East Coast Family Reunion - Day 9 - June 15, 2021

We had a pleasant drive today. Fairly long (345 miles), but it went very well. The only issue was a 20-miniute construction lane compression delay in Wheeling, WV crossing the Ohio River.

West Virginia has an interesting history. From Wikipedia:

“Originally part of old Virginia Much of the area had been settled by yeomen farmers, few of whom owned slaves. With the railroad, a larger industrial or mercantile middle-class developed that depended on free labor; it either felt disinterest or hostility to slavery. The Wheeling Intelligencer newspaper expressed the area's anti-secession sentiment as tensions rose over slavery and national issues. The city became part of the movement of western areas to secede from Virginia after the beginning of the Civil War. It was the location of the Wheeling Convention.[8] It served as the provisional capital of the Restored Government of Virginia from 1861 to 1863, and became the first capital of West Virginia after it seceded from Virginia and was admitted to the Union in its own right in 1863.”

Travelling west on I-70E from Ohio you only cross a small sliver of WV where Wheeling is located. You then enter Pennsylvania and continue along I-70 until it joins the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I-76 a toll road. The Pennsylvania Turnpike also has an interesting history.

The road crosses the entire state east to west, New Jersey to Ohio (360 miles). It crosses the Appalachian Mountains in central Pennsylvania, passing through four fairly long tunnels. During the 1930s the turnpike was designed to improve automobile transportation across the mountains of Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission acquired the rights of way, with seven tunnels, from the South Pennsylvania Railroad that was abandoned in the 1880s, a victim of the New York Central/Pennsylvania Railroad wars (another interesting story) The road opened on October 1, 1940. It was one of the earlier long-distance limited-access highways in the United States, and served as a precedent for additional limited-access toll roads and the Interstate Highway System. It has been continually expanded and improved since then and is now one of the best maintained highways in the Interstate Highway System.

We are now officially in the east. We are staying at a nice RV park just across the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg, PA. The scenery enroute was very pretty, especially over the Appalachian Mountains and the foothills up-and-down. Rolling hills, well kept farmlands and buildings many very old but kept up, lots of trees, all very green. No wind today made the drive much easier. Still a lot of trucks on the road. That is good. Commerce appears to be flourishing.

Our travel plans have been updated to address what to do on Wednesday and Thursday. Those days were built into the travel schedule to deal with any issues before arriving at Cape May, NJ on Friday.

We finally found someone to take a look at our RV coach AC that has a power problem. So we are headed to the Philadelphia/West Chester KOA tomorrow. We will stay there Wednesday and Thursday Night and a mobile RV repair guy will be there Friday am to see what the issue may be (and hopefully fix it). We will also be spending time with my sister and nieces who live nearby as well as getting caught up with travel logistics like laundry and supplies replenishment. After that we will travel to Cape May for the start of the reunion.