![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/QTS-Hop-2a.jpg\" "\\"QTS")
<\/a>Hop 2, Day 1<\/p><\/div>\n
One problem was that the road was even rougher than I-84.\u00a0 When we finally arrived in NJ – exhausted and frazzled – we had to deal with the mess inside the RV.\u00a0 The new table next to my chair fell over, nearly everything that was on the bunks had fallen off (including cans of soda, which, thankfully, did not explode) and everything in the refrigerator looked like it had gone through a dryer cycle.\u00a0 We didn’t have any eggs in there but if we had, they would have been pre-scrambled.\u00a0 We did have a jar of pickles that somehow ended up standing on its lid.\u00a0 How does that happen?<\/p>\n
Another problem was cost.\u00a0 The tolls on that route exceeded $100.\u00a0 The bridge alone was $62<\/strong><\/em>!\u00a0 I was expecting more like $30.\u00a0 Outrageous.<\/p>\n The worst problem, though, is that there is an underpass on I-286 in Brooklyn with a 12′ 6″ clearance, which is exactly the height of Patience.\u00a0 I admit that I had not checked for low clearances on the NY segment because it was all interstate and interstates have standards, right? Wrong. Lesson learned, but not before getting an earful from Jett, who nearly had a heart attack.\u00a0 I, too, was pretty upset as I had visions of either getting stuck on a surface street in Brooklyn and needing a police escort to get extricated, or paying the price of a very long detour back up to I-95 and then across the George Washington Bridge – which would take me on the Cross-Bronx Expressway, another of my least favorite roads.<\/p>\n Well, fortunately it was just a matter of exiting at the underpass and re-entering on the other side, with was really no detour at all.\u00a0 But our blood pressure remained highly elevated for another 45 minutes until we had crossed the bridge (and paid our ransom at the toll booth there) and were safely on US 9 in NJ, which was a pretty nice road.<\/p>\n Our campground for the night was the Timberland Lake Campground<\/a> in Jackson, NJ. I have to give this place a very mixed review. The site was huge and level, so I think the campsite itself gets high marks. There are also a lot of amenities here, including a very large pool (as shown on the home page of their website), a very nice playground, an open-air pavilion, horseshoe pits and a basketball court, all of which, except for the pool, were being heavily used when we arrived. The park was nearly full and it seems that most everybody knew each other. There was a huge pot luck dinner and party that night which, if we were invited, no one bothered to inform us. But the place had a festive, friendly air about it.<\/p>\n So why the mixed review?\u00a0 The place is impossible to get out of.\u00a0 The road from the gate into the office area is wide enough for two vehicles but is marked as one-way inbound.\u00a0 I had to walk the campground to find a way out.\u00a0 There were two choices, neither marked as an exit and both very narrow and difficult.\u00a0 I chose what I thought would be the better of the two and nearly got hung up on trees.\u00a0 If there hadn’t been an empty pull-through site at that location I would have had to back up and go the wrong way out the one-way road (which Jett was telling me, vociferously, is what I should have done to begin with).<\/p>\n Also, the road leading to the campground is basically a mile of 1-lane road with very soft shoulders.\u00a0 Two large RVs meeting on that road would both run the risk of getting stuck.\u00a0 Plus the telephone wires overhead are low enough to snag a large rig that pulls over to let another get by.\u00a0 Combine that with the horrible, rutted, unpaved dirt paths inside the park and I have to rate this campground as a 0 on the accessibility scale.\u00a0 Just plain awful.<\/p>\n It is located very close to the Six Flags amusement park, so I am sure it is a popular campground in the summer.\u00a0 But not one that I will ever return to.<\/p>\n I had planned to take the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to the Beltway, then take the Beltway to the east side of DC.\u00a0 But after our I-286 experience on Saturday I opted to stay on I-95 which I knew<\/em> had no low bridges and go to the west of DC on the Beltway.\u00a0 That added a couple of miles to the trip.<\/p>\n Hop 2, Day 2<\/p><\/div>\n There were more tolls on this route and we cut it pretty close on our cash – we arrived in Lorton with $15 remaining.\u00a0 The total for the 2 days of tolls was over $130.\u00a0 Ouch!<\/p>\n But other than the pain to my wallet, there was nothing painful about this trip.\u00a0 We arrived before 2pm (thanks to an early start, made possible by the extra hour of sleep we got on the switch to EST).\u00a0 We settled in at Site 75 at Pohick Bay Regional Park for the third time.\u00a0 It is a difficult spot to back into, but is a very nice campsite once settled in.\u00a0 We really enjoy having the open field and the playground right behind us.<\/p>\n I will be working remotely this week while Jett catches up with family and laundry.<\/p>\n On one of my commuting trips home I witnessed a spectacular sunset. I took this photo, through my windshield, while driving.<\/p>\n Alexandria sunset<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 2 days, 493 miles via I-495 (MA), I-90, I-84, I-91, I-95, I-286, NJ 440, US 9, I-195 (NJ), I-495 (MD and VA) and some local roads. I routed this trip so that we could overnight in NJ and thus earn the right to put another state on our map. In retrospect, we would have been … Continue reading Day 2: Jackson, NJ, to Lorton, VA<\/h3>\n
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