13 Hours On The Road But NYC Was Hell

We started the 2. day at 5:30am. Of course it was pitch dark, but we had a distance to cover. Weather was beautiful and calm – no wind at all. Boston was straight ahead of us and we chose to drive the I-495 which half-circles the city on the west side. Switched over to the I-395 later which re-connects to the I-95 south of Providence. Day light had come by then and traffic had increased. We saw a few glimpses of the ocean but other than that we drove through industrial areas for miles  and miles. And finally we got into the suction of NYC. It all went well, until we made the turn leading to the George Washington Bridge across the Hudson. Full stop in traffic. From there on things came to a crawl. Besides the highway we could look down into the infamous Bronx, a place I wouldn’t even drive through at daylight. The horrors of living here must be mind-boggling. There’s only one comparable place which I have seen and that is East St.Louis, IL. But let’s not get side-tracked. We finally made it across the great Hudson river and were now in New Jersey. New Jersey is all about oil refineries. We could smell them before we saw them. It’s the same type of pollution we have in Edmonton,Alberta. It’s the price of our convenient transportation the people who live in this area have to pay. But then many of them work here as well. And gas prices went from horrendous $3.89/gal in NYC to $3.28/gal in New Jersey.  The New Jersey Turnpike leads south until we crossed into Delaware. It’s when we stopped at one of today’s many, many toll booths, that it was time to pay for OUR convenience. The bill came to $42.00! In total we have spent in excess of $100 in tolls. The funny part is that many of those toll roads are in bad conditions (it makes your innards jump up and down) and on top of that totally congested. We lost count of all the congestions we got into yesterday. It seemed like the entire population had decided to be on the move. However, I strongly suspect that this is the case most days. The sun was setting somewhat later than up in Maine, but finally we were driving in the dark again. By then we had reached Maryland and Bea had plotted the address of our HARWERTH family into the GPS, so now we got directions spoken in that soft sexy voice from “Hanne”. I was keeping the rig in the far right lane, expecting the exit to come up soon. After leaving the Interstate it was less than a mile to the residential area where Scott and Ginger Harwerth have been living since the late nineties. A last sharp turn brought us up into their driveway and from then on I could relax. With wobbly knees I made it to their door, rang the bell and was welcomed into their house. We had never before seen each other, so this was the time to get to know them and our conversation could have gone on for ever, if we hadn’t been so tired. So finally  we all went outside where Scott and Ginger got a Grand Tour of our trailer. Outside the temps had reached the balmy upper 40ies  - we had made it our of the cold and out of the snow. Happy and exhausted we dropped dead into our bed.