Connecticut to New York, and another 150 miles through New Jersey to Delaware.  It seems that the Delaware highways are not well designed to absorb the huge traffic flow from New York and New Jersey, and the tollbooths for the Delaware Bridge and the Delaware highways beyond it are totally inadequate for the traffic volume.  Of course, we were traveling on Sunday, and there were surely lots of people coming home from the New Jersey shore and other points east on Sunday afternoon.  Probably people have the same complaints about the traffic through Atlanta.  Anyway, if we come this way again, we will plan to avoid Delaware.

 According to Google Maps, Hartwell to Boston via I-95 through Delaware is 1,004 miles.  Taking I-81 through Pennsylvania and avoiding Delaware is 1,015 miles.  Delaware has now joined Louisiana on our list of states to avoid.

 We arrived at the campground in Maryland around 5 p.m., and found that our campsite had a nice view of a finger of the Chesapeake Bay.  It had rained heavily during the day before we arrived, and there was a lot of black mud throughout the campground.  There was not much good area for walking dogs, but Wicket made do, and also met another Shih Tzu with the same coloring, female, about three months younger.  We enjoyed a night there, then set out for Virginia, leaving mid-morning to miss the Monday morning traffic through Baltimore and Washington, D.C.