Flap flap flap flap….Oh…What A Day!

We figured we’d get up early so we’d get some miles done. It was very dark and only 5:00am when we left the Wally Mart at Lynchburg,VA.  We were still within town limits when my my ears were picking up a strange sound from behind. Something wasn’t right. It reminded about the all too familiar sound of a deflated tire trying to get off the rim. I stopped at an exit pull-out to check. Rounding the rear of the trailer I noticed the likewise familiar smell of burnt rubber. The next second I saw it. The front trailer tire on the passenger side was in shreds. God gracious…have mercy, I thought. Luckily we carry a spare tire AND a jack plus a tool box. We were also parked under a street light and heck…it wasn’t snowing or cold. In fact the temperature was 67F (19C) It was time to get the hands dirtied. I placed the scissor jack under the axle and started turning it up. Got the damaged wheel off the rim and hung the new one. It all took about an hour, but we got it done. Not even the cops stopped by to see what was up. I bet the officer was on his way home to mama. Later we stopped at a gas station and I checked air pressure in all tires. Sometimes it was raining and then again it was dry. We started out on Hwy29 but changed to I-85 south of Greensboro, SC heading towards Atlanta,GA   Gas prices were getting lower as we traveled farther south South Carolina is greeting us with this peachy symbol. We never made it to the big southern city! Rain started so badly that we and many others drove with the hazard flashers turned on. At Spartanburg we turned into a Pilot Truck Stop and found a spot on the end of a long line of trucks. Water was running every where. But contrary to some 300,000 households between Michigan and New-England we had power from our truly-yours HONDA Generator. So we hunkered down watching an old movie from 1952. Movies made in my year of birth are always good, simply because it was a good year. :-) Hopefully, tomorrow we will reach our destination, Freeport, Fl.   Thanks for following with us here.

If NYC Is Hell What Is Washington DC?

Our 3rd day of traveling started with a mighty good breakfast prepared by Scott and Ginger. The day continued with being stuck on the Harwerth-lawn. The frost had gone out of the ground and made the surface quite slippery. So we were stuck for a while. That is until Scott brought out a few sheets of wood which we could lure under the rear wheels. Then they had to stop traffic on their busy road and I had to back the rig out of their drive way. No easy task, but we finally got out and left a hefty mark in the black top. It was one of our rear scissor jacks which scraped into the surface and got bend in the process. Anyway, we were heading out onto I-95 South. Only a few miles and we would be in Virginia. The excitement vanished pretty fast as we got into the first gridlock. And it wasn’t even 11:00am! To make a real long story short: We needed 3 hours for approx. 50 miles. We got stuck in gridlock for 3hrs.!!! First we left the I-95 and tried the parallel Hwy 1, but there was no going forward there either. Three hours after our start I got enough of it all and we turned west on route 238 which finally connected us to Hwy 29 South. Light traffic from there on south brought us to Lynchburg, VA. Thanks to the 3hr. delay we got nowhere near where we wanted to be tonight. We are just now trying to figure out how many hours we have left to Freeport Fl. On the positive side we have reached extremely warm weather in the high sixties. No heating the trailer was necessary!

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.

We Had A Great First Traveling Day

We still had things to organize and to pack, but around 9am I turned the key locking our entry door. We told the border officer that after 2 snow storms in a row we were off to Florida and he gave us a good chuckle. Besides running our passports that was all he did. Well, it was the third load and it would be the last one. Since yesterday’s snow was pretty heavy we were anxious to pull our trailer out of the parking spot. We shoveled a little snow and that was all which was needed. The trailer came out like a charm. We even made the slight hill up to the road without spinning the wheels, and then it was just us and the road. We were on coastal Hwy 1 which at Bangor connects with the Interstate 95. If Route 66 is the Mother Road of the western USA, then the I-95 gotta be the mother road of the east coast, as it runs all the way to the south end of Florida.  Northern Maine had received a whole lot of snow and today’s sunshine made the snow glisten in the most phantastic fairy-tale-style way. Yet the roads were all cleared and as we slipped farther and farther south the road was even dry. Yet, as you can see on the pictures our rig got very, very dirty. There was a lot of spray from the road before we had reached the I-95.  We had short lunch stop at Wally World in Ellsworth. Since the trailer was an cold as an ice box Bea got some food from it and we were sitting in our cozy warm van for a while. Traffic was light as always in Maine this time of the year and our Chevy was making excellent speed. It is amazing what this 6l V8 engine is putting out on power. And with the activated Tow/Haul Function the tranny is shifting smoothly without “hunting” for gears all the time. It also makes driving long down grades much less hazardous. Equipped with automatic antispin and our super heavy duty sway bars we hardly noticed the trailer behind. Oops..got a house across the road                     and here’s how dirty the trailer got Molly slept most of the day. She had a very comfortable bed right behind our front seats. For better room we had taken out the first bench behind our seats and Molly sure appreciated that. Portland, ME east side of I-295 When dusk came we had just passed Portland,ME and I knew that it would be dark soon. We tried a Wally World parking lot at Biddeford,ME but the place was PACKED with Christmas shoppers and there was absolutely no way to get our rig around the parking lot. This Wally World is not recommendable for overnighting as the parking lot is rather limited in size. So we left and pulled into the Kennebunk Service Plaza. Portland, Maine It ain’t quiet here, but Bea has ear props and I am sure tired enough to sleep standing in a closet. There’s nothing on TV other BS and I rather wrote my blog posting. Tomorrow we hope to reach Baltimore and if you come by again you will know whether we made it or not. Thanks for visiting!