Through the Big Apple and Into Connecticut

(East Haddam, CT) Hi 84 Lo 65 -- I was really nervous about today's travels, but Jim didn't seem to be too worried about our trip on I-95 through New York City. We traveled across the northern end of Manhattan and through the Bronx, and the traffic wasn't too bad. But the road (I-95) was horrible. It's the roughest highway we've ever traveled on. We were warned it’s free coming into New Jersey, but it costs to leave. When we crossed the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan the toll for the car was $13.00. We don't know what it was for the truck and trailer, we used our E-Z Pass to zip through the toll gate. We'll find out on the E-Z Pass website tomorrow.

Since most RV'ers will never drive their rigs in New York (at least the smart ones), I took some pictures.

The Manhattan skyline coming into view in front of Tumbleweed.


The new World Trade Center (1,776 ft. high) is plainly visible in this shot.

In this one you can see the Empire State Building, just to the left of the large electric line tower.

We drove past Met Life Stadium, the home of the NY Giants and NY Jets football teams.

We stopped at the last service plaza in NJ for lunch. This place was huge, and it was also very dirty. The bathrooms were the worst we’ve ever seen. The place was packed with trucks, and we almost didn't find a parking spot.



We went under several overpasses that were within inches of our minimum height. But like Jim said, if trucks are on the highway, we'll fit.




Traffic was at a standstill in the southbound lanes.


My Garmin GPS sure looked interesting. It shows where we are.


The New York area has the largest apartment buildings we've ever seen. There are a lot of them in this area.


We finally made it into another new state for Tumbleweed. When we crossed the border, the road was a lot better but the traffic was a lot worse. We never dreamed it would be stop and go for several miles in rural Connecticut.


This train runs along I-95 for several miles. Many people live in Connecticut and take the train into New York to work.


The countryside got more attractive once we were in Connecticut. We passed several small marinas on the river. Lots of money around these parts. :)


We had to plan our trip so we arrived at the park after 3:00 or we’d be charged an extra $10 on top of the daily rate. Isn't that a strange rule? We arrived at Wolf's Den Family Campground around 3:30.


This is where the fun really began. The entrance appeared so quick that Jim drove past it. We were on a narrow country road and he had to back into a side road to get turned around, while I stopped traffic. Nothing like a little added stress at the end of a hectic day. :)

This park is very nice but it has so many trees that we can't get our satellite dish to work. There's free wi-fi available, but the signal is so weak it's very difficult to connect. And the Verizon signal is so weak that we have a hard time staying connected. We knew we'd run into these issues when we got up here in the northeast, so we're not bumming too much. We're getting a few local TV channels on our rooftop antenna, and we're limping along with the slow wi-fi. It's a small sacrifice for the fun we're having in a new (to us) part of the country.

Here’s our site.


Jim had to clear some small tree branches off the antenna.


A pavilion is to our left.


A game room behind us. We’ll get more pictures tomorrow when we walk around the park.


We're both really tired and looking forward to relaxing this evening with a BDL (that's "Big Drink of Liquor"). :)