700 miles, 8 states, SN*W!

We're out of Maine, on our way south, and we're at the second night on the road. We got underway at 9:40 on Friday morning, December 5th, only 10 minutes behind our plan. We made a quick stop in Peabody, MA, so Consuelo could check the fit of a garment she's making for our daughter-in-law, Maria. While they did that, I took Thumper for a walk. After that, had soup and a sandwich and headed on down the road, landing in Southington, CT. We thought we could stay at the Wal-Mart there, but the signs said "NO RV OVERNIGHT PARKING", so we found another big empty parking lot at Bob's Furniture. Bob's people said "We don't own the lot, but it should be OK, as long as the cops don't kick you out." They didn't, in fact they parked in the lot with us for some of the night.

On the first day, we traversed Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, into Connecticut. Diesel is a bit more in New England, so we bought $75 in Massachusetts. That lasted into New York, where it was no cheaper, so we bought $100 worth there at around $3/gal.

We've spent over 4 years doing this RV thing, but we're discovering things that we've forgotten, or perhaps mis-remembered, about what we're supposed to do. For example, I found some bake-em-up crescent rolls and wanted to bake-em for breakfast on Saturday. I searched all over for a lighter or matches to light the pilot on the over, not finding any. Then I remembered that we have a convection-microwave oven, and we had the generator running to charge the batteries. 12 minutes later, we had nice warm crescent rolls.

We got onto the road about 8:30 this morning. It was about 18 degrees F when we left, and warmed a bit as we travelled. We crossed into New York, bought fuel, then went through Pennsylvania, a few miles of Maryland, a few more miles of West Virginia, and landed at a Flying J truck stop at the first exit in Virginia. We filled our LP tank so we could stay warm, and parked for the night at around 5:00 PM.

We have a history of Pennsylvania and treacherous weather. We had a couple trips from Rochester, MN, where we lived, to Western Massachusetts, where my family lived, travelling through PA on I81 and I80, facing snow and ice along the way. Today, we encountered snow flurries as we arrived in the Harrisburg area. Not enough to slow us down too much, We almost stopped in Harrisburg, but pressed on. At 6:00, the cashier at the Flying J reported that traffic was moving at 20 mph in the areas we had just come through, so we got by it just in time. More snow is in the forecast. We'll take it a day at a time, but we'd prefer to miss all of it.

Thumper finally seemed to realize at around 2:00 PM today that we weren't just out for an overnight trip, and that she had to resign herself that there would be no free runs anytime soon. My signal for this was when she gave up hoping that we'd park back at the Maine house, watching for the door to the motorhome to open onto the back lawn, and she climbed up on the sofa and went to sleep for the first time since we left.

It's 33 degrees here in northernmost Virginia. We are looking forward to cavorting on the beach in our shorts in Georgia in another week. OK, we'll settle for in a sweater. But MUCH, MUCH WARMER than 33 degrees!