I usually take Sundays off but I was behind due to our family fun so I worked all day yesterday. The boys played outside for awhile. It was a pretty slow, do-nothing kind of day, the type of day I’ve come to appreciate more as I get older. No stress, no drama…just complete, delicious boredom. Aaaahhh…

Anyway, this morning we woke up, packed up the RV, and hit the road. We’re heading north again, landing somewhere in Maryland tonight. We stopped at a large shopping complex somewhere in West Virginia. Richard went to the grocery store with Mason while I went to the craft store with Max. Max gets very bored if he doesn’t have crafty stuff to do. I bought him some new paper (white and colored) and a kit to build a foam castle. I bought Mason a couple of goodies, too. We finished first so we went to the grocery store to meet up with Richard and Mason. I bought Max four boxes of toothpicks there. Ever since he saw one man’s HUGE toothpick sculpture online, he’s wanted to give it a try. Gosh, talk about a cheap hobby! Fifty-nine cents a box! And, we already had glue on board.

After we loaded the groceries in the RV, and put away the cold stuff, we walked to a sandwich shop. Max has decided that honey baked ham is better than Subway ham. We found a mailbox so Max was able to mail a letter he wrote to Matt and I mailed two postcards to the older kids in Maine. We also ran into Books a Million. I’d never been in one of those bookstores before and it was very nice! I found exactly what I was looking for (a new Beverly Lewis book – Christian Fiction about the Amish, very addictive! – and a book on embroidery stitches). Max got ANOTHER book about graffiti, this one full of train photos.

Max’s new book and crafts are great rainy-day activities and it sure looks like we got them just in time because, yes, it is going to rain AGAIN! We just crossed the West Virginia / Maryland border. There are still purple mountains in the distance. Not seeing many amber waves of grain here but we did see some in West Virginia. The spacious skies are heavy with impatient raindrops. Good thing Grampa fixed the windshield wiper! Well, almost anyway. Richard had to use a bit more duct tape on it today but it appears to be working just fine now.

TRIP PICTURES ARE HERE.

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UPDATE – 7:30 p.m. – Oh My GOSH! We are BACK in the LAND of the LIVIN’! We have CABLE TV!!!

Our first experience with Horse Manure Hot Brakes was actually in our old van. We came down off the mountain in Bar Harbor one day without incident, or so we thought. A few miles later, we all smelled a terrible stink. I kept looking around for a ranch because that’s what it smelled like. The smell got worse and we finally pulled over and called a tow truck. We didn’t find out until the next day what had caused the problem. We rode the brakes so hard that day that we did major damage to the van.

Last year we drove down a steep mountain in the RV and, even though we tapped on the brakes all the way down, we tapped them enough to make them hot. Just when we got to the bottom, we recognized the horse manure hot brake smell. We pulled over at a gas station, and let them cool off to avoid any damage. We didn’t think to use the low gear that day because, well, we’d never used it before!

Today, we saw the lovely truck-on-the-incline sign next to another sign that said “Use Low Gear.” What low gear? Did they mean those low numbers, 1 and 2, on the gear shift? Well, okay, if the truckers do it, I guess we can, too. Richard coasted down that mountain for what seemed an eternity, only needing the brake here and there. Hence, no hot brake horse smell (and no need to pull over and delay our trip). Yeah, laugh all your want but at least now we know what to do!

We had to stop at a store to stock up on groceries today. We split up. Richard went for the foodstuffs and I went for other items. The boys begged for a new movie for their DVD player so I bought them two. When we met up with Richard later, he had two movies as well so now the boys have four. They’ll watch them over and over again and, honestly, you can’t put a price on quiet in an RV when you have to drive several hours at a time.

We are in Pennsylvania now. I love driving through Pennsylvania! Mountains, glorious pines, farms, and quaint homes nestled in the trees along blue rivers with gentle rapids – it’s just beautiful…one of my favorite drives. The GPS tried to route us through the national forest but we’ve been that way before and the mountain highway is pretty harsh on RVs. So, we went the long way, through Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, heading for Allentown. Now I can’t get that Billy Joel song out of my head now! Heh…maybe now it’ll be stuck in your head, too!

UPDATE: 5:15 p.m. – We’re parked next to another RV with three occupants, a couple and their grandson. Max and Mason are beyond thrilled that they have a new playmate…until dark at least. His name is Thomas. It must be time to give Mason a haircut because Thomas just asked Max how old his little sister is.

The action started on Tuesday, as we made our way North. We got as far as Benton, Arkansas, when yet another tire blew – the same one that blew the first time around. Fortunately, we have dualies in the back (two tires per side). So we can still drive when one is blown, but we just can’t drive far or fast.

It was too late in the day to get someone out to fix it. But luckily we were close to an RV park and just hunkered down there for the night.

In the morning, we called the local tire place and out came Jerry, a Boomhauer clone, to fix it.

Jerry discovered that when the tire was replaced before, they put on one that was a size too small. This put extra pressure on the one good tire on that side, causing it to blow. The blowout was only a matter of time, apparently.

That discovery forced us to drop $500 on two new tires – one to replace the blown one and one to replace the undersized one.

You’d think our troubles would be over after that. You’d be wrong.

We hop back on the highway and get about 80 miles outside of Benton, when the RV starts shaking violently anytime we try to go over 60 MPH. We find another tire place. They rotate the two new tires to the front and we go on our way again. Except now the just front of the RV shakes when we try to go over 60 MPH. Definitely a problem with the new tires.

We drive back to the tire place and they suggest we go back to Benton and get Jerry to replace the tires with two different ones. So we backtrack 80 miles and get Jerry to replace the tires.

By this time, it is about 4:30 PM and we’v made absolutely no progress because we are once again back in Benton – where we started that morning.

We decide screw it – let’s just focus on getting home. We decided to drive until we were too tired and then find a truckstop where we could sleep it off. So that is what we did.

The point at which we were too tired to drive anymore came at 5:30 AM EST in Wythville, VA. We pulled off at a Truckstops of America and, after much difficulty, found a spot to park out in front. We shut everything down and crawled into bed.

It actually worked out really well. We were in a well-lit area and nobody bothered us. The only bad part was the WiFi sucked. There was no signal in the front of the building.

We got back on the road about 10:30 AM and drove all day until we reached Appalachian Campsites in Shartlesville, PA. We had a great Pennsylvania Dutch dinner, a shower, and a good night’s sleep.

Friday we got up early and headed for Bangor. Made it home about 8:30 PM that night and spend the weekend decompressing.

Very funny, Uncle Justin!

Angie and Cannelafina:

“Mommy? What are the goats doing?”

The first thing that strikes you is how clean and orderly the entire park is. By far it is the cleanest park we’ve ever stayed at.

It seems to cater to the full-timer crowd, as there wasn’t much for the kids to do. But the owners do a good job of catering to that segment of the market.

The WiFi was very good – consistently providing just over 400K upload and download speeds. (By comparison, we have about 500K of bandwidth up and down on our home DSL line.) It certainly ranks in the top five WiFi connections we’ve encountered so far. And best of all it is entirely free.

I spoke with Bob, the owner, about the WiFi and it turns out he installed it all himself. After much research, he told me, he decided to go with the offering from the local utility company. They actually beam the signal to him wirelessly, then he in turn re-broadcasts the signal through his own antenna setup out to the park itself.

One thing – they don’t take credit cards. So be sure to bring cash with you to pay for everything. (A full hook-up site was only $20 per night).

Four out of five marshmallows.

Big Red Barn RV Park
5089 CL 138
Carthage, MO 64836
417-358-2432
Latitude: N 37 deg 07’37″
Longitude: W 94 deg 18’16″
http://www.bigredbarnrvpark.com/

The WiFi was slow, almost unworkably so. And it wasn’t free either (TengoInternet provides the service). We decided after fighting with it a little while to just wake up early and head to the next campground.

This park is a decent stop-over, but not some place we’d spend an length of time at.

Two-and-a-half out of five marshmallows.

Pin Oak Creek RV Park
1302 Highway AT
Villa Ridge, MO 63089
636-451-5656
Latitude: N 38 deg 26’56″
Longitude: W 90 deg 54’22″
http://www.pinoakcreekrvpark.com/

We stayed during what would be considered the “off” season here, and consequently we were one of only a handful of people in the park at the time.

A large portion of the park’s sites are in a huge, flat field – which made it a convenient landing strip for a flock of geese on their way South for the Winter.

The WiFi was decent, though a bit slow.

Three out of five marshmallows.

O’Connel’s Jellystone Park
970 Green Wing Road
Amboy, IL 61310
800-FOR-YOGI
Latitude: N 41 deg 43’35″
Longitude: W 89 deg 16’05″
http://www.jellystoneamboy.com/

About 15 miles from where my in-laws live is the stretch of I-45 that was plastered all over national TV as 2.5 million people tried to drive away from Hurricane Rita.

It’s a week later now and you’d never know anything happened. Just about everything is back to normal. The only remnant of the incident is rolling blackouts as the utility tries to bring the electrical grid back up. Power will go out for an hour or two every few days, so my in-laws say. We’ve got a generator in the RV and a full tank of gas, so it shouldn’t really effect us.

I pulled over at the next exit and we looked high and low but couldn’t see any damage – not even to the car behind the RV. So, we hit the road again.

About 20 miles later, we were on a section of freeway that I swear was the worst stretch of concrete I’ve ever been on. I mean the RV was just a bouncin’ and rockin’ and I thought the TV was actually going to come out of it’s cubby hole over our heads. I looked around and it didn’t look like any other cars were bouncing like we seemed to be doing.

Then, it stopped bouncing and a terrible, horrible noise started coming from the back of the RV and then stopped after a few severe thumps and bangs. And then…the strong smell of burning rubber. The children were freaking out pretty good, but I’d had a blow-out before and knew we weren’t “on fire.” I gently eased off at the next exit and pulled over. Sure enough, one of the tires on our double tire thingies (thank God there was another one to take the stress instead of just metal) had been damaged 20 miles back and finally blew.

There was a repair place just another mile up the road and they took us right in and we were back on the road only 2 hours later…and $500 poorer. But, we’re safe and it was an adventure!

Incidentally, I kind of figured out what might be happening on that “bumpy” stretch of highway but was kind of zoning out on denial, subconsciously hoping we weren’t about to have a blow-out. Duh…

The wifi connection at this campground is worse than poor so uploading photos is out of the question. I’ll try again tomorrow at the next campground.