New England Trip

At one of our gas stops today we checked mileage, and found we had gotten 9 mpg from Pittsburgh, PA to Albany, NY. Most of that driving was without hills, and we know we’ve gotten lower mpg in West Virginia and in some of the driving through the Adirondacks today. However, we were impressed that the motor home is getting about the same mileage we got with the Expedition pulling the trailer on the trip to the west coast.

We had a long day today, about 360 miles from Niagara Falls via Albany, NY to South Hero, Vermont on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain. The route was longer than the crow flies, but we couldn’t cross the Adirondacks on back roads with the motor home. We had a toll road all the way across New York State, and the highway from Albany north went through the public/private Adirondack Park, so we enjoyed a beautiful drive with limited access, no advertising, and many rest areas. The scenery was wonderful – beautiful vistas of mountains and valleys, and occasionally lakes. It was like being on the set of On Golden Pond or Dirty Dancing.

With a big rig, there are always adventures. Looking for a Wal-Mart (pharmacy with a big parking lot for a motor home), we stumbled into Saratoga, and it was only when we saw the Horse Crossing signs, and the racetrack just beside the road, that we realized where we were. We were looking for some cold medicine for Steve, who has caught the epizudics (what Margaret’s father used to call it) somewhere along the way. Our GPS completely failed us, directing us through Saratoga and expecting us to find the Wal-Mart in a practice track at the Saratoga racetrack.

Eventually, from a "The Next Exit" book we also carry, we figured out that the Wal-Mart was on the opposite side of the interstate. It was a reminder that, as good as electronics can be, a sailor should always take sightings with a sextant and keep a dead reckoning log, and not rely on a GPS, and especially not on a Wal-Mart. We got the cold medicine at a truck stop.

We passed an exit to Lake Placid, where the US Olympic Team keeps a training facility. The Lake Placid Olympics seem like just yesterday, but they were in 1980.

Our route took us north to Plattsburgh, NY, where we caught a ferry across Lake Champlain to Vermont. It was fun to squeeze the motor home, towing the Acura, into the narrow lane on the ferry.

The ride was just about 12 minutes, and in another 10 minutes we found the Apple Island campground, which is our home for tonight and tomorrow night. Along the way, we talked by phone with a friend from Buccaneer sailing, John Hamerslaugh, who lives in Montpelier,VT, and we arranged to have dinner with him and his wife tomorrow night.

One of the features of our motor home is a mechanism that allows the living area to expand by about three feet with a motorized slide on the driver’s side of the motor home just behind the driver’s seat. Unfortunately, the driver’s seat partially blocks the movement of the slide, so it’s necessary to pull the driver’s seat all the way forward and vertical before letting the slide out. Margaret forgot to do this today, and broke off some wood trim that borders the edge of the slide as it passed the back of the driver’s seat. As bad as he felt, Steve repaired the broken woodwork, filling some of the screw holes with epoxy putty that is curing overnight for reinstallation tomorrow. Margaret helped, and was contrite. Part of traveling is handling unexpected problems on the road, but we really try hard to avoid bringing them on ourselves.

It’s raining hard tonight, and we hope to have a break in the weather tomorrow to enjoy Lake Champlain. Wish we could send this rain to Hartwell!

Pictures of the road through the Adirondacks and of the motor home on the ferry to Vermont follows: