Our RV Adventures

I went outside this afternoon to run another check on the truck’s A/C system. Based on yesterday’s results I figured the Freon level would have slowly leaked back down to zero. And it had.

So I’ve got medium size leak, and not a big one. And rather than try and go any further myself, I’ll take it over to Mike’s Auto Repair, the place that replaced my water pump last June.

I could probably do it, but I have to buy some equipment I no longer have. Like a Freon leak detector, a full set of gauges, etc., and then there’s finding the time to do it.

So I’ll try to set up a car rental in the next couple of days and then get it in the shop.

This morning when I got up Jan said that during the night she had thought of something that she wanted to do this morning, but now couldn’t remember what it was.

I told her that what she should do is keep a pencil and paper by the bed, and if she thought of something during the night, just write it down. But when she said that was a great idea, I warned her that it might not always work out.

When she asked why, I told that back in college I woke up in the middle of the night with a great idea for something, and wrote it down. But when I looked at the paper the next morning, it said,

“Don’t forget to feed the Unicorns.”

This was a surprise to me because I didn’t even know it was my job to FEED the Unicorns.

Another in our Where We Were 11 Years Ago Today series.

July 12, 2009

Baltimore and Buggies…

We left Lake Fairfax County Park in Reston, VA about 10 am, heading north for Pennsylvania. Kinzers, PA to be exact.

And things were going fine until we hit Baltimore.  Actually, I would like to hit Baltimore.

It deserves to be punished.  Twice.

Because that’s how many times we were forced to drive thru DOWNTOWN Baltimore.  Yes. I said DOWNTOWN. In a 63 foot long vehicle!

We were heading up I-95 coming into Baltimore and approaching the Fort McHenry tunnel looking for bypass signs, since we knew we weren’t allowed in the tunnel because we have propane on board.  They consider it a HazMat problem.

Anyway, we got off at the Last Exit Before Tunnel exit, but instead of a bypass route, we were dumped off the Interstate at the edge of downtown Baltimore, and left on our own.

No signs telling us of alternate routes, nothing.  And the only way we could go was straight into Baltimore.  DOWNTOWN Baltimore!

It was really interesting to look down at the faces of amazed drivers along the streets at the traffic lights. But finally we saw a sign directing trucks to I-95. And we took it.

Big mistake.

We ended up back on the Interstate just one exit down from where we got off before. And had to get off again.

Suddenly we were heading right back into Baltimore just like before. On the same street.

I found a place to pull over taking up about six parking spaces and plotted a new course on my GPS mapping program thru town, around the tunnel, and out on US 30 and back to I-95.

And it would have worked great, except for two things.

The Baltimore Orioles were playing and a lot of streets were blocked off because of the game. Streets I wanted to drive on.

And the other streets I wanted to drive on all seem to be under construction.

We kept heading in the right direction and looking up, we could see the road we wanted to be on, elevated above us, but never found any onramps to it. But after wandering around for over an hour, we finally made it out of beautiful, downtown Baltimore.

Soon we were in Pennsylvania, motoring through Amish country.  And there were Amish buggies everywhere.  We had to be very careful going over the hills.

Finally, we were less than a mile from our RV park and at a intersection a sign said “Low Clearance Ahead”.

No height mentioned

And the sign was far enough down the road from the intersection that by the time we saw it we were committed.

And then less than a half mile from the park we come to the Low Clearance, a railroad underpass with a sign that “Height: 12 feet 0 inches”

And we’re 12 feet 6 inches.

I can drop about 6 inches by dumping the airbag suspension, but you can’t always trust these signs down to the inch.  Sometimes what will happen is the the street will repaved multiple times under the underpass,  raising the level of the street,  shortening the height, and making the signs wrong.

So we didn’t chance it.

But we had to unhook the toad, so I could turn around in the small parking area where we had stopped in front of the underpass. About a mile down the road we found an overpass instead of an underpass.

At last, a few minutes later, we were pulling into the park.

It had been a very long day.

And I still hate Baltimore!

Thought For The Day:

There’s just not enough crayons to explain some things to some people. Not even the 200 count bucket would be enough.