A sad farewell and on the road again.

I was sad to leave the Presslee house as I had a great time with my sister, Suzanne, my bro-in-law, Adam, my beautiful little nieces, Claire and Kate, and my awesome nephew, Simon, who is going to be a super-hero when he gets big. We had an excellent time with them in Pittsburgh. The kids are soooo adorable!

Drove to the Clarksboro, New Jersey Campground. As with many of our drives, it took longer than anticipated. We started out well - had a good last morning with Suz and family and hit the road at 10:30 for what was supposed to be a six-hour drive. But the first leg took a bit longer than we had planned. Not sure why - we had good roads and good weather and I was keeping up with the speed limit as I was not towing. The kids worked on school work and we listened to a few classic radio programs on the Sirius/XM Satellite radio. There was an old Western from the 50’s as well as a detective story. I really like those old radio shows on a long drive.

One really good thing about the interstates in the US is that they have some great rest stops, with ample room for large RVs, like ours. These rest stops often have fast food restaurants and a small sundry shop. We stopped at one to pick up some food. Sonya and I also grabbed lattes at Starbucks. With caffeine levels being restored, we resumed the drive.

We had to stop at Harrisburg, PA to pick up our trailer, Smaug. We had left Smaug at a campground where they were happy to store him for us for the small sum of $5 a day. Pretty good deal! No mishaps in hooking up and in short order we were back on the road. But then I took the wrong exit and we had to

loop around to get back to the exit. But then the stupid GPS told us the exit was on the left, when it was on the right and we missed it again! (insert angry face emoticon here). Third time’s a charm so we finally made it onto the interstate. All-in-all, that little misadventure only cost us about 15 minutes, so all of the swearing from the driver, yours truly, was probably not warranted.

By the time that we left Harrisburg, we still had a 2-hour drive and it was already 2:30pm. Also, we were going to need gas at some point so it was looking like we would arrive at the campground about 5pm. That would allow us to get setup and start on supper before dark. Still looking pretty good. We stopped at the Valley Forge rest stop to grab some diesel and empty our personal tanks. It was shortly thereafter that we hit traffic. Sonya looked at here phone and then it was here turn to swear at our truck’s GPS. The iPhone would have had us turn off the interstate much earlier and taken a longer sweep around Philly. As it was, we were quite close to the city and stuck in what I assume to be rush-hour traffic. We were moving at about 5km/hr. Boring!

Just before picking up the trailer in Harrisburg, Sonya and Natasha had switched seats so that Sonya could rest her leg on the center console. She has a blood clot in her calf and needs to wear a compression stocking and keep her leg elevated. So, when we hit traffic, I asked Tashy to put on a book-on-tape (I still call it that, but it is really on a set of CDs). We passed the time listening to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. We had about 14kms of slow going before the traffic thinned out and we were able to get back to normal speeds. By then, we were very close to our destination. I took one more wrong exit for good measure before, finally, pulling into the campground at just a bit past 6pm.

When it comes to disconnecting and setting up the fifth-wheel, the Reid family is a well-oiled machine. Everyone has a part to play and we were all highly motivated to get things done and get supper going. Within an hour, we had the trailer setup - jacks down, disconnected from the truck, levelled, water, electrical, sewage, and cable hooked-up, awning out, tablecloth on the picnic table, slides out, items re-arranged inside the trailer, and sausages grilling on the barbeque! Supper was a simple but tasty meal of stewed tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, and Italian sausage. We had very little in the fridge and pantry so, after supper, Sonya and I took a trip to a nearby grocery store and spent an hour getting food for our stay in Philly. I could tell that Sonya was tired from the journey as she is normally quick and efficient in a grocery store but on this night, she was moving slowly. It was past 9 o’clock when we returned from the grocery store. Time for the kids to get to bed and, time for Dad to get into bed as well. Isaac was disappointed - he had setup the XBox while Sonya and I were at the store and had big plans for Dad to play video games with him for half the night. Crazy kid. I find that the long travel days are quite tiring - not sure why as they involve very little physical activity. I had basically sat on my butt and listened to the radio or chatted with the family all day. Perhaps, it’s the constant state of vigilance while driving. Or, perhaps, it was the fact that I had been up since 6am, after staying up until midnight the night before, playing games with Sonya, Suzanne, and Sonya then chatting with Suz. At any rate, I turned out my light before 10 and slept for nine hours.