October 21 — After our weekend in Boston and one final night with Cousin Aleta in Connecticut, we moved back into Charley this morning with plans to drive 200 miles down to southeast Pennsylvania where we are setting our circus down once again – this time for four days west of Philadelphia. For those who know this part of the country, you know we can simply hop on I-95 and take it down the rest of the Connecticut coast, over the GW Bridge and around NYC, down the New Jersey Turnpike to Philly and to our campground. But as it goes with this gypsy lifestyle of ours where we drag around our ‘studio apartment on wheels’ as Fred likes to call it, we ran into a low railroad bridge – 11’1″ clearance – just 500 feet from our desired entrance to I-95. Needing 12’4″ of headroom for Charley, we couldn’t make it under. [Insert gameshow voice that bother, Tom, does so well: Wah wah….]
Fortunately, my driver – of course, this would be Fred – was paying attention and we were able to bail into a parking lot just before the bridge and thus avoid the terribly embarrassing and wickedly (borrowed this word from Boston) expensive incident of sheering the top of our RV right off, leave aside the fact that this would considerably delay our plans of fleeing south to get out of the looming cold. But anyway, we got ourselves turned around and once again headed back north where we would need to re-route ourselves. I as the CLO [Chief Logistics Officer] was thinking we could just head a little more south and west to the next I-95 entrance point a few miles down. But not so fast… dang!… same railroad line – this one, too, with only 11’1″ of clearance under the bridge right next to the highway entrance. It didn’t take me too much longer to figure out that this was very likely the Metro-North line that shuttles 125,000 commuters from CT to NYC every day, and this would mean that it would parallel I-95 and likely present low bridge problems all the way down the line/Interstate. Well this CLO was not going to be stymied! With the aid of my couldn’t-live-without-it Google Maps app, I found a new route for us that took us back pretty far north, then west to Bridgeport where we could make it onto Hwy 8 that went south and then fed onto I-95. I’ll bet my average reader doesn’t have to think about low clearance bridges like we now do…!
But anyway, we finally made it onto our desired highway, steered a very wide berth around NYC and made it into our KOA Kampground [that’s right, with a ‘K’, where we’re racking up our Kamping Points on our Kamping Kard!!] Incidentally, we’re sorry, Anne & Linda; we won’t be coming to visit you in NYC this trip as it’s just too difficult with Charley having the final say in our itinerary.
After our hour-long delay up in Connecticut and a lunch stop at the truck stop in Fort Lee, NJ (talk about an interesting place!) we made it to our destination where it is somewhat warmer. We set up camp, showered, and then met my dear friend, Troy, at her house for some wine and nibbles before a delicious dinner in West Chester with her.
All in all it was a good day and we’re finally on our way to some southern destinations and ultimately winter warmth. Unfortunately the weather forecast for the next two days doesn’t look too promising for this area in the country, but that’s okay….
