After a horrendous couple of days digging out the RV and taking it down
to New Paltz (see previous post, “Baptism By Ice: Digging Out”
http://countingstarsrvlife.blogspot.com/2015/12/baptism-by-ice-digging-out.html),
we drove back to my brother-in-law’s house in Lexington. We were
leaving the next day. It had been a challenging few days, but we were
finally starting to feel excited. We ran a few errands in the early
afternoon gathering together some last minute supplies. Then we heard
that we would be getting another six inches of snow.
We were an hour away from New Paltz and, come morning, we would need to close up and winterize the house and drive down the mountain. Closing up the house and driving to New Paltz would take at least a couple of hours; so, with the coming snow, we decided it would be best to close the house then and spend the night in New Paltz. I made a few phone calls and found a motel a block from where the RV was parked. I made a reservation. We packed up, closed the house and headed there. By the time we arrived it was dark and the snowfall was near blizzard conditions. We checked into the motel, ordered a pizza delivered to our room – what a cool thing – and settled in for the night. Neither of us got much sleep. We were excited, like kids on Christmas Eve kind of excited; but, we were also worried about the weather and what we would find in the morning.
We were up at 6:00 AM. We had a quick breakfast and we drove one block to the RV. For the second time in as many days, but not the last, Bill cleaned the new fallen snow off the roof. We hitched up and headed to our first stopover; Millersville, MD. The trip down was uneventful and we made good time, except for the fact that the GPS got us momentarily lost just blocks from the campground entrance. We’d been to this campsite once before so we figured it out fairly quickly and safely arrived with some daylight to spare.
Aside form the couple managing the campground – Brian and Sue - and a family in one of the cabins, we were the only guests. It was our first time hooking up and we were doing it in the ice and snow. It took hours. The 50AMP electric connection wouldn’t fit on the RV connector; it took forever to figure it out even with the help of the manager, Brian, and our dealer, Chuck. Once we got that done we found that the TV and fireplace weren’t working and half the outlets were dead. Bill was on the phone with Chuck a dozen times during all of this and in the coming days - Chuck was really great. Brian and Chuck insisted that it was a GFI problem but Bill told them that the GFI outlets were working. They couldn’t find the problem. We finally gave up and went to bed.
The water pipes froze that night and the next night in spite of the fact we left the taps open and dripping. Determined to resolve the electrical issue, Bill decided he wanted to check the campground connection. Brian said he had never heard of a receptacle being partly dead. Bill worked for Con Edison for 36 years and, although he wasn’t in the electric department, said it was a fairly common occurrence. Reluctantly, the manager checked the campground receptacle and it turns out that one of the “hot” legs to their receptacle was dead. We ran an extension cord to the site next to us, and viola, everything worked. The manager and Chuck kept saying, as one thing after the other went wrong, “I’ve never heard of anything like that happening before.” It was a phrase we would hear often when retelling our story.
Our relief was short-lived. On our second day in Maryland the snow started falling around 1:00PM. By 8:00PM it had let up some, but was expected to continue until midnight. We now had eight inches of snow on the roof and the temperature was predicted to fall to -8º overnight. Bill was afraid that the snow would freeze and decided to clean off the roof that night instead of the next morning as we wanted to head out early. By now he was experienced at cleaning off the roof, but this time he also had to clean off the slides. And we didn’t have a ladder. As many of you know, you can’t safely reach the top of the slides from the roof, so a ladder was necessary. At 8:00PM in the dark and the snow, in a place he didn’t know, Bill headed out to the local Home Depot. As he later told me, he and the snow plows were the only things on the road. The GPS again got him lost (see Bill’s post, “GPS Blues”
http://countingstarsrvlife.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-gps-blues.html). He made it back around 9:00PM and was finally finished cleaning off the RV around 10:30PM.
Anxious to get out of the cold and snow, our next stopover in South Carolina was calling to us. However, we woke to find that, due to the icy conditions, all lanes of I-95 South were closed because of a tracker trailer accident. We weren’t able to take off until 11:00AM. What was supposed to be a seven hour drive turned out to be 10 hours…
-Diane
P.S. Oddly enough, I took no pictures in Maryland. I think maybe, subconsciously, I didn’t want any reminders. I regret it now, but at the time we just had too much going on; little of it pleasant.
Hell had frozen over. We knew because we had driven through it. We had one problem after the other and came close to regretting our decision to become RVers. Now we could see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Naturally, just as we got within a block of the campground, the GPS got us lost. We were getting used to it by now. Once we found the place Bill got his first chance to back-up the rig. He aced it. Even the campground manager was impressed. I cannot express strongly enough how happy we were to finally be in the warm weather. The heater still wasn’t working, but we didn’t need it and had three more weeks to fix it. However, we were exhausted.
We were in The Villages to visit some friends and had to call and tell them we needed a day or two to rest up. We slept, lounged by the pool and shopped. The first thing we bought was patio furniture for the porch. We lived out there the rest of the trip. The porch as was also a hit with our fellow Rvers. They would stop by to see and admire it. We met some really nice people and got a lot of great tips and advice.
