What a Trip!

Normally, we drive about 200 miles a day and only travel every 2nd or 3rd day so we can relax and enjoy each location.  Earlier this trip we stayed 5 days in Tulsa and 5 days near St. Louis.  But in the last week we have driven 4 days in a row, covering 797 miles.  We parked in 4 states and crossed part of another.  Whew! 

There wasn't anything on our route through Illinois, Indiana and Ohio we wanted to see.  We will be back in Pennsylvania and Ohio as we return west next month.  We have checked off one item on our bucket list: we spent 2 nights in Hagerstown, Maryland .  We have now slept in 45 of the 49 continental states.  Only 4 more to go--Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Jersey.

Our home is in Colorado and the Continental Divide runs through the middle of the state.  To cross it, you often have to go over a 11,000 foot or higher mountain pass.  We didn't realize there is an Eastern Continental Divide until Wednesday when we crossed the 2,670 foot divide.

When was the last time you saw an operating drive-in theater?  It has been a long time for us.  We spotted this one on our trip across Ohio.

Trail Ridge Road between Grand Lake and Estes Park, Colorado, crosses the Continental Divide in Rocky Mountain National Park.  From the top you can see into 4 states.  There are other places you feel you can see forever, like the Youghiogheny Overlook in a Pennsylvania highway rest stop.  (Does anyone have any idea how to pronounce that word?)

This is another view from the same area.

I think this view was in West Virginia.  Obviously it is early spring here.  Many of the trees hadn't leafed out.

The limestone (?) hills in West Virginia are also great.

We haven't seen dogwood trees for years.  We found this one in our Hagerstown RV park.

Where we spend our winters in Arizona people refer to it as summer camp for geezers. Maybe we now have regressed to childhood. The best option we could find to park in Hagerstown was the Jellystone Park. It really was nice--since school is still in session and we were there mid-week. It must be wonderful for families with children. They had everything from a zip line to laser tag to water parks and mini golf. 

Blessings and Curses

Blessings:

Last night I went out of the trailer at dusk and saw one of the magical things about lower altitudes in the summer: lightning bugs or fireflies. We don't see those in Colorado. Is it the humidity? I don't know. But I love seeing those little flashes of light and remembering my granddaughter, Kylie, chasing them in Iowa four years ago.

Last night we were in an RV park in Winchester, VA. The sites were fairly close together, but there were huge areas of green grass throughout the park. It reminded me of RV parks we stayed in during our first-ever RV trip in 1988.

Today we drove from Virginia through a corner of West Virginia and a slice of Maryland before entering Pennsylvania. To touch that many states in such a short time in the West, we would have to drive in circles around the area where Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona meet at the Four Corners. The scenery was beautiful. We are no longer driving through just tunnels of trees. We also saw large open fields and farms, limestone outcroppings, and vast vistas.

Tonight we are parked in a destination KOA in Pennsylvania. They have side-by-side hookups for the 50-amp pull-through sites. But the electric is reliable, the restrooms spotless and the location attractive.

On a Friday night in summer, we share the park with a field of tents and lots of families with young, bike-riding children. Not our favorite thing, but we are glad families are having such wholesome fun.

Curses:

Yesterday morning at about 10 we talked to the mobile RV repair tech who was supposed to install our new air conditioner. We had been waiting in Ashland since June 1 for the unit to be shipped from Indiana to Virginia. On Wednesday Roadway trucking told the tech the unit was in Richmond but they didn't have anyone to unload the truck until Thursday. He told them it had to be delivered onThursday. When he called them Thursday morning they still couldn't tell him exactly when it would be delivered, but it would be on Friday. His father had been hospitalized in Florida and he couldn't wait any longer. At 10:45 we began preparations to drive north. As we drove, I studied Trailer Life and found a place to stay about three hours up the road.

Both yesterday and today I spent a lot of time on the phone, trying to work out a location where we could have the unit shipped and installed further along our route. Maybe, just maybe, that will happen in a couple of weeks in Syracuse, NY. Tammy at Camping World RV Sales there was very helpful, as was Dawn at Dometic, the company honoring our warranty on the A/C. We will keep our fingers crossed.

John says any time we have a warranty claim, it is a crap-shoot.