Monday 31st October – Halloween

We’d come up with a plan for today to head into the nearby town of Lexington (Virginia) to a cycle repair shop to get a professional to fix the gears on my bike before driving on a short distance with the hope of finding something to do for Halloween evening.  

We didn’t get off to a great start when we had a completely flat engine battery.  We couldn’t understand it – okay so we hadn’t driven further than the other end of the field (to the dump station & back) over the weekend but it wasn’t as if the RV had been left stationary for days on end!  And we’d been plugged into electricity all weekend so using everything in the coach shouldn’t have drained the battery.  Bizarre.  We approached some RV neighbours who luckily had a power pack that did the job to get the engine started and we got straight on the road, realising that we should invest in a power-pack ourselves for the next time this happened.

We found the bike repair shop and left my bicycle with a very dead-pan mechanic who we didn’t manage to get a smile out of despite our best efforts.  We had to occupy ourselves for 45 minutes before returning to see how the repair had gone so we wandered into the town.  Lexington was lovely!  There were some really individual shops and some historical-looking buildings.  We found a ‘bric-a-brac’ shop which was incredible – there was everything and anything for sale in here, some of it complete rubbish (or trash for American readers), but in there somewhere were some gems.  We got second-hand boogie-boards and tennis rackets for both of us for $15 – more outdoor pursuits in the bag!  Simon found a beautiful Fender acoustic guitar, for $150. Having left our plentiful collection of guitars at home with various friends, I wasn’t keen on Si buying another one! I had come to terms with the fact that we would have to get by without guitars on this trip but as Simon was worried about filling quiet time I realised that it would give him something else to do which he loves.  So, we tried finding some cheaper options – at pawn shops or just getting a cheaper, new guitar.  But nothing worked out any cheaper and in fact when we saw how much the guitars were selling for at the pawn shops, it made more sense for Si to invest in the quality Fender guitar with the aim of recouping some of his money at the end of this leg of our journey.  This RV is filling up fast! 

On our wander around town we spotted a poster advertising a drive-in movie…. Black Hawk Down, on 2^nd November, for free.  Now, Si loves his military history… and this film!  And I have never been to a drive-in movie before and I bet you neither has Harvey!  

Our plans for the next few days started to change.  We then spotted Lexington’s Visitor centre – we’d forgotten one of our first rules – ALWAYS go to the visitor’s centre!  The girl there was really friendly, told us about lots more interesting places to see in the area AND we noticed a poster for ghost walks around the town.  It was Halloween, what more appropriate night in the calendar is there for a ghost walk?!  The VC girl told us we just had to call and leave a message stating what time tour we wanted to be on and if we didn’t get a call saying they were full – just turn up!  Decision made…. We were going back to the same cheap campsite for three more nights, there was more to Lexington than first met the eye.

We returned to collect my bike – all gears in working order for a snip at $12, thanks mardy bike shop man!  Next stop, a return to Walmart for the last Halloween gear in the shop!  We weren’t going to show up on a Halloween ghost tour without fancy dress.  There were others desperately scrabbling over the last cheap tut left, we made our selections and purchased a devil’s face mask, a witch’s hat along with some glow sticks…. And a battery power pack after this morning’s incident.  Random shopping at its finest!  We then drove the 10-15 minutes back to the Buena Vista campsite and said ‘three more nights please?!’  The woman behind the counter looked puzzled. ‘We’ve found lots more to do’ I said.  ‘Really?’ said the woman, she was clearly not convinced.

We thought we’d go on the latest ghost tour at 830pm, which also happened to be the final one of 2016.  After dinner, we headed back down to the VC car park, late as usual, so we arrived just as the walking tour was about to depart.  We quickly grabbed our costumes and crossed the car park to pay and join in.  Only a few others, mostly children, had bothered to get into the spirit (pardon the pun) of the evening so we stood out a bit in our fancy dress!  I was somewhat disappointed… come on America, you’re supposed to be world leaders at this Halloween stuff?! Our tour leader was more eccentric thankfully, in his top hat and tails... but I think that’s what he wears every day anyway.  We did some good mileage around Lexington, home of rich Civil War history it transpires, culminating in the cemetery where we stood by the statue of Stonewall Jackson, which sometimes appears to move in the moonlight…. Ooooh, spooky.

We had a chat with the tour guide who is also an artist, Mark Cline, about another one of his projects – Foamhenge.  Yes folks, it’s a full-size replica of Wiltshire legendary landmark Stonehenge… in foam…. In Virginia.  Or at least it was, until August 2016, so sadly we won’t be able to add it to our list of huge road-side attractions!  Not sure why, but it was taken apart and is being moved to a new Virginian location in 2017.  The pictures on the internet look good though….

It was a great way to spend Halloween, and reasonably cheap at $26 for the two of us, so we were grateful we had been able to commemorate this date in the US with a special event rather than it being just another night on a campsite.

Saturday 29th – Sunday 30th October – Cabin fever

Waking to another blue-sky day in such a beautiful location; this seemed to be the perfect opportunity to make the video we had promised people back home.  A guided tour of Harvey in a ‘Through The Keyhole’ Stylee. I would love to be able to attach said video to this blog because it will save a lot of explanations and you will be able to picture us in our RV as we continue our travels.  However, at over 8 minutes in length I'll have to leave it for now until I can work out the logistics!

Following my directorial debut it was time to spend the weekend relaxing and enjoying the outdoors lifestyle.  Or that was the plan.  I’ve called this entry ‘cabin fever’ to summarise what I think was going on, with the benefit of hindsight.  We couldn’t be tourists every day of the week – the budget clearly wouldn’t stretch to that and you need some down time to chill out.  We’d found a lovely site to be able to do just that.  But I think we were both struggling to adjust to the culture shock of our new lifestyle.  Having both worked shifts and long hours in our Policing life we were regularly like passing ships in the night.  It is a strange phenomenon being able to ‘miss’ the person you live with, but that is a part of being shift-workers, sometimes you don’t have a face to face conversation with your significant other for days.  Now here we were, confined to our new one-bedroom home, sharing the same waking hours with little or no opportunity for any ‘me’ time, for the next 8 months.  I hope Simon won’t mind me saying this, but I think I’m better at keeping myself occupied.  I was embracing having the time to read, to do puzzles, even write a little bit of blog (when I could prize the iPad out of Si’s hands).  But Si is a much more sociable person than I am and was starting to miss regular, uninterrupted contact with his closest friends and family.  The contact we could have was also dependant on whether we had wi-fi access.  I’ve mentioned our data plans on our mobile phones but that won’t last very long with regular use.  This campsite had wi-fi available… in some areas… depending on where you parked your RV!  Today we just seemed to be agitating each other.  I was happy to just do nothing.  Simon wanted to know what we were going to do and realised that he needed more past-times available to keep himself occupied.  It’s also a strange feeling not knowing where you are going to be or what you might be doing in a few days’ time.  Total freedom, yes, but at the same time somewhat unnerving when it is totally out of the ordinary.  How we would both adapt to these factors only time would tell.  Cliff-hanger for you there!

Having cooled my temper after my mistaken attempt to fix my bike a few days ago I decided, bravely or stupidly, to have another go.  I made some improvement but it was by no means fixed or even back to the gear-slipping standards when it was new!  But it was good enough to suggest to Simon that we could go for an easy cycle into Buena Vista town with the purpose of finding ourselves some more entertainment/hobbies.  Cycling into the town was quite shocking, sadly it was an example of a town with more shops boarded up and run-down than open…. and this was on a Saturday!  A bit of a ghost town.  And here is an example of a sign we have been seeing a lot of….

Sculpture and sign in a scrap yard

So many more Trump signs than for Clinton.  With the election in just over a week’s time, is this a reliable sign of things to come?  The British media hadn’t reported on how much Hilary is hated and mistrusted by so many this side of the pond.

Anyway, we did find an Amish shop (Amish Cupboard) open so we thought we would support them - but the only thing we found that we needed was a spare red tea towel!  We then went against our best intentions as the only other place we found was Dollar General, which are open EVERYWHERE.  Sorry, Amish Cupboard but you didn’t have drawing paper & pencils or DVD sets containing four films at once!

Saturday evening we went for our second back-to-back BBQ and had this little visitor… 

Sunday was more of the same, relaxing and enjoying the outdoors.  We did some planning – looking at places we could stay when we reached Dallas and over the next few days. 

I also created another list – well, it had been a week or two so it was time – this was a check-list of things to be done before driving off!  We’d somehow avoided disaster a couple of times so far.  Arriving at the park and ride in Philadelphia we found that we had left our TV aerial up – adding a couple of feet to our clearance height!  I’m sure we’d been under a couple of bridges with 14” clearance warnings and, as our normal height is 12” we must’ve been close to ripping the aerial off and potentially damaging our roof.  There’d been a couple of times when we’ve been sat in the front seats, engine running, ready to go and one of us has said ‘did you unplug the electric cable?’ and the other has replied ‘No, I thought you’d done that’.  So, a list was definitely required and has pride of place in the dashboard for every time we are ready to depart:

1)      Lowered aerial?

2)      Detached electricity/ water hose/ sewer?

3)      Tidied loose objects? (bottles in shower, all washing up away, doors to cupboards, inside & out, closed)

4)      Turned off gas/water? (on console – mustn’t have pilot light lit whilst travelling)

5)      Brought in slide-in?

I took myself for another bike ride and found some other residential parts of Buena Vista that weren’t as desolate as the town centre.  I enjoyed checking out the Halloween decorations – here’s a good example of a homeowner taking the newer, inflatable decorations to a whole new level:

Friday 28th October – Journey through the mountains

Our next quest was to find a campsite, heading inland away from the expensive city ones that also wouldn’t charge us extra just because it was the weekend.  Bingo - We found a PA site called Glen Maury Park in Buena Vista, Virginia to the South West of Washington.  It wasn’t too much of a drive so we had time to deal with some mundane necessities – Si had his first US haircut and I went to stock up the groceries for the week.

The drive took in some beautiful scenery.  We crossed the Appalachian trail and there were some fantastic mountain views as we drove through the George Washington National Forest.  It was Harvey’s most challenging ordeal to date making it up some of the inclines but at least going at a slower speed means you have more time to appreciate the views!

The weather was also being kind to us.  We arrived at Buena Vista RV Park about 440pm to brilliant blue skies; it was time to break out the Barbecue for the first time!  We had so much space to ourselves on the huge field, these pictures make it look like we were the only ones there.  And all for less than $20 a night! 

Lovely sunset on our first night

We paid for three nights up front to keep us housed until Monday.  This would do nicely.  It was lovely to be able to sit outside and enjoy our outdoor purchases for the first time – the folding chairs came out, the picnic table, the playing cards, the wireless music speaker and, even more importantly, the wine all made an appearance.  But with it, the realisation that this was probably quite a standard Friday night for us going forward.  Not too shabby you might say?  But at the same time; the confirmation that this trip was not going to be lots of crazy nights out in bars and restaurants surrounded by other people.  It was just the two of us, on a budget, self-catering, though this was made easier as we’d found a reasonable red wine that we both quite liked. As such, we bought a box of it to save cash!  Plus, the vast majority of campsites (especially our cheaper friends) were out in the sticks, nowhere near the night-life.  To have a booze-filled night out would consist of either driving Harvey into a City and having to find parking, meaning that one of us would have to be designated driver (i.e. me), or having to pay a large cab bill.  Just not feasible on a budget.  But this is a reasonable compromise for the road trip of a lifetime, I reckon!  We are also going to bed and waking up much earlier than at home due to the daylight hours and the fact that, by 10pm you’ve been sitting out playing cards and listening to music for hours, so you may as well!  We do have a television on Harvey with an extendable aerial on the roof but the signal is very touch and go, limiting us to one or two channels at best.  So, it’s pot luck when you arrive at a site whether you can get any TV channels and then totally random what you find is on!

So, in conclusion I’m not sure that this trip is going to do either of our rock ‘n roll reputations much good!

Thursday 27th October – Washington

Big tourism day.  No free park and ride for us sadly but we were grateful for left-over quarters that we fed into a meter ($8.50) before buying metro tickets for $33 to get us into the City centre.  Again, the central points of interest in Washington are all in quite a compact area so we started at the White House.  We got as close as we were able, trying but failing to look through privacy glass of limousines as they sped away from the area with secret-service convoys and flashing lights.

From there it was a short walk to the Washington Monument which you can climb for an expansive view of the City.  Today it was closed, but as you can see, it was particularly cloudy so we convinced ourselves that we probably hadn't missed out too badly.  

Panoramic shot from the base of the Monument - look closely to spot other famous landmarks

From the monument, you can see down the hill to the World War 2 Memorial and the infamous water feature leading to the Lincoln memorial.  

This was the natural route to take and our strolling picked up pace as the rain started to fall more heavily.  Plenty of other tourists had sought shelter in the Lincoln memorial but that did not prevent us from having enough space to appreciate the scale and the grandeur of this marble temple.  Having seen the memorial on a television screen several times (why can’t I think of anything more cultural than ‘Night at the Museum’ as I write…?!) it was an entirely different experience in person.  We took time to read the engravings in the walls and gaze in awe at the man who saved the Union as he in turn watches over Washington.

Bordering the Lincoln memorial are other War memorials which we visited – the Vietnam War memorial which consists of thousands of lost soldiers’ names engraved in never-ending lists down the walls.  I’m not sure if it was the rainy conditions but the most impactive memorial was for the Korean War.  The life-sized sculptures of soldiers in their long rain macs trudging with all their equipment through the foliage in the pouring rain was a genius design to really make you think about their sacrifice.  Morbid but moving. 

Forgetting we had Metro tickets in our pockets which may have reduced our mileage that day, we took advantage of a break in the rain to make the long walk back past the needle of the Washington monument and down the National Mall to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.  Now, this was very much a Simon-based item on the itinerary but I can’t deny that there were many original and historically vital exhibits there.  He could probably take you through them in detail but I will provide a few examples….. 

The X1 in which Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound for the first time in 1947

The module that brought Armstrong, Aldrin & Collins back from the moon

There was so much to see in this brilliant museum that we had to be told to leave by the staff who wanted to close at the end of the day.

Having kept an eye on the clock it was then perfect timing to return on the metro to Harvey and head back to our campsite.  Another fascinating City and perfect for those on a budget.  ALL the iconic places we had visited today were totally free of charge, so apart from public transport our only costs had been $21 on coffees and snacks.  Coffee is a necessary expense.  Any of you who know Simon will be aware that he doesn’t function without regular caffeine!  We had also well and truly walked our socks off today – I think this is still one of our highest Fitbit step counts to date.

Wednesday 26th October – a staying-put day

The campsites are very trustworthy here.  If you arrive after sunset and the office is closed a lot of them have an honesty box or have maps posted showing which campsites are available that night and you can pay the next day.  You just drive on in and plug in your rig.  This site just South of Washington was one such site.  This morning I went over to the office, paid up for three nights ($107) and got a $10 roll of quarters so that we could use the laundry facilities.  It cost $2 to use a washing machine here and the same for a dryer.  We’d bought some line to try to get our clothes dry naturally – but two months on we still haven’t used this; partly due to cold or rainy weather but also most sites don’t let you tie anything to the trees in fear of damaging them.  So, using the dryers is just easier rather than trying to find space and heating to hang everything up in the RV.

We had agreed that after a couple of hectic days of driving and site-seeing, today would be a ‘stay at home’ day.  Well, apart from forcing Simon to come on a bike ride so we could get some exercise!  So, washing done, we set off around Prince William Forest Park.  Here’s the sign we saw at the beginning of the ride…

Remember folks.... they're more scared of you than you re of bears, apparently.

The ride itself was a mix of bumpy tracks but then very smooth cycle track alongside a peaceful road.  There were some hills, both up and down thankfully, but we didn’t find any scenery anywhere near as breath-taking at the Catskills.  There wasn’t much wildlife either, including bears, but I enjoyed getting out for some fresh air in any case.  

I felt that we'd worked hard enough to deserve some Kendal mint cake - thank you Heather Saunders!

It did highlight an issue with the cheap bikes we’d purchased – my gears were slipping frequently which was taking the shine off my cycling experience.  I had an attack of DIY…. Despite knowing my own limitations, I figured I could research on the internet how to fix this little problem myself.  Besides, we had invested in a couple of screwdrivers, spanners and Allen keys – how hard could it be?  Turns out, unless you know what you’re doing, it’s quite hard!  I managed to make the situation ten times worse so my bike only had about two functioning gears and Simon wasn’t able to rectify it.  He was just frustrated that I had taken it upon myself to try a quick fix.  So much for saving money by buying cheap – there’s a lesson in there somewhere folks! 

The other reason we had a cheap day today was that this was day 7 of the trip and we knew we had already blown the week’s budget.... and some!  We were rapidly realising that we would have to expand our budget expectations, even though we didn’t think we had been frivolous at all.  Here’s a summary of our first week’s costs:

Tolls:                                             $47.40

Gas:                                               $258.88

Camping:                                       $251.95

Groceries:                                      $182.25 (including beer)

Parking & public transport:             $40.20

Eating/drinking out:                      $55.00

Laundry:                                        $2.00

Shot glass:                                     $10.00

This is a total of just under $850. 850 bucks!!  And look at the most expensive things – gas and camping – two things we were not really going to be able to avoid on this trip!  With the shoddy performance of the British pound we were getting about 1.24 Dollars per pound.  Our initial aim had been to try and live on 1200 pounds a month (AFTER ‘set-up costs!), so roughly 300 quid a week.  We had managed to more than double this in our first week! Eeeeek!  We were going to have to limit our mileage and shop around for cheaper campsites to try and cut back or we’d be using up funds that we’d set aside for our future travel plans and/or returning to normal life.

Tuesday 25th October – When Ruth got carried away with the gimmicky stuff!

Our first Good Sam park near Philadelphia - with water feature!

Example of what a full hook-up looks like - attached to electricity, water and a drain outlet

So, I told you about the over-sized spectacles in our Atlas.  I happened to notice that today, by taking in a slight detour of our planned day through Pennsylvania, we could go and visit a house in the shape of a giant shoe!  Now, who wouldn’t want to see that?! Not only that, it is so famous that even the road is named after it - Shoe house Road in York! Also, just past that was Gettysburg, home of Lincoln’s famous address (speech rather than house!) so we could visit the battlefield there as well for a bit more culture whilst making ground.

Well, this is a classic example of not having gained an appreciation of the size of this country yet or not taking the scale of our map into consideration…. Or both in fact!  What could have been an easy, low mileage day, turned into a trek and by the time we’d reached the shoe and got our photos it was clear that Gettysburg was sadly a drive too far.  If we'd known we could only do one we should've probably gone to Gettysburg... but then again.....

Who wouldn't want to drive extra miles to see this first-hand?!

To add to the annoyance at myself for coming up with this hair-brained scheme the traffic getting around Washington was horrendous.  This delayed our arrival at the next campsite until 7pm when it was pitch black, thus making the job of finding our pitch more challenging.  Note to self; The crazy, oversized spectacles would have to be reserved for when we were literally driving right by them and I would leave more of the nagivation (the proper spelling of navigation) to Simon!

Monday 24th October – Philadelphia

It turns out that Philadelphia is an amazing City if you’re travelling on a budget.  After a 20 to 30 minute drive to the Park and Ride we found ample spaces at no cost, even for massive RVs, and then the return train fare into the City was only $6 each.  We agreed Parking and Riding was the way forward and I still also stand by this next tip – even if you think you know what attractions you want to see in a place, always go to the Visitors’ Centre (VC).  The one here was very helpful.  You need an allocated time slot to visit Independence Hall, but the tour is free.  The VC itself has interesting displays about the history of slavery in the USA and the importance of the Liberty Bell, before you cross over the road and queue up to see the real deal, again for free. 

Most of these attractions are walking distance from the VC, with one important exception – The Rocky Steps – or more precisely the concrete steps at the Museum of Art more commonly known for appearing in the film ‘Rocky’.  Instead of buying a whole City tour, the helpful lady at the VC pointed out that we could ride the City bus there and back for only $4.10 each instead and she furnished us with the tokens we needed making it so simple a child could manage.  The bus was a great way of seeing some more of the City on the way and it was worth making the effort to see the steps and the Rocky statue there.  No one here was bothered about making a fool of themselves - groups of grown men raced each other up the steps and countless people, ourselves included, were pulling various poses for the essential photographs to be taken.  Great fun:

View looking down the Rocky steps back towards the City

The Museum of Art’s grounds themselves deserve some attention.  They’re beautiful and on the opposite side to the infamous steps there is a weir with an historic water pumping station overlooking it.  Bear with me, the station has been renovated for weddings as the view over the weir and rowing houses opposite is breath-taking.  

The Clock Tower of Independence Hall

Back in the City Centre we took our time seeing the Liberty Bell before making our allotted time at Independence Hall.  It was impactive being in the very room with some of the very same furnishings that legendary Americans such as Washington sat in during the birth of the US Constitution. 

Independence hall with the actual chair that George Washington used 

We will probably return from this trip better educated in US History than our own… but maybe my memory isn’t that good – writing this two months later I have forgotten many of the interesting facts we were told that day that would have been great to show off with – damn! 

A list of what you can achieve in 84 years if you really put your mind to it!

Not wanting the day to end we walked around some more to visit locations relevant to Philadelphia’s most favourite person in the World Ever – Benjamin Franklin.  He’s everywhere and they don’t miss an opportunity to teach how much he achieved in his lifetime.  In fact, there’s a list near his Gravestone.  Now we all know I like a list!  But this one was awe-inspiring; That guy was busy, makes you feel quite guilty (see right)!

It was an opportunity to take the mick out of one of Simon’s best mates, Ben Franklin (no relation), by taking various photos relating to the great man himself and pretending they related to him….. 

With my Philly steak & cheese... good times

I don’t think I have mentioned any theory or reasoning behind our direction of travel?! But Ruth, you said ‘the plan is there is no plan’.  Well, yes, but you must decide which way to turn the steering wheel somehow!  Since we had cancelled our initial plans to hot-foot it to Austin, Texas ASAP for the F1, the next time and place we HAD to be was Dallas, Texas on Wednesday 18^th November for a Morrissey gig.  (This was obviously my thing, not Simon’s thing; he is not a fan.) We’d only booked this gig because we knew we would be in Texas for the racing, but never mind, plans change!  In researching for the trip, I had stumbled across some itineraries on the ‘Rough Guide’ website.  When I travelled as a youngster many years ago, my rough guide book was my bible.  Thankfully, these days you don’t need to lug such a hefty tome about with you any more – bless the internet!  But their website had 6 colour-coded itineraries on it each which they suggest should take about a month to do, ie 6 months in total – boom! That’s how much time we have in the US! I’m not saying that we are going to follow these itineraries rigidly but they are very useful for pointing out some of the more interesting places to stop at and what for.  For example, Philadelphia was on there.  Whilst looking at this site my attention wandered to another section entitled ‘Around America in 10 Sandwiches’.  Hello, this could be fun!  I am telling you this now as the ‘Philadelphia Steak and Cheese’ appears on this list and so today was the inauguration of this important part of the trip!  We’d stocked up on bananas, snacks and drinks from Harvey to try and get us through the day as far as possible but, having walked miles, we found a sandwich bar and bought a Steak and Cheese to share.  I was impressed considering the fast-food-type establishment we bought it from – it was delicious!  I posted a score out of ten onto Facebook with a photograph and gave this eating experience 8/10.  

Birth place of the Stars & Stripes

That kept us going nicely to do some more wandering and make the purchase of another shot glass for our collection.  We’d had a lovely long day and seen everything we wished to see.  For transport, the shared sandwich, coffees and our shot glass the whole day had only set us back $52, that’s going to be tough to beat, as is Philadelphia.  Lovely City and lovely people.

Sunset as we made it back to the Park & Ride 

Sunday 23rd October – Atlantic City

I had an amazing sleep…… I think I won that one! Simon… not so much.  But we had set an early alarm to ensure we arrived in Atlantic City nice and early to beat the traffic.  It was our first attempt at going into a City and finding somewhere to park… on a weekend.  It seemed that the on-street parking was all metered (and expensive) or illegal so we started looking for car parking, eventually haggling with an attendant who agreed we could park Harvey for $20 for the day.  Having checked out the meter charges this seemed quite reasonable so we went for it with the reassurance that there was someone keeping an eye on the RV.

Then we went for a walk, going between the Casinos and shopping malls to reach the seafront.  It was a beautiful blue-sky day and there was a great atmosphere along the Boardwalk because there were a load of crazy people running a marathon and some not-so-crazy people running a half-marathon.

View down the boardwalk

Random statue of a girl running away from an assault of some kind

The other important thing we had to take into consideration was that it was the F1 Grand Prix in Austin today.  Particularly painful for Simon, as the original plan was that once we had our RV we were going to hot-foot it straight down to Texas so that we could be there in person.   Understandably, this idea had to be shelved once we knew that we would never be able to make those time constraints – if we’d set off having collected the RV on 19^th and driven solidly down to Texas for 8 hours plus a day, maybe we could’ve made it – but at what cost?  We would’ve missed so much and have been exhausted.  So, I promised Simon we would strive to find a bar which was showing the race today.  As soon as we hit the Boardwalk we struck lucky with a sports bar with multi-screens.  The lady working there promised we could find the appropriate channel on our return.  We walked miles along the Boardwalk and back, taking in the golden sandy beach, casinos, shops and hotels and even a moving memorial to those who lost their lives from the area, fighting in the Korean War.

We headed back to the sports bar but, a different female member of staff present tried all the many channels in front of us with no sign of any racing.  The bar had filled up with different groups, all watching different American football matches that were on that day, nothing else.  Well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!  We ended our visit with a couple of beers and some snacks whilst absorbing the atmosphere in the bar and adjoining casino.  Can’t say we started to make sense of the rules of American Football… we’ll see how that goes. 

We had received an excellent present from David’s parents in Boston…. A US Atlas.  Having initially thought we could cope with just the SatNav, this has been irreplaceable.  Even more so for the section at the front entitled ‘Break-worthy roadside attractions’ which contains two extraordinary spectacles per state.  I’ll give you an example.  Lucy the elephant is a three-storey house just South of Atlantic City.  Now open as a museum and point of interest, of course it was worth a slight detour to get some pics and to see the beautiful beach where she lives!

This picture gives you an idea of the scale

Look - she's got windows!

From there it was a short drive to our first Good Sam Park ($44 per night) just South of Philadelphia where the owner gave us a very helpful tip about park and ride facilities with RV parking that would assist us in getting into the city the next day.

Saturday 22nd October - on the move and learning RV skills

I had a much better night’s sleep, I put it down to the fresh air and exercise or maybe I’m just getting the hang of this?!  

Before we left today we needed to fill up our fresh water tank – sadly in the pouring rain.  A learning experience, we had no idea how long this takes.  We have a very handy little console of sorts inside Harvey that gives us a sit rep (situation report) on our levels with red LEDs.  We have one for the LPG gas, one for the battery (for the inside stuff not the engine), one for fresh water, one for black water (sewage) and one for grey water (sinks & shower water).  When you push the appropriate button it tells you if that tank is empty, a third full (or two thirds empty for the pessimists out there!), two-thirds full or full.  When you attach our hose between the tap and the inlet on the side of the RV and let the water flow in, from outside you have no idea how much you need and, if left unchecked, the fresh tank will over-fill and burst leaving you without any water - disaster.  So, we were understandably cautious for a first fill – me in full wet-weather gear outside hovering next to the tap, Simon in the nice dry RV pushing a little button to check the level.  Turns out you can turn on the tap and leave it running for aaaaaaages if you want to!  From nearly empty it can take 10-15 minutes to fill our tank, I think it’s 50 litres? Anyway, it’s a learning curve, but we successfully re-stocked on water.

Then, on the way out of the Park we went for our first dump together.  Don’t be freaked out, it’s perfectly normal!  We have a system of pipes on the underside of Harvey with nifty colour-coded pull-handles; grey for the grey water and black for the….. you’re there I guess?!  You can’t just unload your waste any old place; you need to go to the dump station where you attach your hopefully very secure and watertight hose with connectors to the drain and pull your coloured handles one at a time (we have invested in stock of latex gloves for this purpose – we just can’t seem to leave the old habits behind!). The system works well, no bad smells and you don’t physically see any waste as it’s a sealed system. Well, I’ve complained about getting drenched for the water but, I am a lucky girl, for Simon has decided that this is really his area of responsibility and I am not gonna argue!!  But having stayed at this park for two nights it taught us that in reality we can only be self-contained for 24-36 hours max without needing at least a tap and a drain.  When we’ve both had a shower (and that’s one where you’ve turned off the flow of water in between ‘rinses’) and all the washing-up, tooth-brushing etc. has been done we are running low on our supply of fresh water and, understandably, this also means our grey tank is brimming.  When that’s full the drains or the shower tray back-up so it must be sorted.  We aim not to let the black tank reach that point….

Anyway, ablutions sorted we hit the road heading south as fast as Harvey could carry us to try and escape the winter-type weather enveloping the Catskill Mountains, briefly stopping off to see the darn waterfall we never found on our bikes the previous day.... unfinished business!

We had agreed New York City maybe a great way to finish this trip, instead of trying it out as one of the first destinations in our over-sized new home.  So, with NYC on the back burner, we estimated that a reasonable day’s drive would be to head towards Atlantic City on the East Coast with a view to visiting Philadelphia afterwards.

An example of our highway view from the RV

I had the very important matter of sorting our access to cash out once we were back in the land of phone signal.  We stopped at some services and tried swapping back our British SIM cards into our phones to be able to add credit to make the necessary call to Halifax.  Ironically enough, we needed to add credit via the credit card that was blocked to be able to do this.  Fail!  Ruing the day we decided to rely solely on the Halifax Clarity Card…. So, I headed into the services to use a public phone, however much it cost, I would buy a phone card or get a stack of quarters to finance this urgent call.  No phone in the services, and to this day I don’t think I have seen a single public phone booth anywhere in the US, seriously!?!  Why are they needed these days when everyone has access to a mobile (sorry, cell phone) I guess?  I returned to the RV dejectedly.  We were fast using our gas, meaning that we’d have to dip into our spare emergency cash and again tonight if we wanted to stay somewhere.  Stuck needing to get in touch with Halifax with no phone available and no email address I could use.  Then I thought of social media in the realisation that at least I had some data with my AT&T phone-plan!  Thank goodness for Twitter! There, I said it.  But without the little white tweetie bird I don’t know how we would have sorted our situation?! I send a direct tweet to @AskHalifaxBank sounding as desperate as possible and explaining the situation.  They advised that if I had access to a landline I could make a reverse charge call via the operator to them and they would accept the call.  I replied explaining that was not possible and that it had already cost me enough trying to resolve this matter – the only way was for someone there in the UK to call me to sort it out, please?! (despite it being late on a Saturday afternoon in the UK of course!).  We drove on.  Sometime later I received a response asking if now was a good time for a call from Halifax. Yes, anytime is a good time for the call, thank you.  I must have been on the phone for at least 20-30 minutes going through security and answering so many questions about my suspicious transactions.  Thank goodness I wasn’t paying!  I was grateful to Halifax but also angry that, despite telling them my plans, we had to go through this.  I verified that they would put a note on my account explaining that any sus-looking transactions for the foreseeable future would more likely than not, be me!!

Having averted this financial disaster and been somewhat taken aback at how much it costs to stay in what is essentially our own home for a night with a bit of water thrown in the deal, now is a good time for me to mention a couple of camping clubs that we joined.  This was following the recommendations of a couple who’s blog about touring the US we’d skirted over in the UK; as per their advice we had joined ‘Passport America’ and ‘Good Sam’s Club’.  Joining each was reasonable, about $40-50 as I recall.  You get a membership card and a catalogue of the campsites that your membership is valid in.  The difference – PA gives you 50% off the camping rates! 50%, wow! I hear you say.  But there are conditions…. (boo) most of which are that you can’t use this reduction at weekends or Holidays and other conditions limit the number of nights you can use the deal at the same campsite.  On the other hand, Good Sam only gives you a 10% reduction in price which isn’t a lot when you’re paying $50-60 but it’s better than nothing and there are no sneaky conditions with them.  In our experience since this trip began, Good Sam camps are expensive but always very well maintained and run whereas PA sites can be very shabby and make you want to leave as soon as you arrive sometimes (read on…!).  So, it being a Saturday night tonight meaning that a PA site was out we thought we would see what life is like on the road for free! Especially as we had somehow spanked half of our weekly budget in two days and I reasoned with it being the weekend the services would have a reduced population of truckers, possibly?! 

Having seen some pretty-looking services earlier in the day we felt positive, but when we got to the Atlantic city approach all the services started appearing in the middle of the road.  That doesn’t sound right!… what I mean is that the services were now on the land dividing the north-bound and south-bound tracks of the Highway, right in the middle, instead of being down a slip-road from the slow-lane, away from the road.  In the end, it was getting late so we ran out of options and ended up in a parking spot near the front of the Police Station at one of these Services.  So, bonus points for security, but minus points for being near the fast lane of a busy Highway!  Simon said “there is no way you’re gonna sleep at all here tonight!” Sounds like a challenge to me!  So, after a hasty microwaved dinner with accompanying beer, as we had found a liquor store to celebrate having a working credit card, we settled down for the night having ensured all the doors were well and truly locked!

Friday 21st October - day in the wilderness

Sad to say I didn’t sleep as well last night as I had the night before. Torrential rain and winds rocked the camper about and as I was not acclimatised to our location I had images of rising waters going through my head and had my doubts about the capacity of our RV to cope with such a battering.  I really should have had more faith, Harvey stood up to the challenge just fine.  You see, I had made use of my insomnia (I think some of my best thoughts and ideas hit me when I should be sleeping) and I had been struck with the perfect name for our new home.  The reason for this is threefold:

1) An homage to Harvey, aka Fluffy the Wonder dog, Simon’s first Police dog who was also an       RSPCA  rescue dog, (the RSPCA being ex-employers of mine)
2) Where we come from in Essex no one pronounces their ‘H’s so the name Harvey would be said ‘arvey sounding like RV
3) It rhymes – Harvey the RV

So that’s it in stone – from now on in this blog our camper will be referred to as Harvey.  Sorry to those of you who don't believe in anthropomorphism, deal with it.

Simon was oblivious to the overnight conditions and the weather had cleared in the most part by the morning.  The forecast warned of further rain later in the day so there was time to test the bikes out on the rugged terrain first.  We had been provided with maps, but I managed to leave the most relevant one in the RV!  I knew that there was a waterfall nearby so we just planned a relatively easy ride out to that.  But we lost our bearings completely and ended up travelling much, much further than planned and onto trails that were definitely more suited for the hiker rather than those on wheels.  We had to carry our bikes over boulders and pass them to each other down steep inclines that were too perilous for us novices to face.  We got up to some amazing viewpoints… or what would have been amazing viewpoints if it weren’t for some low cloud cover....

Look at the view!!

But the cloud did clear on occasion....

According to my Fitbit we did about 5 miles which does not sound anywhere near as painful as it was!  We were out from 11-230pm and so were understandably shattered when we got back, thankfully before the heavens opened and we battened down the hatches in Harvey.

I’m happy to say that our water heater is really fast and keeps the water warm for a good time too.  It was my first time using our on-board shower and it was lovely.  Due to the space being somewhat limited (and that’s for me!) the hot water heats up the cubicle in no time and the power isn’t too bad for a mini-shower.

I was very happy with our first outdoors day having missed getting much exercise since I broke my foot and looked forward to more of the same. 

There was hardly anyone else on the campsite, apart from a group of lads who set up a tent but must’ve given up after the rain really set in that afternoon. But before that

First use of our camping chairs!

The beautiful sunshine before the rain arrived

It was a taste of what a State park must be like, very few people around and not much to be doing into the evening, we wouldn’t be partying into the small hours here!  This park was actually closing after the weekend for the winter.  That became a factor in the weeks ahead as we realised we had to get moving south to try and keep up with the warmer weather.  Winter is coming…..

Harvey tucked behind the trees