The Great End of Summer Road Trip – Almost – literally – the end of the road

So in my last installment, I mentioned a road safety issue that has become all-too-prevalent on today's highways, and it might get a bit political as I describe what happened to us driving down I-85 south of Charlotte on our way to our final layover before hitting North Georgia for a grandson fix. After all, it's been 12 weeks and 2 year-old William's vocabulary is expanding exponentially, as well as in much needed clarity.

But first we had to survive the drive.

As most of you know, I prefer to drive in the right-hand lane with my cruise control set to 57 or 58 MPH. We're retired, have no set time frame to arrive at our destinations, and if the world wants to pass us by – let them. I follow the rules of the road pretty religiously, especially the one where you're supposed to move left or slow down when encountering a breakdown or a police car who has pulled someone over for a traffic stop.

But sometimes, that's just not possible with today's crowded highways.

As we are heading south, I see not one, but TWO tractor trailers in the breakdown lane ahead of me, but there is no opportunity to bail out of the right hand lane, due to a couple of other tractor trailers in the lane to my left. Both tractor trailers in the breakdown lane had their emergency flashers on.

As I approach approximately 70 yards from the rear-most tractor trailer, he suddenly PULLS OUT INTO MY LANE! I yell a quick curse, and slam on the brakes, pretty much figuring our home on wheels is about to be destroyed by some idiot trucker. And there was NO WAY he had bothered to check his mirrors before pulling out, as it was a straight stretch of road with nobody in that lane except for us.

Now, tractor trailers don't accelerate very fast, and motor homes don't stop on a dime, especially gas models like ours without air brakes. At this point, I'm also thanking God that most drivers don't like to drive behind RV's because we block their line of sight, because the last thing we need is someone tailgating us and smashing into us from behind.

As luck and preparation would have it, we ended up slowing down to that idiot trucker's speed with less than 30 feet to spare. About half the length of our RV / toad length. Makes me wish the front camera had been recording at the time.

Three things contributed to our collision avoidance:

1. Keeping the motor home under it's maximum weight capacity so that the brakes could handle the load.

2. Keeping my speed under 60 MPH all the time.

3. The Roadmaster Invisibrake we bought and had installed last January. Had we not had that installed, the 3,600lbs of Jeep Cherokee we tow behind us would have been pushing us forward instead of pulling us back as the brakes of the motor home were slammed on.

All this to say that, unfortunately, this type of bad driving is becoming almost an epidemic on our highways, with both inexperienced newbies and immigrants both legal and illegal getting their CDLs without being able to read a lick of the English language. It shows in examples like this one, as well as when there are lane closure warning being given miles in advance, and truckers barreling past us without a care in the world and having to squeeze themselves over as they run out of road.

There's been no shortage of stories regarding bad truck drivers in the past couple of years, and we were almost one of the casualties. Only a combination of still-quick reflexes and the above safety practices allowed me to be able to write this story.

At least this story has a happy ending, and we've arrived at our Georgia destination for the month of October. Don't know when the next installment of Parental Parolees will be, of if anyone is even bothering to read this now that I'm not announcing new articles on social media. If you like what you're reading, drop me a quick comment and let me know.

The Great End of Summer Road Trip – Part 9

The voyage south has had it's moments.

Our first stop below the Mason-Dixon line was Endless Caverns RV Campground. As campgrounds go, it's a pretty good one with gravel roads and sites terraced on a hillside. They've got a bounce pad and playground that Jace would love had he been traveling with us, golf carts for rent, and a nice set of walking trails . Their pool had already been shut down for the season (bummer!), like so many others on the latter part of this trip.

They also had the Endless Cavern tour right on-site.

Now, we had brought the daughters to Luray Caverns years ago, taken Jace through the caverns containing Ruby Falls, and of course Barbara and I had done the mother of all cavern tours when we visited Carlsbad Caverns on our first westward swing in the motor home years ago, so you'd have to be pretty special to impress us with a cave tour.

Endless Caverns does NOT impress.

The tour starts off with endless warnings about not touching anything underground – walls, ceilings, no walking through puddles of water – and I get it; those warnings are there to protect the caverns from surface damage caused by skin oils and the like. The problem comes in when you're trying to maneuver your way through the caverns via a floor worn slick from endless footsteps and sometimes on a thin rug covered in endless cave dust so as to make footing treacherous. With almost no handrails for support except in a few areas with stairs or steeper slopes.

In short, due to the need to keep your eyes on your footing, you end up missing many of the lighted displays set up for the tour itself.

We hated it. Not at all worth the $25 per person cavern tour fee.

Heading out for a rendezvous with my brother Doug and sister-in-law Tracey in North Carolina, we had to take the motor home over the Blue Ridge mountains. Now understand, I have a GPS program on my iPad that was developed for truckers and modified for the RV world, and with few exceptions has provided exemplary directions for more than 7 years and 66,000 RV miles. I have parameters set for “prefer highways” which means interstates, state parkways and state (numbered) roads.

But state roads in Virginia, while technically safe for truck and RV traffic, are merely local 2-lane roads working their way through isolated small towns on your way to and from destinations.

So we find ourselves on a road boasting a 12% uphill grade and 5 or 6 “switchbacks” used to get up the mountain, meaning I'm reefing this 52-foot motor home / Jeep combination through extremely tight turns that limit cars to 15 miles per hour, and praying that no one is coming down the mountain the other way who needs the same amount of room I need on the switchbacks in order to go up!

And frankly, I'm lucky to be hitting 10 miles per hour, not that I'd want to go faster even if I could.

The way down is the same 12% grade, but at least it's without switchbacks, so I've got the RV in 2^nd gear and pumping my brakes to keep my front tires from exceeding their 155 degree temperature maximums.

They hit 144 degrees at their hottest.

I had hoped to include some video of that part of the drive, but our dash cam was misbehaving.

Our drive day ended at Paradise Lake and Campground on the Virginia border with North Carolina; a cute little resort with many permanent residents but one pass-through site ready for us to quickly pull in without having to disconnect the Jeep – much needed at the end of that particular drive!

Next up was one of our favorite RV pastimes – Cracker-docking at a Cracker Barrel. For this trip, it's how you meet with your brother and sister-in-law who live in Arizona without the 2,200 mile drive on I-10. They had been visiting a nephew in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina and had time enough to meet us for breakfast. Cracker Barrel hardly ever disappoints, especially since they let us park our rig away from their buildings for a free overnight stay.

It's been almost 2 ½ years since we last saw each other after our Dad passed away, so even a short family fix was much needed.

But there's till a few miles and drive days to go before we finish up the Great End of Summer Road Trip, and our next installment will highlight one of the all-too-prevalent safety problems on the road today.

But you'll have to wait to find out what it is in the next Parental Parolees!