To Chautauqua Lake

Today was a driving day.

We looked at the map last night and rough sketched a plan to get us to Kelley’s Island by Friday. The plan would have put us in the mid southern part of New York today and the western side tomorrow. This morning though, we were really in our groove for hitching up and we were rolling by 9. We made good time on the road and towing now feels basically just like driving, so going long distances isn’t a biggie.

With one exception. When driving, let’s assume for the sake of argument that I never go above the posted maximum. A full day of regular driving can cover 5-600 miles. When towing, I still really don’t like to go too fast, so sticking to around 60, after 8 hours, we covered 400. But we decided to go ahead and cover it rather than split it into two days.

We didn’t take a lot of pictures today but I did take a picture this morning of one of the more useful features we’ve found in our tow car: a downward facing backup camera! Bruce has three different views on the backup camera and once you get close enough, the third view is extremely helpful. I have nailed the car positioning for hookups every time using that. I still can only pull Dory forward, but I’ll figure that out later….

Along the road, we talked about how staying in a site for more than two nights started to push it with our grey water since we both love taking showers in the Alto. If you have “full hookups” you can dump your waste water into a sewer pipe, but at state parks, like Kelley’s Island, there aren’t sites like that. At most you might get electrical. There are also usually “dump stations” at the entrance to many campgrounds, so you can do a dump, but it means dragging the trailer over there to do it. Fine on your way in or out, but not so fine if you max your tank mid stay. I mentioned that I’d seen portable grey water dump tanks that would allow you to do some emptying without having to hitch up. Because we are now in the land of cell service, Richard was able to look this up while we were driving. Turns out, there was a “Camping World” store just 30 miles down the road on our exact route. And they had these in stock. Sweet. So we figured that was another sign from The Universe that we really should go buy a grey water portable tank.

Camping World for us is kind of like how the Lego store used to be for our son. We were hard pressed to only buy a few other things in addition to the portable tank.

Other than that, not much to report on from today. “Battlestar Gallactica” is confusing. We downloaded season 1 to watch at night and it really seems like we’ve jumped in at season 3 or 4 or something. I sort of get it, but it’s confusing.

We are staying at Chautauqua Lake KOA tonight and will very likely stay here tomorrow as a reward for our drive today. It’s a fantastic site with a lake view and no one in front of or next to us. We can’t really go to Kelley’s Island early because it’s all booked up and there are not a lot of other nice places between here and there. Plus, it is supposed to rain all day. We may make it a sleep in, laundry, write post cards kind of a day. And that sounds pretty awesome.

Total miles: 401.7, Engine time: 8 hours 27 min, 17.1 mpg