Jace Vacation Destination #3 – New Hampshire – The Drive Day

After a wonderful stay in Niagara Falls, it was time to head to more familiar territory for Barbara and me – central New Hampshire. Specifically, Freedom, NH and a stay at Danforth Bay campground in the Lake Ossipee area. Historically for us (and Jace), this campground was the first extended stay of more than a night nearly four years ago when we headed out on our first trip in our new home. Fittingly, Jace was with us for THAT trip as well, but he was barely more than three years-old at the time.

But first we had to get there.

As with many people my age, sleep doesn't come in 8-hour increments anymore. Getting a good night's sleep for me means maybe 3-4 hours, then up for another 3-5 hours, then back to sleep for a few hours more. Being retired, this doesn't hamper things much, except on drive days. Perhaps some of you readers have noted that when you wake up in the morning, there's a new post waiting for you. Most of my typing and posting comes between the hours of 1:00 am and 4:00 am in the intervening hours between sleep.

On the rare drive days that will take a minimum of 12 hours if everything goes well, this can be a problem.

So it's important for all of us (especially me) to “strike while the iron is hot” so to speak when approaching a long drive day. That means that when I get up, EVERYBODY else gets up so that we can get on the road and arrive in one piece. For Barbara and Grover, it's not a big deal. Both can nap if they need to, and certainly do if I have interrupted their sleep cycles. But now we have an almost 7-year-old with us, and there's no telling how that's going to work out!

I'm up at 11:45 pm, and by 12:10 am we're pulling out of our campsite in NY. Everything but shore power had been disconnected before we went to bed, so it was a simple task to take Grover out to do his business, unplug from the pedestal, bring in slides and jacks and strap ourselves in. For Jace, this meant no car seat for the early part of the ride. He's a very good sleeper; going right back to sleep if he wakes up in the middle of the night. So Barbara came up with a solution to just loosely strap Jace in with a seat belt on the couch, give him his pillow and cover him up. Given his propensity to roll around in his bed at night, I wasn't too sure how well this would work, but he slept pretty much straight through until around 7:00 am (his usual wake up time). And he didn't fall out of “bed”.

Jace let me take a 2-hour nap in the back bedroom while we parked in a Mass Pike Service area, we grabbed a surprisingly well-prepared McDonald's breakfast and it was back on the road to finish our drive, arriving at Danforth Bay at 2:00 pm. Thank goodness we have a motor home, as setting up is pretty automated except for attaching water, sewer and electric, since I was pretty wiped out after 600 miles, 2 stops for gas, and one 2-hour nap. Longest drive day ever for us.

But we got here.

Just a couple of points to note about the drive:

I-90 through New York State is long, but in remarkably good condition for a highway in the northeast. A lot of recent repaving has resulted in a very easy and relatively quiet ride in our motor home. I honestly wasn't expecting that.

The tolls on the early part of this trip have been BRUTAL due to the direct nature of our trip planning. Three weeks of motor home travel in West Virginia, New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire have resulted in approximately $80 charged to our EZ-Pass thus far, with travel to and from our Maine destination and more Massachusetts driving yet to come . . .

The Mass Pike has completed some really nice improvements to their service areas along the entire length of the roadway in recent years. New buildings, and more importantly, new gas and diesel pumps designed for large trucks and RV's. Instead of RV-ers like us having to potentially block the access ways by the gas pumps in front, they have installed 4 long pull-through lanes accessed via the rear of the building which allow fill-ups without blocking traffic. More importantly for us gas motor home owners, there is a single gas pump in the left-most lane of those four lanes that makes my life easier. Sure, you'll pay the higher than normal price for gas on the turnpike, but the ease of pulling straight in and out more than makes up for the higher prices.

Up next, will New England weather interfere with Jace's vacation plans?