May 4th

May 4^th. The day that will survive the trip as being the most entertaining, frustrating, stressful, exhausting day EVER! (fingers crossed)

The day began with a trip into Hartford to see the Old State Capital building and the Mark Twain house and museum.  We stopped in Downtown Hartford for lunch at Woody’s, a cute little hot dog restaurant located at 915 Main St. in Hartford. I can’t say it was the best hot dog I’ve ever had. However, they did have great selection of hot dogs, hamburgers and a few sandwiches. Todds Philly Hot Dog very tasty.

On from there, we toured some quite scary areas in Hartford and then headed back to the Cabin to get back on the road. The trip from Connecticut to Quakertown, PA was to be the longest so far, 4 hours on the road. So far, we have been visiting our destinations during the day and then driving at night. It’s worked out well up until this point. Last night changed everything.

We arrived at our camp ground in Quakertown just before midnight. We learned 2 things on this leg of the trip that we will never forget. First, our camper is definitely not 12’. While holding our breath we passed through a wooden covered bridge, definitely true to Amish country imaging, which stood a maximum height of 12’1”. As we quietly inched under the cover, Todd and I leaning out our windows, we had a great sigh of relief when we realized that we would not be spending the rest of our night being the stuffing of an old Amish Bridge.

The second lesson of the night was, Pennsylvani,a as beautiful as these green, grassy rolling hills are… they are not ideal for parking a trailer after 3 days of rain.  As we were parking our trailer, Todd pulled into the slot in front of ours to straighten the camper. Well, as it turns out, this slot was left empty for very good reason. The soil in this area of the park is the same consistency of  cake mix. Watery cake mix. We spent the next 5 hours in Hell. If you can imagine, moving 8-9 tons of weight out of cake mix, while it’s raining is not an easy or enjoyable task.

I watched in amazement as the man of the year raised the truck, digging out cake mix from under the tires and wedging boards under the wheels to give traction. We were able to roll the truck about 1-2 feet at a time before each side had to be repositioned. After 5 hours of playing in the mud, we decided maybe this was the night we would stay in a hotel.  Of course, there was 2 problems with this idea. First, we’re in Amish country, Hotels are not on every corner. Second, the problem with hotels is they want you to check out at 11am or pay for another night.

As we drove around in what seemed like circles through Quakertown, the clearings and parking lots started to call our name. After all, we drive with our house behind us and any parking space would have sufficed at this hour. After finding no sign of hotels, (which now makes sense), we decided to try another park located a little north of our destination. We raced the sun in reaching our bed as we pulled in to the park at 6am. Still holding true to his Man of the Year title, I watched, blurry eyed, as Todd hooked up our camper to all the necessary connections… which apparently included building a Coax cable to hook up. Apparently after the night he had, there was no way in hell he would be going to bed without watching some of his beloved news. By 7am, the sun was officially peaking it’s head and we were finally able to craw under the sheets for a brief nap as the cats were also able to come out from hiding.