GTW Hop 5: Gettysburg, PA, to Lorton, VA

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Sparky

101 miles via PA 116, US 15, I-270, I-495, I-95 and VA 600 and 242. Cumulative distance: 775 miles.

GTW Hop 5: Gettysburg PA to Lorton VA

A ding-a-day. It is the theme of this trip. It would be more accurate to say “ding a hop” but that doesn’t have quite the same ring. So a ding-a-day it is.

The Hop 5 ding was unique in that it (probably) wasn’t my fault.  We had a blowout on the RV just south of Thurmont.  Not just a flat tire, but a major explosive blowout that shredded the tire and curled up the sheet metal over the wheel well. It sounded like an M-80 going off in the bed of the truck. Freaked out the dogs. And us.

I pulled over to the side of US 15, got out, inspected the damage, considered trying to change the tire myself for about 30 seconds, then opted for calling in a professional.  I dialed 911 and they patched me through to the state police.  They promised to “send someone to help.”  I was expecting a state trooper who would call a local tow truck guy.  We waited about 30 minutes – Jett in the cab and me on the side of the road, both reading.  Finally a yellow emergency assistance vehicle, like you see on the Mass Pike, arrived.  A very nice man introduced himself and proceeded to change the tire and, when done, adjusted the tire pressure on all 4 tires – at considerable risk to himself as the shoulder was not very wide and he encroached on the first travel lane a tad as he was working on the left tires.  He refused payment and a tip.  So I shook his hand and he rode off into the noon sunset.

My hero.

The blowout

The curled sheet metal

I said that this ding *probably* wasn’t my fault.  However, when I checked the tire pressure after he had filled the spare (to 80 psi he said), my gauge read 90 psi.  So we have a major discrepancy in gauge readings.  If I have a faulty gauge which resulted in the tires being under-inflated, then I could fairly be blamed.  But I would just deflect that blame to the gauge.

I will get another gauge and, together with my other electronic gauge, we will have a gauge-off.  The two that agree remain; the other gets tossed.

So, once again, we marveled at our strange combination of bad luck/good luck.  Yeah, we have had an appalling series of mini disasters.  But in each case things have turned out surprisingly well.  Even the loose slide cable – the repair guy finally appeared about 10 minutes before we departed the Campground in Gettysburg and we waved him off.  My temporary fix with the cut washer worked like a charm, bringing the slide in quite normally.  Twice, in fact, because after pulling it in I had to deploy it again so that I could retrieve my glasses from the bunkhouse (Note to self: wear glasses when pulling slides in).

The route itself was pleasant – it was yet another beautiful day, coolish but sunny and bright – and, except for the tiny little blowout incident, uneventful.  We had no trouble finding the campground in Lorton, despite the fact that, for the first time, I had forgotten to print the Google map of the route.  So we had to do the first piece by memory (the GPS kept trying to send me down little side roads) and we relied (gulp!) on the GPS to get us the 5 miles from I-95 to the campground.  Again, it took us a different route than Google and one of the roads was smaller than I would have liked, but we got there unscathed.

The campsite was of the back-in variety and was plenty large enough to hold the rig.  But narrow.  Trees were posted as sentinels on both sides of the entrance.  And, just to make things more interesting, a couple of trees limited the ability to swing the truck freely.  I knew it would be difficult but resolved to try.  Long story short: we made it in a single try!  I have to believe it was largely luck, but it was a huge confidence boost.

One try!

Other positives:

  1. I was able to get both bunkhouse slides deployed.  It took a little effort to unfurl the bent topper, but I got it.  This gives us access to the second bathroom for the first time in a week.
  2. With the two 10-ft halves of the 20-ft sewer hose that I bought yesterday and the Y-connector that I had purchased in NH, I was able to connect, for the first time, both drain pipes simultaneously.  I got the hoses nicely supported, too, so cleanup should be a breeze.
  3. I got the antenna to work.  The solution? Turn it on.  There was a button, nearly invisible, in the bedroom closet, that controls the antenna.  I gave it a shot and – presto! – suddenly we had access to way more channels than I expected: over 40, including some, like LWN, that I thought were cable-only.  Over-air TV has changed a lot from when I was a kid and we had 3 channels, plus the 6-hours-a-day educational channel.  The picture quality?  Unbelievably good.  Better than the cable that we have had at any campground to date.  High definition and a very strong signal.  Some of the channels were from Baltimore, over 60 miles away!

The bottom line on this hop was that the positives outweighed the one very big negative.

Today we need to make arrangements to get some new tires – 2 for the truck, 1 for the RV.

Categories: Adventures, GTW, MD, PA, Places, Routes, VA | 1 Comment

Gettysburg, PA

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Sparky

If you want to swim for a few hours in a deep pool of American history, just visit the Gettysburg National Military Park. I can’t say that I have been to all of the great battlefields of the world, but this one is huge (24 square miles), relatively new (the battle was 149 years ago) and incredibly well-preserved, so it is hard to imagine that there are many better. There is a wonderful visitor’s center, with a museum, a theater and a bookstore that looks like it stocks every Civil War book currently in print. And there is a self-guided 24-mile auto tour which is arranged chronologically. If you get the companion 2-disk CD and book (as we did – $25), you can spend an entire afternoon visiting the sites where so many died during those three bloody days of 1863. Plus the site of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.  You can take the dogs, too (as we did – free).  If you have a nice day (as we did – free), it is a great way to spend an afternoon. An incredible place. Highly recommended.

We didn’t do too much else while we were here.  We did go into town on Saturday, had a nice breakfast at the Lincoln Diner, right in downtown Gettysburg on one of the streets down which the Union army fled when routed on the first day of the battle. We were also lucky enough to be in Gettysburg for the once-a-year antiques festival which had 150 vendors lining the streets hawking all kinds of stuff that I had when I was a kid (Flexible Flyer, View Master, Hardy Boys, etc). Of course we couldn’t really buy anything as we have no room. That made it a very inexpensive day – $1 for a tiny doll and $8 for ice cream.

We stayed 3 nights at the Gettysburg Campground, conveniently located just 2 miles from the start of the self-guided auto tour. It is a large campground – 240 sites – and it has just about everything you could want: pool, horseshoe pits, playground, dog walk (with free poop bags), a very nice general store, mini-golf and, most importantly, spacious sites with cable TV.  There is also an on-site RV repair business, which so far hasn’t helped resolve our slide problem.  But I ran into the repair guy this morning at the general store and he promised to stop by to take a look at it.  I doubt if he will be able to improve on my temporary fix (cut a washer to serve as a collar for the damage cable end), but at least he can give me some idea of what will be involved to fix it right.  I will probably have to add that to the growing list of things to be repaired when we finally get to a dealer – probably in Knoxville, TN.

Next up: Lorton and Alexandria, VA and a week with Jett’s sons and grandkids.  And a pair of new tires and an oil change for the truck.

Categories: GTW, PA, Places, RV Parks | 1 Comment

GTW Hop 4: Gordonville, PA, to Gettysburg, PA

Posted on September 22, 2012 by Sparky

68 miles via US 30 and PA 116. Cumulative distance: 674 miles

GTW Hop 4: Gordonville PA to Gettysburg PA

This “easy” hop took over 2 hours to complete.  US 30 was bumper-to-bumper for about half the distance we traveled on it.  Not fun.

Because I was concentrating so hard on not running into the guy in front of me, I didn’t get much opportunity to enjoy the countryside. But there really wasn’t much to enjoy.  US 30 is a heavily-developed commercial strip, so unless you are into the “big box” architecture of the latest Staples, there isn’t much to see.

We were 20 minutes late leaving the Country Acres Campground because (1) I decided to gas up and got a station attendant who couldn’t communicate and (2) the tilt of the camper caused some difficulty in getting the big slide back in (lesson: level the damn camper!). In fact, we didn’t quite get it back in all the way; the lower back corner was sticking out a couple of inches.  When we got to the Gettysburg Campground we had difficulty getting the slide back out again and when I did get it fully deployed I noticed a loose cable. Further investigation revealed that the cable for that lower back side of the slide had popped loose.  I can’t be sure, but I suspect that the additional stress caused by the tilt was too much for it.

Yet another self-inflicted wound.

The good news is that our current campground is one of the rare ones that has an on-site RV repair facility.  I have already put in the call.

Today is supposed to be near 80 degrees and sunny.  Sounds like a good day to take the dogs for a walk on Seminary Ridge.

Categories: GTW, PA, Places, Routes | 1 Comment

Gordonville, PA

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Sparky

Gordonville lies just a few miles east of Lancaster and is in the heart of “Pennsylvania Dutch” country.  We stayed at the Country Acres Campground and dined last night at the Bird-in-Hand Family Restaurant. We also visited some Amish furniture shops and bought a couple of small tables for bedside use, which I think showed great restraint on our part as the furniture the Amish make is beautiful. We really wanted to replace our loveseat with two swivel rockers, but the measurements didn’t quite work out – we weren’t sure how to get the sofa out, or the rockers in, through our 24-inch door.

We also had breakfast at the local Waffle House, but I don’t think you want to hear about that.

The campground is the definition of “pristine.” The landscaping is by far the best we have encountered yet.  The office has a store with some beautiful (and very inexpensive) local crafts.  The pool is huge, but was closed for the season.  The sites are level (sort of – I mentioned that I neglected to level when we arrived so we spent two nights listing).  Free cable.  The best thing, though, was the laundry.  We did two loads last night for a total cost of $4.25.  The dryers give 17 minutes for a quarter!

Maybe I will find some mud today just so we can do another load.

Next up: Gettysburg.

Categories: GTW, PA, Places, RV Parks | Leave a comment

GTW Hop 3: Milford, NY, to Gordonville, PA

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Sparky

282 miles via NY 28, I-88, I-81, I-476, US 22, 222 and 30. Cumulative distance: 606 miles

GTW Hop 3: Milford NY to Gordonville PA

The “B” on the map is our refueling stop, this being the first hop (of very few, I hope) that we could not complete on a single tank of fuel. We can’t assume that any service station will have diesel (though on this hop it seemed to be much more readily available than in MA or NH) and we certainly have to be careful about where we take our huge trailer.  So this was a truck stop that was very easy to get into/out of.

This hop was more difficult than it should have been.  It started with a sign posted just a couple of miles from our starting point in Milford, NY, on NY 28: “Vehicles over 9′ seek alternate route”.  Huh? We had traveled that same road just 2 days before and there were no low bridges, overhanging wires or any other kind of height obstacle.  And was it referring to NY 28 or to some other highway (it was posted near an intersection)?  It caused us considerable angst, but we made it to I-88 without bumping into anything.

We also ran into a lot of traffic near Scranton and again south of Allentown.  Some of the roads were pretty rough (the contents of the coach arrived more jumbled than usual) and we had a major battle going on between Google and the GPS – they diverged widely on which route we should take.  We settled for Google as our level of trust in the GPS dropped after the low bridge fiasco.  And it got us to our destination unscathed.

The campsite (Country Acres) is very nice and, surprisingly, is nearly full, which is in vivid contrast to the empty Beaver Valley Campground in Milford.  Maybe there is a reunion of fallen Amish who now travel the country in Class A’s? The best thing about the site: it has cable! We haven’t yet gotten the antenna to work, so we have been off the TV grid for 3 days.

I made the rookie mistake of thinking the site was level without checking (hey, it LOOKED level).  We spent the night tilted left.  I will have to correct that today.

So was the trip uneventful? No, we had another petite disaster.  At least I hope it was petite.  We lost our better sewer hose somewhere on I-81.  Flew out of the back of the truck, apparently.  I just hope it didn’t become a disaster for some trailing motorist.  Hopefully it either landed on the side of the road or was immediately crushed by an 18-wheeler.  Lesson: never leave anything loose in the bed of the truck if there is *any* chance it can become airborne.

The GTW is now about 10% complete. We will celebrate the milestone by doing laundry.

Categories: GTW, NY, PA, Places, Routes | Leave a comment

Cooperstown, NY, and the Baseball Hall of Fame

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Sparky

Our bucket lists were reduced by one yesterday.  We visited the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.

Was it worth the trip?  Well, it was kinda on the way to California, so why not drop in?  I think, though, that we were right in resisting the urge to make it a weekend trip all these years.  From Boston it is about 5 hours each way – a LOT of driving for a 2-day weekend.  A long weekend would be more feasible, but I suspect the place is mobbed on long weekends.  It was actually pretty busy yesterday – surprisingly so given that it is after Labor Day and the weather was terrible (tornado watches and wind advisories all along the east coast, including Cooperstown). But I still found free on-street parking within four blocks of the museum and didn’t have to shove anyone out of the way to view Curt Schilling’s bloody sock. The weather made it a bit unpleasant to wander around the downtown area, but, all in all, we were patting ourselves on the backs for being so prescient as to plan a museum visit on a crappy day. As Yoda would say, very bright we are.

One factor that we didn’t rate highly enough when thinking about a visit to Cooperstown is the village itself. It is slap-your-face cute and a significant attraction in its own right. Of course the HOF attracts all kinds of baseball memorabilia shops, but I didn’t expect to find a very quaint general store (like the Ben Franklin of my youth) right next door to the museum. Or colonial houses and ancient pubs. The environs were a big plus and made the day doubly enjoyable.

Highlights of the Hall of Fame visit: learning about the Red Sox history (the club originated in Cincinnati as the Red Stockings), seeing various artifacts of Red Sox history (yes, including the bloody sock), learning about rule changes over the years, seeing the Babe Ruth exhibit and Doubleday Field, the site of the Hall of Fame game every year. The field is surprisingly small in terms of capacity; just about any AA minor league club would have a larger stadium.

The Baseball Hall of Fame

Doubleday Field

The playing field on a rainy day

Red Sox memorabilia, with Bloody Sock

The Cy Young painting in the main entrance

Jett in downtown Cooperstown

We left the dogs home alone while we were gone for 5 hours.  That was the only drama of the day – worrying about whether Grace would get nervous and eat the coach.  When we returned and saw neither flames nor a hole chewed in the side, we were relieved.

Our home for the last two nights was the Beaver Valley Campground in Milford, NY. In many respects this was the best campground yet – spacious, sparkly clean, nicely landscaped and, yes, it even has beavers.

A resident beaver

Patience at Beaver Valley

Today we are embarking on our longest haul to date: 269 miles to Pennsylvania Dutch country.

If we can get out of the mud.

Categories: GTW, NY, Places, RV Parks | Leave a comment

GTW Hop 2: Warwick, MA, to Milford, NY

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Sparky

219 miles via MA 2, I-91, I-90, I-87, I-88 and NY 28. Cumulative distance: 324 miles.

GTW Hop 2, Warwick MA to Milford NY

This hop was mostly on interstate highways and was (thank God!) uneventful.  The day was sunny, the sky was dotted with happy puffy clouds and birds were singing.  All was well with the world.

But that would be too boring.  There is another slight “ding” to report (it seems like it is a ding a day, which, as Dave Barry would say, would be a good name for a rock band – the Dingadays), but to the truck this time.  As we left the campground at noon and traversed the rather rough road to the exit, the back corner of the truck came in contact with the suspended pin support bars on the underside of the fiver, snapping off a plastic corner piece.  Trivial, really.  But annoying.

Can’t we have just ONE incident-free day?

I have to say that the Catskills are really beautiful.  We passed many farms and homes that could be fodder for a pastoral painter.

Our home for the next two nights is the Beaver Valley Campground in Milford, NY, just a few miles from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.  Initial impression: best campground yet.  The grounds are immaculate, the restrooms spotless and the campsites very well provisioned and maintained.

I am writing this on Tuesday morning and the rain is pouring down.  But we don’t really care: it is a museum day.

Categories: GTW, NY, Places, Routes | Leave a comment

Warwick, MA

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Sparky

Nobody knows Warwick, MA.  Warwick, RI, sure. But Warwick, MA? Nope, never heard of it.  Even “locals” like my brother-in-law Ray who lives seasonally in New Salem, MA, just a few miles away, had never heard of it.  And small wonder. Almost no one lives here (2010 population: 780) and it has no industry to speak of.  What is does have aplenty is trees. It is basically wall-to-wall forest. If you like long walks in the woods, you will love Warwick.

The reason we spent three nights here, as I have already mentioned, was the combo birthday bash and farewell party thrown by Ray and Kim in the burgeoning metropolis (2010 population: 990) of New Salem (a.k.a. “the forgotten Franklin County town”). The dominant geological feature of New Salem is the Quabbin Reservoir, one of the largest public water reservoirs in the country (over 410 billion gallons capacity). In addition to providing pure drinking water to most of eastern Massachusetts, including Boston, it is also a wildlife sanctuary. Bald eagles have been reintroduced there and the population is growing.

Ray and Kim’s cottage is surrounded on three sides by restricted-access watershed land and they see the wildlife up close.  Hummingbirds swarm their feeders, wild turkeys, deer and moose occasionally wander through the yard and eagles sometimes swoop by.  It is a very serene place.

We stayed at the Wagon Wheel Campgroundin Warwick. I previously mentioned our misadventures in finding the place, so if you go there I suggest that you enter the coordinates into your GPS rather than relying on the address. It is much larger than Saddleback with over 100 sites, almost all of which have full hookups. It was a joy being able to set up the sewer line so that it would drain by gravity alone. It also offers horse-drawn hayrides. We didn’t go on one, but I can imagine that the kiddies would love it.


It being mid-September in one of the coldest parts of Massachusetts (Orange, just to the south, is pretty consistently mentioned as the coldest spot in the state in winter weather reports), most of the sites are either unoccupied or occupied by vacant seasonal RVs.  We didn’t have any neighbors within a hundred yards.  Which is probably a good thing as the dogs got loose on our return from the party Saturday night and decided to explore the campground.  In the pitch black (and it gets VERY dark in Warwick – on a clear night the Milky Way stands out like a smudged White-Out streak in the sky) they disappeared from sight immediately.  As it was “quiet time” I had to call in a whisper.  Grace came back almost immediately, but Cha-Cha wandered around for several minutes before deciding to return.  I should have locked him out.  Would have served him right.  But he might have succumbed to frostbite (37 degrees at 6am today).

The Wagon Wheel is hosted by Scott and Kim Williams.  We didn’t meet Scott, but we did meet Kim and their son Wade, both of whom were very helpful.  They made us feel very welcome.

But it is too damn cold here.  Time to head south.

Categories: GTW, MA, Places, RV Parks | Leave a comment

Happy birthday until we meet again

Posted on September 16, 2012 by Sparky

Saying goodbye is hard for everyone, but is particularly hard for Jett, who has a large, close-knit family. She originally had 7 siblings. Three sisters are gone now, but two sisters and two brothers remain. The older brother, George, lives in Rockport, MA, which Jett regards as her “home town,” despite the fact that she only spent summers there. But it is a beautiful spot and one which is hard to leave. George, always a homebody, is barely mobile now and you would have to strap him to the back of the commuter train to get him “over the bridge” and out of town.

Which is why he is the only one of Jett’s four living siblings who didn’t make it to the party hosted yesterday by younger brother Ray at his bucolic cottage in New Salem, MA.  The occasion was a combination 60th birthday party for Ray (who isn’t actually 60 until next month but wanted us to share in his cake) and a farewell-until-we-meet-again party for us.  Also in attendance were Jett’s sisters Sybil and Christine, Christine’s husband John and Raymond’s lovely wife Kim.  We brought our dogs, who are always welcome at Ray’s cottage, and they took advantage of their rare off-the-leash opportunity to race around his expansive yard with youthful exuberance.  The cottage is so far off the beaten path that we had no worries about them running into the street; the only danger was a risk of an unexpected encounter with a moose or porcupine, or perhaps being swooped up by an eagle.  But nothing bad happened and they ended the evening tired but very, very happy.

Meanwhile the humans were chit-chatting away, snacking on a variety of hors d’oeuvres, sipping wine and trying very hard to balance the happiness of the birthday event with the sadness of the farewell event.  Some poignant toasts were made at dinner and some heartfelt gifts were distributed afterward.  The goodbyes were teary – especially with Christine who was leaving in the morning to visit her son in Texas.  But the farewells with the others will occur today, after we meet for brunch.

Then, I expect, Jett will have a good bawl in private.

None of my family, which is not so close-knit, made it to this event.  However, I will see my son Tony, his significant other Krystle and their lovely daughter (and my granddaughter) Liliani today.  There could be a few tears there, too.

Jett, Sybil, Kim and Christine

Jett, Sybil, Kim and Christine

John, Ray and Sparky

John, Ray and Sparky

Christine and Jett

Christine and Jett

The expansive yard

The expansive yard

The siblings, Ray, Sybil and Jett

Backyard driftwood art

Categories: MA, Places, Preparation/Planning | Leave a comment

GTW Hop 1: Northwood, NH, to Warwick, MA

Posted on September 15, 2012 by Sparky

105 miles via US 202, NH 9, 10 and 78 and MA 78. Cumulative distance: 105 miles.

GTW Hop 1

GTW Hop 1, Northwood NH to Warwick MA

FYI: “GTW” stands for Great Trip West.

This was a nice trip, right up until we got to the Wagon Wheel campground. The problem? We didn’t know that we had arrived. We were relying on the GPS and it took us about a third of a mile beyond the entrance (which wasn’t well marked) and around a bend. When the nice GPS voice announced that we had arrived we were surrounded by dense woods. Then the adventure began…

But first, the route.  The stretch down US 202 to Concord was part of the training route that we took the day before, so no surprises there.  It is a very nice road for a big rig – wide lanes and most 4-lane road. Then we got off on NH 9 and took a little detour into the WalMart parking lot to return a dog harness.  This was our first WalMart parking lot experience.  WalMart is very RV-friendly and many stores let RVs park overnight for free (which really pisses off the local campground owners).  I don’t know how many parked there overnight, but when we arrived about 1:30pm there were about 30 RVs parked there.  A couple of them were even tailgating, which doesn’t strike me as a great way to spend a sunny afternoon – sitting in a lawn chair on the WalMart tarmac, with cars coming and going.  It seems more like RV purgatory.  But to each his own.

The trip down NH 9 and 10 was also very pleasant. This is mostly 2-lane road, but with some slow lanes to allow passing on long uphill climbs.  This stretch ended in Winchester, NH, which was one of the few towns that we went through.  We were struck by how different this Winchester was from the very affluent Winchester, MA.  This Winchester has public housing (and pretty crappy housing at that) lining Main Street.  The nicest buildings in town were the two senior housing complexes and the rehab center on the southern edge of town.  It appears that growing old and infirm is the biggest growth industry in Winchester.

The ride down 78 – in both NH and MA – was narrow, hilly and twisty.  But totally devoid of traffic and quite pleasant to drive.  I think it would be a great road for a motorcycle or sporty convertible.

Then we got to the campground.  But didn’t see it (or any signs for it) and went on by.  The GPS then “recalculated” us onto a route that left us staring at the thing that to someone driving a big rig is like staring at a fire-breathing dragon: a low bridge.  I had dutifully downloaded the “low clearance” POI file for our Garmin, but it had no effect in this case.  So, as a complete novice with fewer than 200 miles of towing experience to my name, I had to execute a very difficult 3-point turn on very narrow roads.  I lost my head a bit (I was too preoccupied with cursing to think straight) and started backing up without waiting for Jett to get out and direct me.  And immediately swung the back end into a telephone pole.  I would call that “dropping the baby, part 2.” Again, not a huge amount of damage, but I did put a scratch on a lower panel and dented the bunkhouse slide topper.  Of course it couldn’t be the one that was already damaged.  Nope, it had to be the other one.  So now I have a matched pair of damaged toppers.

But we did get the rig turned around and got it back to the vicinity of the “you have arrived at your destination” announcement, at the entrance to a state forest.  I parked the rig on that entrance road and walked up a bit to see if I could spot a sign to the campground.  Nothing.  Meanwhile Jett was flagging down a motorist and asked for directions.  We were only a few hundred yards away, but it was around a corner and not visible.

Naturally, as soon as we learned where it was I spotted a small sign, high up in the trees and mostly obscured by leaves, that pointed us to the campground.

So we finally arrived and backed into a wide-open site (and, if I say so myself, nicely executed on my part).  Then we tried to call Jett’s brother to let him know we had arrived.  No cell service.  I had to drive 7 miles into Orange, MA, before I could get a signal.  I took the opportunity to refuel.

After some effort we got an internet connection at the campground, which is how I am able to post this.

Then we crashed, exhausted from the stress.  Not the most auspicious start to our journey.

Categories: Adventures, GTW, MA, NH, Places, Routes | 2 Comments