Getting back on our schedule

 Tuesday morning we left Williamsport and started the journey to get back on our schedule and land in New Hampshire. We stopped for the night at a KOA near Oneonta, NY just off I-88. The first thing we noticed when exiting the interstate was that the GPS wanted us to turn right but signs for the KOA insisted we turn left. Years of experience told me I had better follow the signs even through I knew from viewing maps that the KOA was on the right hand side of the interstate. The signs took us winding back thru narrow country roads making several turns and routing us back under the interstate. We were beginning to wonder about our decision to follow the signs, especially when we got to the KOA and could see the bridge that was very close to the route the GPS had picked. Our first thought was that the bridge may have a very low weight limit so when checking in asked the lady why the signs took the long way here. She said there was a turn off the main road that was almost 180 degrees that only a car could make. Going back and viewing the turn from Google Maps we could see what she meant by a sharp turn. With the rig we have now and knowing the turn was there we could have made it but if you weren't expecting such a sharp turn you might not make it.

That KOA was quite plebeian and asphalt was nonexistent. There were large muddy spots in places and only a few sites that were available for transient RV's such as us. Most of the sites were filled with RV's set up as semi-permanent or permanent. Our water connection was on the opposite side of the motorhome and we had to route the hose under the chassis to make the connection. There was no sewer connection so we had to stop by the dump station on our way out the next morning. The campground did not have cable and over the air signals were too weak for our equipment. The satellite was blocked by trees so our only means of watching television was by streaming. Fortunately our Verizon  hotspot had a strong signal and the local traffic was low so streaming worked nicely. We chose this campground because it was about halfway between Williamsport and our New Hampshire destination. If we had done a little research we would have picked a different campground. Talk about rural, someone from Morgan County Tennessee would feel at home here.

If you have not spent any time traveling in New York state you might be surprised to know there are very few roads that are not constantly going up hill or down hill. The interstates here have many long and steep grades. Our new motorhome is built on a Ford E450 cutaway van chassis with the new 7.3 liter V8 and the 6 speed tow/haul mode transmission. This power train continues to impress us, especially the transmission. We can set the cruise on 65 MPH and when we hit one of those long downhill grades the speedometer stays locked on 65 MPH all the way down the hill and we do not touch the brakes or the accelerator. Even our little Chevy Sonic with its impressive 6 speed cannot do that although it does a nice job of transmission braking. We are curious how Ford is doing that and think it must have something to do with the torque converter.

We finally made it back to the East coast and you immediately notice the increase of traffic due to the dense population. We got to our new campground, Wakeda, which is a large campground with all the sites under the canopy of trees. No satellite here and the only over the air station we could get is PBS. The campground only has WiFi at their store and our Winegaurd Connect dose not see the signal from our campsite. The Verizon hotspot is slow due to high traffic so streaming is spotty. Connecting to live television streams is touch and go but Netflix's works ok. If you are unfamiliar with steaming live television it is not tolerant of gaps in the connection and you have to keep re-connecting which is a pain and you miss some content. This campground has a large number of permanent RV's on sites which seems to be common in this area. Folks from the large cities keep them like summer cabins for a place to escape the rat race of everyday life. Another component is folks from the Northeast who retire to Florida but don't like the hot weather there head back north in the summer. Walking around the campground you see a lot of Florida license plates.