The blog is back

Once again I stopped writing to the blog without explanation, it's a good thing this is not a real job! It seems to be a habitual lapse every time we near the end of a trip. My only excuse is we seem to be busy all the time when we get home. I’m going to go with that one, because it’s true, we have many things going on with the new to us old house. We've also been on the road twice since returning from Delaware. I have a few posts in the can and will put them up one every couple days.

The whole time we were in Delaware for my mother’s funeral we had a heater running in the compartment where all the water tanks are located. The temperatures were going down into the 20’s every night and we were concerned about freezing pipes. Inside the motorhome we were warm with both the gas furnace and electric heater running, but we were watching the weather closely. Few Recreational Vehicles are made for winter climates, ours certainly isn’t.

We stayed a few days after the burial to help my brother Dave and his wife Lois with anything we could. My parents stayed in their home right up until their deaths, which is remarkable but they couldn’t have done it without Dave and Lois. They did everything for my parents in their final years and went well beyond what any children would be expected to do, we owe them a debt of gratitude.

Classic Nor'easter

With another nor’easter bearing down on the coast and snow and ice predicted, we decided we better get out while we could. We secured the bus for travel and at 0 dark thirty on the morning of March 19^th we pulled out of Lums Pond state park.

Our normal leisurely route down the Delmarva Peninsula didn’t seem like the prudent way to go, so we planned on the dreaded I-95 route. I don’t know why everyone hates 95 so much, probably because of the heavy traffic from Delaware to south of DC. 

Blue is I-95, Orange is 301 route to Carmel Church

We used the 301 connecter to avoid all the big city traffic. Through the eastern shore 301 is a down right pleasure. Traffic picks up some approaching the Bay Bridge where route 50 joins 301 at Kent Island, but it’s all going in the same direction! We are now south the Baltimore traffic and before we reached the DC congestion 301 splits off and travels thru rural Maryland and Virginia.

We intersected I-95 at Carmel Church Virginia, stopped for fuel at the flying J and then joined the south bound traffic on the nations first interstate highway (I think it was the first anyhow) I know we stopped again somewhere because we had a half tank of fuel when we got home, but I don’t remember where it was. FYI, it’s 550 miles from Lums Pond state park in Delaware to Myrtle Beach. We burn about 85 gallons of gasoline to make the journey. We weigh just shy of 26,000 lbs pulling the truck, are 57 feet long, have 10 wheels on the ground and get 6.5 mpg.

Our modified I-95 route from Delaware to Myrtle Beach.

We arrived home in Myrtle Beach at about 5pm; our total travel time was 10.5 hours. That’s not bad at all, considering we made two stops and I never consciously exceed the speed limit. Actually my preferred top speed for our flying circus is 65mph. Things can happen too fast above that speed and then there’s the sometimes thrilling feat of bringing the whole contraption to a stop when a traffic signal changes unexpectedly!

It sure did take me a long time to thaw out. Besides leaving Florida early this year and driving north to Delaware, winter just would not let go. It was unseasonably cool down here in March and April. I was wearing long pants in Myrtle Beach for gosh sakes! 

We toughed it out and worked on some our home projects, spring finally came, it lasted for two days and now its summer…..I’m not complaining!  Not even when the $80 worth of southern grass seed dried up and burst like miniature kernels of popcorn! I could write a play about my education with southern grass, it would be a landscaper’s Greek tragedy!