The long drag East.

If you read this blog enough you will know that we DON"T LIKE INTERSTATES.

 

 That being said we have a long one way trip scheduled - San Diego CA to Maine which is diagonally across the entire country. 

3200 miles.

In order to get there and have time to enjoy ourselves before it's time to return we have to get on the Interstate system and put in big mileage (for us). We know I8 from Casa Grande to San Diego like the back of our hands having driven in seemingly hundreds of times since 2014 when we first discovered Sundance 1 RV Resort https://banbrv.blogspot.com/2014/12/where-heck-is-casa-grande.html. 

Shortly after Casa Grande I8 joins I10 and we have been down that stretch from Casa Grande to Las Cruces NM many times too. We usually stay at the SKP Park in Deming NM but we stretched ourselves this time to reach Las Cruces NM.

Next was Amarillo Texas for one night and a planned 2 night stop in Edmond Oklahoma.

Things don't always go as planned for the good, or the bad, and we had a scare when fueling between Amarillo and Edmond when we were ready to turn out of a gas station. There was construction everywhere and I don't know if that confused the truck driver who decided to drive up the road on the wrong side of double yellow lines. I had to slam on the brakes to miss him.

Shortly after that we were in yet more construction and on horribly bad roads, which seem to be a specialty in Oklahoma. There was a very load BANG on the windshield of the RV. We couldn't see anything wrong but when we pulled into the campground and raised the driver shade there was a large chip which soon turned into a crack.

The damage on the windshield

We stopped for the night and  the weather started deteriorating, with thunderstorms and heavy rain. The day we were to depart there was a flash flood warning on TV and severe thunderstorms were reported all along I44 which were were planning on taking up to Springfield Missouri.

The Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City

We decided to stay were we were for an extra day! We also decided to call out insurance company to file a claim on the windshield. They are aligned with Safelite for chip repair and I thought it would be an easy thing to do, but after 2 hours of miss-direction and an hour on hold, I gave up for the time being as neither the insurance company nor Safelite seemed to be able to do anything productive.

To top all that off we started losing power going up hills but replacing the fuel filters cured that.

 

We had been pounding the Interstates and driving 300+ miles a day for day after day to give us more time in the North East with 1 night stops at Elks Lodges along the way. We didn't stay at a commercial park until we were East of Indianapolis and that was almost by accident! We intended to dry camp at the Rising Star Casino in Rising Sun Indiana but they had a full feature RV park there too and we decided on the spot to spend 3 days there and recover from the long boring drive. It turned out to be a really nice area with some picturesque small towns. Free wifi, free cable TV and free breakfast every morning, plus Good Sam and Players Club discounts really helped too!.

The Rising Star Casino is actually a river boat on the Ohio River

Near Oklahoma city we stayed at the Edmond Elks who were really friendly people. As we walked in to register they were setting up for their weekly darts game and we rushed out to get our darts! 

After even more days of Interstates we turned off at Ashtabula Ohio and the Elks Lodge there. It sits right on the shore of Lake Erie in the pretty town of Ashtabula. We immediately met Linda and Heinz who have been full timing for 20 years in an Airstream trailer and make us look like beginners! They have been all over Mexico and Alaska too. 

We hit it off straight away and went from our intended 1 night stay to 3 while we all had dinner together and sat outside talking while we watched some glorious sunsets.

Heinz and Linda, lovely people.

Ashtabula was an iron ore port in the 1890's being on a straight lime down to Pittsburg. Badly polluted it is a shining example of how such sites can be cleaned up.

Sunset over Lake Erie

All around the area are covered bridges and wineries which kept us busy exploring.

There must be 30 covered bridges around Ashtabula

Meanwhile we were working with the insurance company to sort out the windshield replacement. They though it might take 3 weeks to locate and ship a windshield, so we decided to do it somewhere around Rochester NY. 

This would give us time to drive there while they found and ordered the windshield and at the same time let us explore the Northern end of the Finger Lakes which has been one of the objects of this trip. Once we get the work done we can move to the Southern end of the lakes and finish off our explorations.