On the Road

About 9am on Monday morning, we were loaded and ready to go! I was so anxious trying to get away from the city congestion – it was practically unbearable sitting in that traffic! But finally, we reached the Indiana border and a relief settled in as the cars disappeared.

But the drive wasn’t quite so easy. Pretty quickly Artur and I ran into some disagreement with the GPS. I, personally, don’t care for the GPS. I guess you could say I’m old-school – I like to look at the map and plot out my route in advance. I will reference the map throughout the travel, but should have a general idea, in my head, what roads I will be taking. Artur, on the other hand, just wants to jump in the car, enter our end destination, and follow the instructions. But, on this route, the GPS got it wrong….

No biggie, though, Artur and I smoothed it out and figured out where to go. To avoid the toll roads, we endured highway 30 through Indiana and Ohio. It was relatively slow going, but we got away from the traffic jams and speeding cars. What we couldn’t avoid, however, was the sheer tedium of Indiana and Ohio. Being from the Midwest, flat farmland is in no way exciting to me. But once we hit Pennsylvania, the whole story changed.

I’d been to Pennsylvania previously, but I must not have driven the length of I-80. It was a stunning drive – I recommend it to everybody! Hilly and foresty, with quite a few lakes and rivers. The scenery was beautiful and serene. But the drive wasn’t quite so smooth. If our life were a novel, that first chapter would’ve been analysed with some strong foreshadowing. The entire drive was filled with rain! Ranging from slight drizzle to full-on torrents, there were many points where I just wanted to stop for the day! And boy was it cold!

Our first night on the road, we settled into a truck stop for the night. I don’t mind the truck stops – actually, I feel pretty secure staying there. With so many trucks, rvs, and people around, I don’t worry about being secure…..And the noise doesn’t bother me – complete silence would bother me more! The second night, however, we made it to the campground and settled in there. But all was not well…

We met up with the evening ranger (a super nice fellow workamper!), and he helped us pick a site that was available. Artur pulled the trailer in, and we hooked up all the cables (in the cold rain). It was rather unpleasant, and thankfully, Artur managed those tasks. We got the slides out and while Artur was fiddling with the hook-ups outside, I began to get some of the random items put into place (we needed some room to walk around!).

Before too long, I made a disturbing discovery – water leaking in the kitchen! It was a rather terrifying hour or so – drying up the kitchen, realizing we couldn’t go to the hardware store to attempt to fix the leak (we were locked in the campground), and wondering how we were going to get our “home” to the shop for repairs. There was a brief moment when it was suggested that we might need to drop this idea and return to Chicago. Me, in my infinite wisdom, declared that since there was nothing we could possibly do tonight, we should just stop thinking about it and deal with it tomorrow.

So we did. Artur connected the tv, we relaxed as much as we could in the circumstance, and we went to bed.