The trip home was relatively un-eventful. Vicky spend most of the time laying down on the dashboard so she could see where we were going. Other times she would be laying across Margie's shoulders just enjoying the scenery. We stayed at the track Saturday night, and bright and early Sunday morning we made our way back to Rapid's house to drop off the trailer. Our plans were to leave the trailer at his house, and find a campground to stay in so we could empty our holding tanks and refill the fresh water tank for the ride home. We found that there was a KOA Campground roughly 10 miles from Rapid's house, in Adel, Iowa. It was a little small compared to the one we stay at back home, but it was very clean, and it had a WiFi connection!
After we got all settled in, I hear a shriek from the back! We have a flood! Water is all over the floor, coming from the wall! After about an hour of searching around for where it was coming from, I managed to find the culprit. A drain hose in the kitchen had worked itself lose. All fixed, and now we could settle in and watch some satellite TV. Yea, it was rough, but we managed to survive the night.
Monday morning we left on our journey back home. I faithfully followed Jeeves' directions and everything seemed to work out fine. The motorhome never skipped a beat, and actually ended up using 9mpg for the entire trip. That's a 2mpg improvement over the V10 Bus we had last year. One interesting thing I noticed during the trip, was the difference in the drivers between the mid-west and the East coast. When we were out West, we were amongst the majority, (trucks) but as soon as we reached PA, all that changed and we were now one of the minority. Some people must think that because you have great big tires, you must have great big brakes as well. The closer we got to home, the worse it got.
Our first stop was in a service area in Ohio. No WiFi, but we were able to let the generator run all night which drowned out the noise from all the big rigs that were around us plus it allowed us to run the AC. Shortly after we left that lot, it started to rain, and it kept on raining for the remainder of the trip. One part of me was thankful for the rain, because it washed off all the suicidal bugs from the windshield. I took us thru the Certified Scales to see what everything weighed. The motorhome alone was 26,540, and the trailer was 7640, for a total of 34,180lbs.
During our next fill-up, which happened to be in PA, I took a peek at our KOA book and found that there was a KOA Campground near us, and it was in the Pocano Mountains. A quick phone call got us a reservation, and we headed over there for the night. Getting to this particular campground was something that I hope never to do again. The directions were very poor, so I stopped in a little store to ask directions. "Go down the road a little ways, and there will be a fork in the road, right across from a little Church called "Holy Mary Mother Of God", or is it "Our father Who Art In heaven", well, it really doesn't matter it's too far off the street to see anyway". I managed to find the street after passing it. The roadway to the campground was just barely wide enough for the motorhome, let alone cars coming from the other way. We somehow managed to make it to the place, and I very carefully found our site. Back when I made the reservations, I told the person on the phone that our motorhome is 35' plus we are towing a 24' trailer. They told me, no problem, the pull-thru is big enough. After parking, the trailer was in the roadway by 4' and the front of the truck was 5' into the next roadway. We are a total of 64', and the site could hold 55'. At this point I didn't care, and we hunkered down for the night.
The next leg of the trip was exciting to say the least. We got to ride thru the traffic on the George Washington Bridge which took us a solid hour to get thru. After getting thru that mess, we were able to resume our normal travel speed of 75mph for most of the ride home. Jeeves has a feature where it shows you how many miles you have left, and also what time you will arrive. It said we would get home at 4:10 and he was right on the mark, as we pulled into our yard at exactly 4:10 bringing to an end, "The Trip Home".
Total round trip mileage - 3023
Total Diesel fuel consumed - 335 gallons
Total amount of fun - TONS
Mike & Margie Casella (and Vicky too)