For instance, in Minnesota every summer we have the deadlines of when we need to be there for medical appointments. If we make reservations for camping, we have deadlines for arriving. If we register for a rally, we have a deadline we try to meet.

We are on our way to Maine to see our daughter. She is leaving on vacation September 21st. Our planned route and stops along the way will take us somewhere between 12 and 18 days to get there. Which works.

But then we face the other major deadline we face every year. Winter. Our list of things we’d like to see in New England while we are there has nearly 50 items on it. That’s the list of things to see AFTER we visit our daughter. Then there’s nearly 50 more items we’d like to see before we get south far enough to escape winter. If we visit one site a day that’s three months!

We don’t plan to make another trip to New England so what do we do about all those sites we want to see? I guess we dawdle less along the way there. So, no we are not going to the Gypsy Gathering next week. We need to be moving on. We can catch another Gypsy Gathering somewhere down the road much easier that we can see those sites that are so far away. New England, here we come.

TTYL,

Linda

We are headed to New England to visit our daughter in Maine and see the sights in that part of this beautiful country of ours. Now we don’t like to drive very far on any one day. Mostly because our RV is MUCH more comfortable when parked than it is while driving. So we usually limit ourselves to four hours of driving time plus however much time we spend at stops along the way. Four hours from Forest City, Iowa, would take us to a Corps of Engineers campground on Coralville Lake where we stayed once in the View and which we liked very much. Of course, we never looked at it from the point of view of driving a motorhome like we have now let alone one towing a car but we were sure we would still like that park so we set out mid-morning as is our usual style.

We didn’t make it. We can blame it on the winds we had to fight today but I think we’ve just forgotten what it is like to travel any distance. So we are at Colony Country Campground in North Liberty, Iowa, which my mapping program tells me is really only about ten minutes short of the CoE campground. But this is a real RV park where we don’t have to wonder if our RV and car are both going to fit. We were just too tired to deal with the possibility that the CoE would be a disappointment in our bigger rig. We must be getting old.

Tomorrow we plan to drive to Joliet, Illinois. My mapping program says that’s 3 1/2 hours. We should be able to handle that, right?

That lets us drive through the Chicago area on Sunday when there SHOULD be less traffic than on weekdays. Having said that, now I know I’m getting old. When did driving in metropolitan areas become such a hassle? Of course, Chicago is not just any metropolitan area, right?

That would put us just 2 1/2 hours from Elkhart, Indiana, where the Gypsy Gathering, http://gypsyjournal.net/Eastern_rally,  will take place next week. We could take a break and spend the week there but we’d have to settle for a 20 amp hookup since we didn’t reserve anything before the 30 and 50 amp sites filled up. And it would keep us from traveling on toward Maine and all the great stuff in New England. Are we ready for that? Stay tuned to see.

TTYL,

Linda Sand