Trip Report - St Helens OR to Essex Junction Vermo - Event Date: 26 Jul 2016 - 24 Aug 2016

Well, we’ve done it.  Crossed the USA and back again, I mean.  In spite of best intentions there was no daily journal, no plethora of photos that once viewed will never be looked at again by anybody.  Instead we have  dozens of memories – good and bad – of a trip long in the planning and surprising brief in terms of execution and completion.  Here are a few random thoughts on cross-country RVing in general.

The Trip – Outward Bound for Vermont

My Mom passed away in November of 2015, at the age of ninety.  It was her wish to have her ashes scattered on Mt Mansfield, Vermont’s highest peak.  The event, coordinated by my sister Stephanie, would call the family back to Essex Junction, where we all grew up.  Mare and I elected to travel overland because:  a) I despise everything associated with commercial airlines, and b) we needed to see the country before we got much older and gimpy.

The R Pod was acquired in January from a couple who found that it just wasn’t right for them.  After several months of planning and two shake-down trips – one two day trip to the nearby Oregon Coast, and one four day excursion to Southeast Oregon - we felt ready to roll.  The only mod to the trailer was to install a wireless rearview camera just above the spare tire.  I hand fabbed an aluminum bracket to secure the camera to the spare bracket, and it worked out just fine.  (I hate being surprised by vehicles that tail-gate and then pull out suddenly to pass.)  Mare, Zeke the Dog, and I headed east on July 26th.

Our trip took us across Oregon and into Southern Idaho.  From there we turned north to enter Yellowstone Park via the Western entrance.  We spent little time seeing the sights, choosing to drive directly through the park and into Wyoming.  From Cody (temperature 102F) we headed to Garryowen, Montana, where I spent hours going through the Custer battlefield site.  We pressed on to Minnesota and Wisconsin, then crossed over the Upper Peninsula of Michigan into Canada at Sault Ste Marie.  We fled Ontario drivers and returned to the US via Buffalo, New York.  From there we crossed that state to Vermont, arriving in Essex Junction on August 4^th.

The Stay in Vermont

For the entire time in Vermont we stayed at Mare’s family home and at the summer cottage on Lake Champlain rented by my sister for the family reunion.  The R Pod rested in the long back yard behind the house that Mare grew up in.  The next week was spent with family members, doing things that families do and commemorating Mom’s life.   We hit the road for the return trip on September 16^th.

The Trip – Inward Bound for Oregon

The return trip had one single purpose – to get us back to St Helens safely and sanely.  This meant pushing a few extra miles each day, compared to our less aggressive eastward journey.  Whereas we traveled under the vast heat dome that settled over the country on the eastward leg, on the return we saw periods of heavy rain across Indiana and into South Dakota.  Fortunately for us we escaped the tornados that plagued several states even as we completed crossing them.  We arrived home after a hellacious push from Missoula, Montana, to our driveway in St Helens.  Like migrating birds or spawning fish, once we got wind of our final destination there was no stopping us, and we arrived home on August 24^th.

Reflections and Critique

No Rvers travel the same path in the same way.  We had two major goals:  Get to Vermont in time for the family events and reunion;  Get to Oregon as expeditiously as possible.  The outbound leg allowed for some sight-seeing while the inbound path was strictly utilitarian.  Here are some general observations that represent our experiences and opinions.

1.        On Campground Reservations

We made advance reservations for the trip to Vermont and took what we could find on the way back to Oregon.  We stayed in membership campgrounds, state parks, and on USFS sites. 

a.       Membership campgrounds are quite predictable.  Ours were impeccably groomed and maintained.  State parks were similarly well managed.

b.      USFS reservations were at best disappointing and at worst infuriating.  This deserves a bit more explanation.

The USFS has subcontracted their advance registration process to vendors, and I am sure you know to whom I refer.  After back-to-back “double booking” experiences it became apparent that the subcontractors’ databases do not talk to the USFS Caretaker system.  In spite of having confirmation numbers printed and in hand, we were faced with the choice of moving further down the road or setting off a massive ripple effect by displacing folks already assigned to “our” spot.  We went down the road.

After being advised by one Caretaker to “make an issue” out of the mess, and upon arriving in Vermont, I did exactly that.  What ensued was a very frustrating and unpleasant exchange with a subcontractor Rep, who claimed her firm was not at fault and placed the blame on the Caretakers.  USFS of course defended their volunteers and blamed the reservation takers.  The request for full refund has to be reviewed by the USFS bureaucracy; I still have heard nothing from them.  Conclusion?  Buyer Beware.  The handling charges basically eat up the benefit of having a Senior Pass in the first place.  In the second place there is nothing like reaching the end of a long day only to find that your “reservation”  is useless.

I will have more to say about this in separate posts as I do not intend to take this lying down!

2.       On Road Safety

After having travelled some 8,000 miles a few comments are in order.

a.       Politics aside, the infrastructure of this country is generally in sad shape.  Thank you, legislators everywhere and at every level.

b.      As noted, we travelled some 8,000 miles, of which approximately 9,200 were under construction.

“Construction Ahead” or Road Work Ahead” has different meaning in different states.  Idaho for example, is populated by the Coneheads, whereas other states – Montana and South Dakota come to mind – are the home of the Barrel People.  These outward manifestations of lane control are put in place to slow down traffic in case someone eventually decides to do highway work and maintenance.  I would guess that only 5% of the miles so identified actually had any real work going on. This observation includes many, many week days!  I swear that in Idaho we observed one truck and crew picking up cones even as, five miles later, another crew was solemnly putting cones down.  I suspect when the trailing truck was fully loaded it changed places with the cone placement team.

c.       Blown-out truck tires will wait in ambush and throw themselves under your vehicle.  They are quite adept at hiding in the tar-patched spider webs of miles of interstate highways.  They have an innate sense of when the proximity of other vehicles in adjacent lanes will prevent you from swerving to avoid them.  We lost our sewer hose carrier to such an unprovoked attack.  Fortunately the sewer hose itself was not in the carrier tube at the time; a broken hinge on the tube hatch forced us to place the hose in double poly-bags for transport, several days earlier.

d.      In the order of severity of threat to life, limb, and property, the absolute worst drivers that we encountered were, in order of incompetence, the following:

1.       Ontario drivers within 50 miles of Toronto

2.       Ontario drivers within 5,000 miles of anything

3.       Chicago drivers

4.       Portland, Oregon drivers

5.       80% of all drivers merging with interstate traffic.  People – it’s not called an acceleration lane for nothing.

e.      Virtually every state we passed through had a sign admonishing drivers to not text and drive.  Trouble is, those affected don’t read the signs because they are texting!   Rather than spending so much money telling people what not to do, I think all states should make it illegal to text and drive, with the penalty of a minimum of one year loss of license regardless of circumstances, upon apprehension and conviction.  My life is not worth your crummy text message!

I am sure more will come to mind and I will post any follow-on thoughts separately.  Fact is, although we will be unlikely to undertake such an adventurous trip again, the R Pod worked nicely for us and met our needs exactly as planned.