Here are all the places we stayed during the trip.
Here is a link to view the specifics of the places we stayed.
The long drive back to San Diego
In New Orleans my knee started giving me trouble again, probably due to all the running around in Red Bay trying to get things to happen. Kathy really wanted to get home anyway, so we are just driving about 300 miles a day toward SD.
First night was in Beaumont, Texas, then on to San Antonio for Saturday night. Sunday night was spent in Fort Stockton, Texas. Geez, Texas is a big state and El Paso is still about 200 more miles. We spent the the night in Las Cruces, New Mexico on Monday, then on to the Tucson area, actually someplace called Picacho, AZ, about 40 miles north of there Tuesday evening.
We arrived in San Diego yesterday on Wednesday, October 25th!! Kathy was sad to leave all the trees of the East Coast. Western Texas all the way to the steep Mountain Springs Grade to the Jacumba Pass is basically treeless. 1,200 miles of desert with few trees.
I just checked the mileage and we drove 10,375 miles over the last 5 months and 3 days. Holy Cow.. That’s about $4,000 just for diesel fuel!!!! Plus we put about 6,500 miles Kathy’s car driving around sightseeing!!
What a great trip. Once we get the coach fully unloaded and cleaned, I need to start on the modifications for the next trip in January, boondocking near Quartzite for a week on BLM land. That includes adding a couple hundred watts of solar to the roof and replacing the worn-out house batteries, plus the addition of a new TV up front so the news can be watched without bringing up the TV behind the sofa.
(A special thanks to Gloria and Pat for coming over to help unload since Bill couldn’t walk with his knee. I couldn’t have done it by myself!!!)
Starting the Trek West
We left Savannah early on Friday morning so we could be past downtown Atlanta before their afternoon rush hour. Only rest stop I could find for the whole trip was closed for construction, so we used fuel stations to walk the pups and ourselves.
I had never stopped at a Loves truck stop before so it was a learning experience. First thing is you cannot pay at the pump with a credit card, you must go inside the store. They appear to have two pumps for each bay, but I was not sure how you made the other pump work as there wasn’t any controls. I have filler caps on both sides, so I could have used both had I been able to get it to work. As it was, those massive diesel nozzles on the pump filled my tank very quickly just using one of them. [Walking the dogs over to a tiny bit of grass/weeds was scary in between those huge trucks making very loud noises, but the pups did OK, just a little skitterish!]
We camped overnight in a pull -thru at a place called Cane Creek RV campground in Heflin, Al, just over the border from Georgia. Really nice campground a couple miles from the interstate. Real quiet there. We wanted to get to Red Bay early to have a better chance at getting an RV site at the Tiffin Service Center as it’s first come first served. No reservations. We left there before 8am in an attempt to make that happen.
By the way, Hurricane Nate was heading for Alabama that weekend. We were not sure what Sunday was going to bring our way!
Charleston
We drove down from D.C over a couple of days stopping in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, for an overnight in a pull-thru. It was a pretty uneventful couple of days till after we drove thru Charleston and onto James Island where we were staying. It got real interesting real fast as we made our way on the smaller roads toward the campground. Lots of very low hanging branches and the trees themselves were leaning into the roadway. I had to drive on both sides of the road in an attempt to miss the thick branches I could see with gouges on them from prior vehicle traffic. The rooftop antennas were doing their Boing Boing Boings as we made our way the last mile or so to the campground entrance. And the Spanish moss hanging on those tree branches gave the drive an eerie overtone while experiencing the sounds coming from the antennas.
Thankfully once on the campground roadway the branches were all cut back 
to a decent height. This campground was a very large county park with all sorts of areas to do things. There appeared to be a water park, an outdoor adventure area including a rock climbing wall, lots of fishing spots. There were even crews installing Christmas lights on specially built structures all along the roadway for their Holiday Festival of the Lights, which looked more impressive and much larger than our Del Mar one. They have two fenced dog parks with beaches and a lake for them to frolic in. Kathy wasn’t about to let our pups in the water as the sign at the gate to the dog parks said alligators may live in this area. Not sure why so many dogs were playing in the water if there might be alligators just under the surface ready for lunch.
We arrived on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday morning we drove over to the visitor center in town to get a map, then we headed out to procure a parking spot, which we found on the very south end of the city along the water in front of the White Point Garden. It was from there we started our trek into the historic district.
First we strolled up Meeting Street. The houses were incredible. Each one was a little nicer than the last one. All the balconies with 
their signature ceiling fans were fabulous. Some of them seem to have painted their balcony ceiling a very light seafoam green, which was strikingly pretty. We made our way north to Market Street where we made a right to peruse the market buildings with all their shops in the middle of the north and south Market streets. 
We were going to go down Church Street but decided to walk over to the water near the wharfs and another large park I saw on the map. (Charleston is on a peninsula, water on three sides.) When we got there, it was like a gale was blowing off the water (almost blew the pups off their feet!). Just a hundred yards up Market and there was no wind. Not sure why that was. I remember NYC on a windy day, the streets were like wind tunnels.
We walked along the waters edge to the end of that park and cut back inland toward Church Street to head south to the car. Church Street had a lot of folks walking down the middle of the brick paved street and bicycles all around. There was lots of great architecture to gawk at, but the atmosphere was so different than just a block away on Meeting Street which had more cars and people plying it.
In a little while we were back in the park diagonally across from where we parked the car. We drove back to the island for a late lunch at a Mexican place that said they allowed pets on the patio. Surprisingly it was really good Mexican food, it did strike me as odd that on the front door in large letters it said “No pets”. I went inside and asked. They said, “Bring them in,” and he went out to the patio to put a couple of menus on a table for us. After we were seated he brought out a pie tin of ice water for the pups.
Once satiated we headed out toward Folly Beach on the ocean side of the Island we were camping on. James Island is large and it took a while to get there. But once there, we drove up and down the street closest to the ocean and checked out all the beautiful beach front homes. Almost every one of them was raised up about 15 feet from the ground. Must be fun to haul all the groceries up those steps! We drove down as far south as the road could take us. There was another state park. We headed in. The gale was still blowing and there were some pretty large waves coming in. The water was a muddy brown. Had never seen that in the ocean before.
Something I found out when we were at the campsite earlier that morning walking the pups, I was holding my phone and using my elevation app to determine how low this place actually was. It said we were 6 feet above sea level. I was holding the phone about 5 feet off the ground. This island is about a foot above sea level. No wonder lots of the homes even away from the beach were raised up a fair amount. Not long afterward I heard the radio advertisements from many different companies refer to the area as the “low country.” They got that right. Made me think of the Netherlands but without the dikes.
When we got back to the coach, Kathy asked how far we had walked. It hadn’t seemed like we went very far, but I had almost 12,000 steps. No wonder my knee was letting me know it was there!!
Day two we decided to do a driving tour thru more of the historic district. What a cool city. I could live here, although I had not experienced any humidity, which would probably make me rethink that if we came back in the summer. After we drove around for a couple of hours, we made it back to the park/garden at the south end of the city to get the pups out and for us to stretch 
out our legs too. We looked at all the statues from this 
first city of the secession. There were a lot to George Washington, but the most interesting was the one to all the brave confederate soldiers. It was placed in the most prominent spot in white garden park.
After we got back into the car, I started searching for a place to eat that would let us bring in the pooches. To my surprise I found an ad for a website called www.bringfido.com and it listed lots of dog friendly restaurants all over the US. There were many in Charleston, so we picked one and headed that direction. It had 5 bones (rating) and almost that high a rating for the Caribbean food. I really wanted the jerked chicken!
We got there – it was called Fuel – and it was an old gas station that had been slightly modified to make it a happening place. The patio out back was the nicest 
patio I have ever been to. A couple different levels, a high roof above for shade. A perfect place for us and the pups. There weren’t many folks there as it was pretty late for lunch on a Monday afternoon, but the food was amazing. I had a cup of sweet corn bisque and a jerked chicken sandwich. The corn bisque was the best soup I have ever had, hands down. The jerked chicken was pretty good, but not to the scale of the soup. Kathy had the sauteed shrimp salad. She said it was outstanding. And this, from a dog friendly restaurant app. Hard to believe our luck. If only we had found that app 4 months ago. Geez!
Heading to Savannah tomorrow morning.
Driving to NJ
Since the hurricanes in the Caribbean were such an unknown quantity when we were leaving the Boston area, I decided to fill up the coach even though we wouldn’t actually need fuel till the Washington, DC, vicinity. Better to be able to get out of harm’s way if needed without counting on a fuel stop during a storm.
We traveled some of the worst roads I can remember on Interstate 84 and even worse on 684. I cannot imagine what 95 would have been like as I read that 84 is a much better drive in a motorhome on a few forums. One particular jolt on 684 dropped the stabilizer bar down in front of me that holds the electric shade from moving side to side while driving. It looked like the old- time elevator gates that scissor across the opening, only in the coach it goes up and down with the shade instead of side to side on the old elevators.
Thankfully only the stabilizer dropped, but it was extremely unexpected and startling when driving down the road at 65 mph. For about 30 more miles I had to look on either side of it to drive to the next rest stop were I could try to fix it.
Luckily the bolt, sleeve and washer were right there on the dash when we stopped and it took just a few minutes to put it back together and tighten it up so that didn’t happen again. Then we were back on the highway.
After a short drive we turned off 684 to I-287 to cross the Tappan Zee Bridge. I was surprised to see there were two bridges now. The westbound lanes traverse a brand new cable stay bridge and the eastbound lanes are still on the old bridge.
Not far past the bridge was the turnoff for the Garden State Parkway. I had contacted the NJ Turnpike authority to verify I would be allowed on that roadway. Their first response was a NO, as nothing over 8 feet wide was allowed. I responded that all modern buses are 8 1/2 feet wide, the same as my coach, and I used to see lots of buses on the Parkway. The next response from the same person said they were in the process of updating their documents and that I was allowed on the parkway’s full length.
What they didn’t mention was the low bridges if you are in the fast or slow lanes, and they never mentioned the extremely narrow toll booths. One of the toll booths we went thru had maybe 3″ clearance on either side due to the mirrors extending out the sides. That was thrilling…
I have grown to love the I-pass transponder, especially the tolls that were full speed without any toll booths to drive thru.
We drove all the way down to exit 98 where we picked up interstate 195 west for 8 more miles toward Rt 9. We were camping in the boondocks for sure!
Driving down to BoothBay Harbor.
Since it was a short drive to Boothbay, we hit the road right at 11 am, which is most campgrounds’ checkout time. We headed out to find US 1 south that was just a few miles inland of us. It was a surprising drive as right after turning off the main road from Bar Harbor, there was this very nice downtown of Ellsworth, Maine. We hadn’t been that direction our whole stay as we were just off Mt. Desert Island and concentrated on poking around there.
All along the road were grand old houses as US 1 stays close to the water. One of the most surprising things of all was a large cable stay bridge. We could see it off 
in the distance and it was spectacular to get close to, then drive over it. I had only seen that type of bridge in pictures.
Most of the way down we were fighting our Google Nav directions as it kept wanting me to go down small streets and make u-turns.
Heading toward Bar Harbor.
We took two days of driving to get to the coast from Schroon Lake, NY. We drove off to find US 4 outside of Lake George thru Vermont and up and over the mountains around Killington, which I used to think were tall mountains when going there for skiing. I was shocked when we passed Killington Peak and I hadn’t noticed we were in the mountains yet. I guess I am really jaded by the 9 and 10 thousand foot passes we traversed out west. I noticed those!
Once past there, I was looking for the freeway that headed up toward St. Johnsbury so we could meet up with US 2 again. Hadn’t been on it since Michigan where it went into Canada and we had to head south due to not having our passports with us. 🙁 And the freeway was actually free. I got to test out my Ipass/EZpass in Ohio and NY to the tune of about $50 so far.
Back to finding US 2, we missed the turn for the road that went diagonally northeast that would cut off quite a bit of miles and time and we had to head back down there. It got a bit nerve racking when we came upon the 10′ clearance sign. But we stayed the course and made it back to US 302 unscathed. Took it over the US 3 and then to 115, which may have been a New Hampshire road and it brought us over to US 2. t\Then it was just a short jaunt to Shelburne, NH for the night.
We camped in a place called Timberland and the name fit, It was like we were in the middle of the woods that night. 5 feet behind our coach was a steep drop-off and a railroad track at the bottom. Didn’t want to back it in too far..
Unfortunately local WiFi was useless and so were both of our hot-spots. It was like we were back using a 9600 baud modem again.
Then next morning we got on the road early and headed east again on US 2 up to Norridgewock for cut down to I 95 north toward Bangor, Maine. Our campground was in Trenton just next to the causeway to Mt. Desert Island.
Heading toward Niagra Falls..
We got a late start for a longer drive today to right outside Sandusky, Ohio. It was mostly freeway so fairly uneventful. Lots of road construction in Michigan and Ohio. Got to go thru my first EZ-Pass toll booths today. [A big thank you to Connie for going through all our mail and sending the transponder out!!] The arm went up on the second one, the first one was already up. No indication it took our money, no lights at all. I guess the arm going up when leaving the turnpike was a good sign. I got onto my IPASS account and there is no activity yet. I guess electronic transactions take a while for the EZ-Pass folks. Maybe they use sneaker.net. 🙂
We just ordered pizza for delivery to the campsite… It’s been a long time between pizza’s.. Maybe April? Geez.
About 60 miles east of our overnight was Cleveland. I didn’t imagine the factory of sadness town would be so nice looking. [I was bummed it was too far to go to Michael Symon’s restaurant downtown!]
The second leg of the trip was about as long as the first day’s but at least we ended up on Grand Island next to Niagara Falls. As we got into the park, it started to pour, 
I almost thought it was hailing, it sounded like hail, but it didn’t look like it. It’s always fun setting up in the rain. Just finding the site in the downpour was a challenge, and of course it was a back-in site. Pull thru’s on rainy days are a godsend.
This campground is very, very nice! Even the showers are top shelf, although the water pressure was a bit on the wimpy side.
Off to the Falls in the morning.
Gaylord Michigan & a Tornado warning.
We headed out of Paradise Point Tuesday late in the morning and headed toward the Mackinac Bridge. It’s a really long bridge with a lot of construction going on that day. I just looked it up and it’s twice as long as the 
Verrazano. Weird thing is the speed limit for loaded trucks is 15 MPH. Could you imagine trucks crossing the Golden Gate, Verrazano or GW bridges at 15 MPH and it not being rush hour?!
We scheduled 5 days for Gaylord in a KOA just south of town. Pretty nice place as KOA’s go. The real reason for staying here was to get the fridge sensor fixed. We had an appointment on Wednesday @ 9 am for the diagnostic. Of course it was pouring rain Wednesday morning and I made my way to the RV dealer just north of town. They took down all the necessary info from the coach and called Norcold to ask that they ship a new sensor. Norcold asked them to try using a magnet on the sensor, which I already had done. But they explained that if the sensor had gotten wet, then I would have needed to wait a couple days to try it. I didn’t know that at the time. But when the tech tried it, (it had been almost 2 weeks) it reset. He was done and I could leave. OMG.
Thursday we decided to scrub the coach and use the new central Vac I had installed for a thorough vacuuming. Wow does that new unit have a lot of suction!! Kathy might have been right that she thought it might suck the tiles off the floor. The best thing about a central vac is the air (and dust) does not blow back into the house like a regular vacuum does. We cleaned everything well.
Wednesday evening right around 6 pm the Emergency broadcast System 
Alert went off about a Tornado a bit southwest of us. Great… More weather, I immediately got out the laptop to look at the Doppler for our area. Wow, lots of red areas around us. I went outside and put the chairs, tables and grill back in the belly of the coach and mentioned what I heard to a few of our neighbors. Thankfully the tornado touched down about 30 miles from us and was an EF0 and did almost no damage. But the rains came like a banshee and went on for hours, only slacking off a bit around midnight. Our campground looked like a lake that night . But Thursday morning it had all drained away. Must be all sand around here.
Friday was a down day, we did some grocery shopping and basically was lazy 
all day. Hey, I really am retired. Saturday I affixed the I-Pass/EZ-Pass Toll Transponder to the windshield. I attempted to charge it up for all the tolls I will be hitting in Ohio and NY in the next few days as we head toward Niagra Falls. Turns out I had to add a new credit card number to the account as the one I used to initially order the device and put the minimum amount in the account would not work for reloading the account. I guess they must use different merchant accounts for initialization and refills. I use VAN’s for most autopay stuff, (Virtual Account Numbers) thru my Citi cards. Sometimes they can be a bit tricky in situations where the might use different merchant numbers each time. I know Amazon does, so I cannot use a VAN there, I tried.
I also spent some time trying to get tickets for some of the TV Shows in NYC. The Late Show, SNL and especially for Kathy The Chew and Dr Oz. It will be interesting to see if any come thru while we are still in the area.
Heading toward De Tour Village & Paradise Point RV park.
We left early around 8:30 am so we could hit the dump station and still get to the next park at a reasonable time. Summer Breeze campground was really nice and I almost didn’t want to leave, but it was time to get to a new spot. The drive was unremarkable till we hit the city (village) limits when a dark, black cloud enveloped the town and our view out the front. We pulled over so I could check the NWS CONUS Doppler radar web site.
By now the lightning was spectacular out the front window. Not really a good thing when you consider what that means. Anyway, I determined the storm was moving southwest and we should be thru it quickly. Wow, was I incorrect! We started to head to the campground and the storm hit us like a brick. We got to the turnoff for the road out to the point when the rain and wind picked up significantly. At one point on that small road, Kathy started yelling that she couldn’t see, slow down! Inconsequential when you realize I was the one driving.
We came around a 90-degree turn and it was like we hit a hurricane, The rain was horizontal and hitting us dead on, making the wipers on high of no use then. I was just driving by braille then, hoping not to hit one of the bumps. I eventually found the dirt road turnoff for the campground. Now we only had to get thru the locked gate, to which we had a code. But when we got there, it was raining too hard to open the window to punch it in.
Then out of nowhere a person started walking toward us with a small umbrella. He was going to open the gate for us. You need to realize it was a torrential rainfall. How his umbrella stayed open in the wind gusts was amazing to me. What he didn’t know was that I knew the code for the gate, but the rain was coming in at such an angle it was streaming down the driver’s window channel on the inside. I was just trying to keep it from getting on the floor in the coach. I had lots of towels shoved into the channel to sop it up prior to the channel filling and overflowing on the floor. For the most part it worked. And the guy opening the gate made it even better so I didn’t have to open that window to punch in the code. [Thank you, Tony!]
The sun came out just a few minutes after we parked and I learned the name of the good Samaritan. His name was Tony and his wife’s name was Julie. He had just purchased his coach a few months ago too. His license plate was a take-off on Cousin Eddy from the Christmas Vacation movie. I had not seen that one, but am looking for a download soon as Cousin Eddy had a motorhome. It was the same year as ours and had done some upgrades to get it just right.
An hour later we were sitting outside watching the water as the sun was slowly making its way toward the horizon over this glorious little bay in front of us. Large cargo ships were traversing the waterway in the distance, and now that the sun is down, with full lights blazing.
We sat outside talking with the neighbors about their travels and where they were heading till the mosquitoes forced all of us to head into our RV’s quickly. Tonight was Kathy’s mosquito introduction. We don’t have mosquitoes in San Diego.