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.
New England Trip
