East Coast Family Reunion - Day 13, June 19, 2021

The group plan was for some of the family to take a pontoon boat trip into the bay today with some crabbing and fishing.  Alas, the boat had a mechanical problem (before sailing) and they had to cancel.  Plan B was bicycle riding on the Wildwood Boardwalk.

Judy and I just stayed in the campground most of the day, getting things set-up, making a trip to the grocery store, and relaxing a little from the long drive (2907 miles).

Happy Hour and dinner were at the main group house.  I grilled chicken and others prepared delicious side dishes.  We also celebrated my sister Sharyn's husband, Barry Turner 's 80th Birthday with an ice cream cake for desert.

A few more family members still need to arrive but most are now here.

 It was great for everyone to get together again.

East Coast Family Reunion - Day 12 - June 18,2021

The mobile RV repair person arrive around 8:00 am and was quickly able to fix the wiring problem that had shut down the coach air conditioner unit.  We had been trying to get the problem fixed since Nebraska without success.  Every RV dealer we contacted was booked solid and could not schedule service for a month or more.  Likewise, we were also not able to find a mobile RV repair person who was available for a quick response service call.  As we approached PA, our niece Allison, was able to provide some contact information for 2 mobile RV Repair companies.  Luckily, one could come this morning and knew what to do to fix the problem.

We were fortunate our problem was not serious and did not prevent travel enroute. And, we really didn’t need the AC as it was relatively cool along the way, especially at night.

Since it was only about a 2 ½ hour drive from West Chester to Cape May, NJ we were able to relax a little before leaving for Cape May. 

West Chester KOA - Pictures

The drive took longer however due to heavy traffic and we arrived at our destination in Cape May around 4:00 pm.  We are staying at a very nice campground, Holly Shores RV Resort and will be staying here until July 1^st with a side trip to Philadelphia on June 28^th and 29^th to see a baseball game and museum tours.

After getting set up at the RV Park we travelled over to the main reunion house that would be the HQ for the reunion. Not everyone was arriving today, but after happy hour, we had pizza delivered for dinner .  The reunion begins.

East Coast Family Reunion - Day 11 - June 17, 2021

I have been off-line for a awhile due to computer problems, now resolved, but in catch-up mode.

With a day off, we visited the Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square with my sister Eileen and her daughter and my niece Allison and her two girls Delancy and Kessler.

It is a world class botanical garden and is one of the premier horticultural display gardens in the United States. It has a long history but was acquired and refurbished by Pierre S. du Pont of the prominent du Pont family in 1906.  Here is a little history:

Longwood Gardens - Wikipedia

As an aside, Kennett Square, although not giving the impression of an agricultural area, but rather a quaint Pennsylvania colonial town, is also known as the “Mushroom Capitol of the World”. The area annually produces over 500 tons of mushrooms, half of the United States’ mushroom crop.

It was an enjoyable visit and well worth the experience.  Here are some pictures:

Longwood Gardens - Photos

After resting back at the RV we had dinner at a very nice restaurant in nearby Chadds Ford.  Family members are staring to arrive and the reunion activities are beginning.

East Coast Family Reunion - Day 10 - June 16, 2021

 A short travel day today. We left Harrisburg around 9:00 am and arrived at the West Chester, PA KOA about 11:00 am.

This campground is a large KOA in a wooded setting about 30 miles from downtown Philadelphia. It is near several affluent towns just west of Philadelphia which have retained their rural charm and character.  Lots of history (and money). 

The RV Park is adjacent to the Brandywine Battlefield along the Brandywine River.  It is the site of a Revolutionary War battle in 1775 between General Washington and his soldiers and the British moving up from the Chesapeake Bay.  The British won the battle and subsequently occupied Philadelphia with General Washington retreating to Valley Forge and wintering.  You know the rest of the story.

The area is also adjacent to the town of Chadds Ford.  It is the site of the Brandywine River Museum of Art and the Wyeth Family Studios.  It is the home of the collections of works of three generations of the Wyeth family, N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, and Jamie Wyeth. It has a spectacular collection of Wyeth art and if you are all familiar with and enjoy their art, it is well worth the trip.  It is presently closed for renovation but is planned to open on June 20^th.  We will stop here on the way home after the reunion.  We have been here before and it is worth seeing again.  The N.C. Wyeth house and studio also offer tours.  We have done them before and may do them again if open. 

Today was a logistics resupply day.  Judy did the laundry (I helped).

I also travelled about 6 miles through very narrow  country roads (but very pretty scenery) to buy groceries.  The local grocery store chain Giant is very large and dominates the market in the area. A couple of grocery store comments:

I picked up a 12 pack of beer (to kill the road dust after each day’s trip). As I was leaving the beverage area in the store with the beer, a guy came up to me and said I had to pay for the beer before leaving the area (near the produce).  Sure enough, I noticed his station near the coolers with a register and card reader. I asked him why they were doing this.  He said he didn’t know.  He just worked there but thought it had something to do with small kids in other parts of the store.  Strange, although you can still only buy hard liquor in” State Stores”, liquor stores run by the state.

The other thing, kind of creepy, was there were robots going up and down the aisles and other areas of the store.  They were kind of like big vacuum cleaners with a pole sticking up in the air.  If you came near one it would stop.  I asked a clerk why robots and what did they do?  He said they wander around the store keeping their eye on things (he didn’t go into details) but said if they saw something amiss, they would call someone.  Wow.

We are going to do some sightseeing tomorrow and then have dinner tomorrow night in Chadds Ford with family members who flew in today and my sister and nieces who live nearby.

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.

East Coast Family Reunion - Day 8 - June 14, 2021

It was a bit of a strange day today.  We got on the road at the normal time around 8:30 am – 9:00 am but it seemed to take awhile to get locked in to the travel mode. The terrain in Indiana was about the same as where we have been.  Lots of Ag (more corn) and the road about the same.  I have to say however, the Interstate roads in Indiana are the worst we have seen so far.

We had stayed a little bit west of Indianapolis so we went around the city on the southern loop and picked up I-70E at the east end.  I was impressed with the size of the city and traffic there.  It is really a big city and a major transportation hub.  About 6 or 7 Interstate loops and roads intersect there.  As we moved east there were also definitely more people on the road.

We had pretty good wind again but a tailwind and it wasn’t a problem.  The problem was a lot of construction, lane closures/compressions and delays.  There was also a major delay due to a bad accident up ahead of us.  We probably lost about and an hour or so just clearing all the delays.

We also stopped at another nice rest area in Ohio for lunch.

Another challenge was driving through Columbus this afternoon.  Lots of downtown construction and nothing we recognized from our time there in the 60’s.  We are staying about 30 miles east of the city at a nice KOA at Buckeye Lake.

Harrisburg, PA tomorrow then two days (our travel flex time) to figure out what to do next before our scheduled arrival in Cape May, NJ.  We have a few minor RV issues we want to get fixed but are having trouble finding anyone to do that.  RV service centers are slammed, saying they are short of help and booking appointments two months out.  There are also lots of people in motion coming out of the COVID thing, and it is approaching the peak travel/recreation time.

Just as an aside.  Not many people we have come in contact with at truck stops, gas stations, and RV parks are wearing masks.  Ready or not, it appears people are moving towards their accepted risk tolerance.

East Coast Family Reunion - Day 7 - June 13, 2021

We left Davenport around 8:30 am and after refueling, getting mochas and truck stop breakfast sandwiches we were on the road by 9:00 am.  It was a relatively short drive today, of 265 miles (mostly through Illinois) .  It went well, little wind more rolling hills and large Ag fields with mostly corn and possibly some soy beans (hard to tell from the road).  These are not hobby farms.  The fields are very large and my guess is many may be corporate owned.  They are definitely not growing the corn for domestic food consumption.  The scope of the effort suggests otherwise.  We did see a large Dekalb Corporation collection, processing and storage facility enroute. Everything is green here, is well kept and has lots of trees and shrubs along the roadsides.

We left I-80 east of Davenport and headed southeast on I-74 towards Indianapolis to avoid the I-80 congestion around the Chicago area and further east. There was less traffic on I-74, fewer trucks and better scenery  Still rural. We also crossed two big rivers today. First the Mississippi east of Davenport and the Illinois River in Peoria.

We are staying at a KOA in Crawfordsville, IN tonight about 30 miles west of Indianapolis.  We had an unpleasant surprise when we hooked up.  Our coach Air Conditioner would not turn on.  It looks like some sort of AC power input issue.  Fortunately, it is not too hot here and we have a nice shady site.  We will try to get it fixed enroute or when we get to Cape May.

Another relatively short drive tomorrow to Columbus, OH.  We were stationed there  from 1963-1968 after our return from Bermuda.  I am sure it has changed a lot and I still sort of root for the Ohio State Football team.  There will not be any memory lane explorations.  It will be an overnight stop then on to Harrisburg, PA on Tuesday.