Well, first of all, we'd like to once again thanks folks on this forum for their help!!! As one might expect, doing a nearly 8,000 mile trip through 23 states, is going to produce a few problems that this forum helped us with!
We live in Central Washington State and my wife and I have wanted to go to Maine for as long as we can remember so 2 years ago she started planning our trip.
Our goal was to try and use secondary roads and scenic byways. So, we started out on I-90 but once we hit Buffalo, we didn't see I-90 again until our way home where we got on it again at Buffalo.
We found the roads in Nebraska BRUTAL; Wyoming and Kansas had some rough spots as well, but boy, Nebraska... LOL, it claimed our 2 rear hubcaps, a burner on the stove "bounced" off, TV plug on the 12v TV up front, and I think I lost a dental filling in there somewhere!!
For the most part we got VERY lucky weather wise; massive thunder, lightening, HEAVY rain, occurred at night and we really didn't face difficult weather until we hit Cheyenne, WY on the way home and then we had some treacherous wind
. We were doing 40 mpg on the freeway (no problem with traffic because there wasn't any!!!) The warning we kept getting was 60+ mph side winds (I know we should NOT have been out there) and suddenly my wife heard a noise and our slide topper was unrolling. The wind was hitting us broadside, then going up, and UN rolling the slide topper. We slowed to 20, it rolled back in and I'll save you the long version, but we eventually got to an exit to a gravel road, and I got our ladder out and with m/c straps and duct tape, secured it. We didn't build in a buffer to just sit it out like we SHOULD have, as I had doc appointments for a surgery (tomorrow) - anyway, that will fall under what to do different next time...
Overall, the trip was fantastic - our main objective was: Watkins Glen State Park in the finger lakes of NY, then Baseball HOF in Cooperstown NY, Booth Bay Harbor and Bar Harbor in Maine, then down to Plymouth, MA, before weaving our way through the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia and West Virginia as well as Kentucky.
We do not pull a toad, which would make a huge difference, but we do have a 2-person scooter that we hang on the back and the weather allowed us to use it "almost" as much as we needed. We thought we'd only need it for about 50 miles based on where we were staying and what we were after, but we ended up riding it 135 miles. LOL, we averaged 15.8 MPG going east, 14.5 mpg coming home and 97.6 mpg with the "Scoot"! It made our trip a LOT better, but it doesn't replace a small car for all the places we'd of liked to go.
Around Bar Harbor we used the free shuttle which actually takes you to a lot of places, but you have to allow for other stops = what might take 15 minutes in a car, can take 30-45 on a free shuttle bus. The other mistake was booking a campground at Bar Harbor that we THOUGHT had a free van ride to a park and ride 4 miles away where we'd catch the Bar Harbor free shuttle - problem is the campground stopped doing the free van service September 1st...….
Speaking of campgrounds, we had some diamonds and we had some TURDS. My wife thought she did plenty of research, looked at photos and read reviews, but some were just plain not what they portrayed themselves to be online and some were even better than we thought!
We were gone just a day or so under 5 weeks, we probably needed 6-7 weeks to do this trip the proper way. As said, a toad would have been a huge advantage. LOL, we took WAY TOO many clothes, as we underestimated the laundry facilities at so many places. We had upgraded our dinette foam (spendy as all get out) and what a HUGE difference it made - I mean seriously big difference. Our DISH Playmaker worked good all the way across the country - I never called DISH to change anything, I just plugged it in and took what we could!
We did everything in our power to avoid any and all tolls because we'd hear horror stories about RV's and tolls, but at one point we were suddenly at a toll area and had no choice so we went forward and it was absolutely a simple procedure. $1 for cars and $6.50 for us (lol, at this point we could care less about $6.50) but it was a wide lane, super nice toll person, and through we went!
I will "try" to add some pics to this post, but I'm unsure if I can?? The main part of this thread is to once again thank everyone for their help!!
Well, apparently I'm too stupid to attach a pic?? I've attached pics before, not sure what I'm doing wrong now... Maybe I'll try again in a week or two when I'm healed up...a little...
Stop at any sites in NE ? The Arch, Sterling Museum, Air Space Museum, our World Class Zoo in Omaha ?
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