We’re off! 2018 East Coast Tour Time! Update #1

I’m sitting here at the Philadelphia South KOA right now on Day 6 out of 62 of our 2018 summer road trip. I just finished blogging about last summer’s trip, so I’ve been thinking about this summer’s blogging goals and how to stay a bit more on top of things this year so that I’m not writing posts about this trip in 2024 or something.

Last year I did weekly (ish) recaps, and I plan to do that again….but I’ll also try to get a jump on the more detailed posts as I go along. And in behind the scenes news, last year I was very proud of how well I did keeping up with photo editing. This year I want to do that again and add in taking good daily notes about things we do and places we stay, so that my posts don’t gradually get less detailed in the months to come as my memory fades.

Okay! So we left Sunday morning and spent Sunday and Monday nights in Durham, NC at Falls Lake State Recreation Area, where we had an estate-sized site with a view of the lake:

We spent our full day in Durham touring the Duke Lemur Center:

…and braving the rain to check out the excellent outside exhibits at the Museum of Life and Science:

Then on to Washington, DC, or, more specifically, Lake Fairfax Park in Reston, VA. This was a nice find of a campground–maybe 45 minutes outside of the city (or 10 minutes from a Metro stop), and $50/night for electric only. Which would be a lot for electric only most places, but not so much so close to the city.

Our first DC day was perhaps our least well-planned for the entire trip. We wanted to see monuments. Maybe the National Gallery? Maybe the Library of Congress? We were also using this day as a sort of experimental trial to see if it made sense to drive into the city instead of taking the train. And it did! We found parking pretty easily everywhere we went; the main issue with it is that it’s all 2 or 3 hour parking, so you have to keep moving the car if you want to stay longer.

Anyway, we ended up seeing the Jefferson Memorial, which was one we’d never been to before:

Despite the look of that sky, the rain held off until we were back to the campground in the evening. We recreated one of my favorite photos of all time at the FDR Memorial.

Abe at 18 months with Fala and FDR:

And 5 year old Abe with Fala and FDR:

It’s extra special now because we have our own Scottie!

We didn’t make it to the National Gallery, but we did hit the Library of Congress, which is a gorgeous building:

But Abe was a bit of a monster here. He’s not at his best at the beginning of trips. He seems to be settling in now, although bedtime remains a trouble spot. Change is hard when you’re five, I guess.

Our second DC day was set aside primarily for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and it very much lived up to the hype:

And that brings us up to Philadelphia, which I have not yet edited photos of. Soon!

From here, we go to New York and then on to Cape Cod, Vermont, Acadia National Park, and then on to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island before making our way home by way of upstate New York and western Pennsylvania.

Random thoughts:

*The dogs are with us on this trip. Well, two out of three dogs. We left Fiesta the beagle at home with the house sitters because 1. some of the campgrounds we’re staying at only allow two dogs and 2. Fiesta is our most emotionally healthy dog and the one least likely to care much that we’re gone as long as she has someone feeding her and petting her and a warm place to sleep. So far it’s going pretty well. Our main worry was about getting back to the trailer on touring days in time to feed them and let them out, but there are worse things than not doing marathon touring days. There are a couple of places where we’ll board them for a day or two to make things a little easier, though.

*We’ve been plagued by rain so far on this trip. I hope it stops raining so much soon.

*I counted and I think we’re staying in 19 different campgrounds on this trip (in 62 days). Last year we did something like 30 campgrounds in 59 days. So this should be a much slower pace, with a lot fewer overnight stops. I think that will be nice. Also fewer super long driving days.

RV Catastrophe of the Week:

The return of a fun feature from last year’s updates!

Where do I start? I hope we’re front loading minor catastrophes here.

*The day before we left, we discovered a small soft spot in the trailer floor, which means water is getting in somewhere, somehow, and has been for awhile. I completely panicked for a few minutes until Dave could talk me down. It’s possible I’ve internalized all the warnings about water and RVs a little too well. It was too late to have anyone look at it before we left, so we caulked everywhere we could think of and resolved to try to forget about it (aside from checking occasionally to make sure it’s not getting worse) for the trip and take it in when we get back.

*During a heavy rain at Lake Fairfax Park, water started coming in through the window in the kitchen. Some googling suggested the weep holes in the window frame might be the problem. We cleaned them out as well as we could, and–a couple more heavy rainstorms later–things seem okay again.

*Ari’s bed is on a lift system, so that it’s stored up by the ceiling during the day and we push a button to bring it down at night. The night we got to Philadelphia it wouldn’t come down. Going through the troubleshooting flow chart in the owner’s manual proved unproductive. We went to Walmart and bought a cot. First thing tomorrow we bring it to Camping World and hope they can figure out what’s going on.

I had hoped the kinks were all worked out and I wouldn’t even have any catastrophes to report on this summer, but it turns out that RVing is pretty much just a series of minor catastrophes. Maybe travel in general is. Worth it? Yes. But I really hope we can get Ari’s bed working again soon.

 

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