I have to admit that breaking the suction and moving on to this new chapter in our adventure was hard. The great kindness and help that has been shown to us is humbling. And without these amazing people in our lives we would not have been able to do this adventure.
80 days since we first left New Zealand (plus a return trip to NZ for me), 2 trips to Canada, 2 trips to Portland Maine and a visit to Boston, we pulled away from the US Cousins and headed out on our adventure. We are keeping track of where we have travelled so far on a map, and when I transfer it to the map of the USA it just shows me how large this country really is. We already feel as if we have one and seen so much, yet we have only covered such a little corner of this country.
Saturday arrived sunny, so it was all hands on deck to get the Garden Gnome (alias Ellie-Mae) ready for the big trip. TOH in his infinite wisdom found a new friend he had to introduce to me. Rest assured I only opened the door enough to take the photo and then it was smartly shut. So that is now 2 more item ticked off the bucket list, my first snake (albeit dead) and the TOH had a tick on him the day I arrived back. Now the removal of that was interesting. Boy do those little buggars hang on.
But the suction had to break. Sunday dawned wet and the weather on the trip west was in parts horrendous. As with all new travellers we had a few hiccups on the way. We have an app for travelling with a 5th Wheeler, which enables us to avoid low bridges, narrow roads and tunnels while providing us GPS directions on how to get to where we are going. Having used it to travel to Canada from Maine, we thought we had a handle on how to work it. Well to quote an old quote….. “You know what thought thought ……” As we started off we realised the App had reset itself, and lost our rig dimensions, that it had flipped back to Kilometres instead of miles and lost our preferences.
Lesson No 1: Learn the App well, so that you can avoid town centres, while still allowing you to take the route you prefer.
Lesson No 2: Always check the app and have it set up the night before leaving, NOT as your trying to drive along a very busy (even on a Sunday) Interstate.
Lesson No 3: Always make sure your both in agreement and/or understand each other as to the preferences. (i.e. do we take toll roads or do we take the weenie, teenie, windy little small roads (get the picture) that run through every small town the app can find and also add over an hour or more to the trip!!!).
Also Lesson No 4: Always check the rig is set to be driven and in particular….. the handle on the steps is locked away and not still sticking out!!!!!
Believe me all lessons well learnt (and a few more that I am not even going to think about). You will all be pleased to know that we did finally arrive safely to our new home for 3 nights (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), to a beautiful tree covered Bonnie Brae Campground. We found our site and parked and hooked up like we had been doing it for years…. and in the rain as well. After a stiff G&T and dinner cooked indoors due to the rain we settled down to watch a movie and were able to laugh about all the lessons we have learnt on this trip west and look forward to a sunny and hot Monday.
