"If Tomorrow Never Comes..." Garth Brooks

What a day!  We left Quechee, VT a little after 9:00AM in the rain.  We drove in the rain, which was very hard at times, until about 1:00PM.  After that there were only sprinkles on and off.  We got on I-89 South a couple of miles from the RV park and followed it to I-91 South.  As we came into Springfield, MA the traffic came to a crawl and was backed up as far as I could see.  There was talk on the CB of an 18-wheeler accident with spilled fuel that required a haz-mat cleanup.  We never really came to a full stop, but we did crawl very slowly for 35 minutes before, magically, the parking lot was history.  We never did see any sign of the accident.

While driving across Connecticut we passed the exit for Sandy Hook, where the elementary school massacre occurred.  If I had been in the car I would have gone into Sandy Hook just out of curiosity.  I still can’t believe that absolutely nothing has been done to prevent it from happening again.  Blame it on the Not Responsible Association and their influence over Congress.

At West Hartford, CT we picked up I-84 West and were soon in New York State.  The traffic was heavy (Friday afternoon?) and at one point I was in the left lane passing an 18-wheeler when I saw something to my left out of the corner of my eye.  I was startled to see a pickup truck rapidly passing me on the left shoulder (between me and the guard rail along the median).  If it hadn’t rattled me so I would have given him a blast of the air horns.  The 18-wheeler that I was passing did see him pass me and blew his horns at the pickup as it passed by him.  Some people are just stupid and suicidal!  Just thinking about it makes me angry again.

We stopped at an I-84 rest area in New York about 3:00PM to decide where we would stop for the day.  There just aren’t very many RV parks near the PA/NY border on  I-84.  We checked with a couple of Wal-Marts only to learn that they did not allow overnight parking.  After consulting our directories and several iPhone apps we found Tri-State RV Park just across the state line in, get this, Matamoras, as in Mexico, but this one is in PA.  I called and they were full but said we could dry camp (no services) if we wished.  We wished.  We pulled in about 4:00PM and were led to a grassy area where other RVs were parked.  I pulled onto the grass and immediately the motorhome became stuck.  The lady leading us asked me to pull up a little more and I told her I couldn’t because I was stuck!  She said that at least the car was out of the street so we could stay where we were.  She said that "Charlie" could help us get out tomorrow.  Meanwhile, I unhooked the car and tried to back out.  No luck.  I rocked it back and forth a few times to no avail so I quit.  I didn’t want the tires to dig in deeper.  About that time the bottom feel out of the sky and it began pouring down rain.  I’m not going to worry about getting out until tomorrow.  Otherwise, I’ll just get upset.  Right now I’m eating cheese and drinking duty-free Canadian Club that we bought at the Canada/US border.

We were on the road about seven hours today, minus about an hour’s worth of stopping but made slightly less than 250 miles, although, we drove through parts of Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania.  I kept forgetting what state we were in.  It’s really weird when you realize that it takes two whole days to drive across Texas.