Fuel pump and M.A.G. towing

After visiting Assateague Island, our plan was to go to Salisbury for the night. We'd sent our first Amazon purchase while on the road to a locker there for pickup. That plan changed when the gas pedal all of the sudden stopped working. So, we did what we always do: call Goodsam. They wanted to send out a mobile mechanic. A state trooper stopped by while they were looking to make sure everything was okay. Goodsam failed to find a mobile mechanic and eventually failed to find a place that would tow us. Since we indicated that we were safe, they asked if we could spend the night where we were. I probably should have said no, because at 10 PM another trooper came by and told us we needed to call a tow company. Apparently after checking with dispatch, he changed his mind and we spent the night on the side of the road. Not the best sleep ever. 

The RV, at night, on the side of the road on MD 367.

In the morning we finally got our mechanic. He was pretty sure we needed a new fuel pump which would involve a tow to the shop. After calling GoodSam again to get towing covered, we were prepared to be spending a few days at their shop in Roxana, DE. 

 

Roxana is a tiny, tiny place. We’re not even sure that there is really a town there. We looked to see if we could find motels in the area and couldn’t find anything. Although our biggest worry was how would we catch the Oregon Ducks game. Given that there wasn’t a sports bar in the area either… 

 

Joe, the tow truck driver and mechanic worked his butt off for us to make sure we wouldn’t have to worry. He worked hard and made sure we were comfortable. He got a new fuel pump rush delivered, installed it, and epoxied a tiny crack in our fuel tank by 7 PM that same night. 

While he worked, we spent the day in the backyard of the house on the same property as the shop. They had a “bar” room that had a bathroom with its own shower they said we could use. When he was done, Joe offered that we spend the night in the lot since it was dark. We took him up on the offer as we felt comfortable there. Now we're sitting in the Wicomico County library in Salisbury thinking about how lucky we've been with the friendly people who have helped us.

Assateague

Many of our friends in the Northeast suggested that we go to visit Assateague Island National Seashore. Given that Kathleen remembered reading and loving the book Misty of Chincoteague as a kid we didn't need to be told twice. The drive out to park from Baltimore was pretty with lots of small towns and farms along the way.

Assateague island is 37 miles long and never more than a mile wide. The northern two thirds are in Maryland, while the southern third is in Virginia. There is no road down the whole island but you can access the island at either the very northern tip or the very southern tip. We went to the northern side because Virginia doesn't allow animals in the park, even in the car. Which is a problem for us.

The island is largely known for the wild horses. These horses are believed to have descended from horses that were put out to pasture on the island about 300 years ago in order to avoid paying grazing fees. Now there are two distinct herds, one in each state. The Virginia herd is rounded up every year by the Chincoteague fire department and foals are auctioned off. The Maryland herd is managed as wildlife by the National Park Service as part of the National Seashore.

In order to keep the population from getting out of hand, the Maryland horses are administered birth control through a dart riffle and only allowed to have one foal per mare. This ultimately leads to the mares having longer, healthier lives as well.

Although the horses are wild animals, they are about as tame as most city squirrels. They show little to no fear of approaching people, and often hang out on or around the roads. Not that there are many other places for them to be. We saw two horses as soon as we arrived on the island hanging out to the side of the road. While the original two were gone later, there was whole band hanging out in the road.

 

 

In addition to looking at the horses, there are nice beaches that are probably quite crowded in peak season. They were a little cold and windy this time of year.

  

We did one short "dune" hike. This hike included large sections of the road that was built down the island in 1950 during a period in which people were planning on developing the island. The great nor'easter of 1962 quickly convinced people that this wasn't a good idea. All that remains of that plan is a very dilapidated road.

 

It also seemed like a great place to kayak and take bikes out in a different season. Even though we weren't there during the peak of possibilities, we were very glad that we stopped in.

DC

Our end point for the mad dash across the country was Washington, DC. Not because we wanted to see DC, but because we got the chance to celebrate two of our friends getting married. During our time in DC we stayed in the parking lot of our other friends’ apartment building. We spent most of our time there catching up with friends and relaxing, but we did do one day of heading downtown to look at museums on Monday. 

All of the Smithsonian Museums along the mall are free. We started with the Air and Space Museum. Half of the museum was closed for renovations but there was still a lot to see. We spent two hours there looking at life-sized spacecrafts and learning about navigation. We were going to check out the other Air and Space Museum by Dulles on our way out of town but were deterred by the $15 parking. What can I say, we're cheap. 

After getting lunch from a food truck on the mall we moved on to the Natural History Museum. Kathleen's highlight was seeing the outbreaks exhibit opened last year for the centennial of the 1918 Flu Epidemic. It was interesting, but as Andreas pointed out in Air and Space: exhibits can be less interesting when you already have a degree or two in them. We knew we weren't going to learn much. But it was fun to see how the information was presented. 

 

Next we briefly looked at the geology area, followed by the mammals, before the museum closed and we had to leave. The second time we've closed down a museum! There was still a lot we wanted to see, but oh well. 

Lots of people recommended the portrait gallery to us, so even though we aren't big art people we ended the day there. It was interesting and we appreciated the amount of information they had about each of the artists but we were starting to get museum-ed out. 

Overall, we barely scratched the surface of DC. We could have spent another day or two looking around but leaving the kids in the RV all day wasn't a great option, and we were getting tired of living in a parking lot. We were ready to get back into slightly more remote areas. 

Travel Update 5

Our second week of hurrying quickly across the country we didn't make any particularly interesting stops. However, we did stay at some really nice campgrounds. We wanted to do a very short, photo filled, travel update to show off a couple of places.

Waverly Lake, Illinois was gorgeous. We got into camp fairly early and stayed to hang out for a while the next morning. We even made a morning campfire to cook up a deluxe potato breakfast.

  

 

This section had some beautiful scenery but we didn't do anything very exciting as we were driving pretty quickly to make it to DC.

We did have an exciting incident happen with the RV. A few hours after leaving Lane Farm campground, driving through West Virginia we heard a popping sound. Shortly thereafter another, quieter one. At this point the RV became tricky to control. When going around corners it would make another muffled little pop and the steering wheel would shift in such a way that I needed to hold it at a different angle to keep it going straight. Luckily we were close enough to a small town that had a mechanic. We had broken a bolt in the upper control arm on the passenger side. Dave, the mechanic in Harmon, SC, was able to get it stable to the point of driving safely, but we would need to go get it fixed properly and re-aligned. While he was working on it, we noticed something else had gone wrong. Somewhere in our travels that day, we had lost our spare tire!

 

We got our RV fixed up at SOS repair in Winchester, VA the next day and continue on our way to D.C

Travel Update 4

Our first week of hurrying across the country had several nice stops. Two of which already have their own post, Craters of the Moon and The Geographic Center. However we also stopped several other  lovely places so we wanted to do a quick travel update to include pictures we took of those places as well.

We stayed by a lake in Idaho near the Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area. We didn't see any raptors but the lake was still lovely.

Further in Idaho we worked very carefully to have Andreas take a picture of the odometer as it hit 222,222.2 while Kathleen drove. We were probably more excited about that than we needed to be, but we like numbers.

Right before we left Idaho we stayed by one more beautiful lake. It was pretty but super cold. It actually started snowing softly before we left. Afterward we crossed through quite a snowstorm in Wyoming but just kept moving. 

In Wyoming we stayed in one of our rare paid campgrounds at Vedauwoo in the Medicine Bow campground. It was absolutely beautiful but a little chilly because it was up above 8,000 feet. 

 

We wrapped on the week in Kansas City, Kansas. Andreas's friend from his Masters program lives in Missouri and was coaching in a soccer tournament in Kansas City. We stopped off to watch one of his games and get lunch together. We love meeting up with people on the road. 

The Geographic Center

Given that we only had two weeks between weddings on opposite sides of country we mostly spent those two weeks driving quickly across. We partially chose our route to be direct and we partially chose our route for how funny it looked in the stickers on the back of the RV. 

We also wanted to see the geographic center of the lower 48. One of the books we read was American Gods by Neil Gaiman. One of the minor premises of the book is that roadside attractions are modern day holy places. His explanation: 

“It's perfectly simple," said Wednesday. "In other countries, over the years, people recognized the places of power. Sometimes it would be a natural formation, sometimes it would just be a place that was, somehow, special. They knew that something important was happening there, that there was some focusing point, some channel, some window to the Immanent. And so they would build temples or cathedrals, or erect stone circles, or...well, you get the idea." 

"There are churches all across the States, though," said Shadow. 

"In every town. Sometimes on every block. And about as significant, in this context, as dentists' offices. No, in the USA, people still get the call, or some of them, and they feel themselves being called to from the transcendent void, and they respond to it by building a model out of beer bottles of somewhere they've never visited, or by erecting a gigantic bat house in some part of the country that bats have traditionally declined to visit. Roadside attractions: people feel themselves pulled to places where, in other parts of the world, they would recognize that part of themselves that is truly transcendent, and buy a hot dog, and walk around, feeling satisfied on a level they cannot truly describe, and profoundly dissatisfied on a level beneath that.”

One of the places in the book is mentioned as the exact opposite of one of those holy places. There was a contrived plan to make a roadside attraction but the magic just wasn’t there. The gods avoid it unless they are forced to be there. 

After this description, and given the face that we are into things like mathematically calculating the center, we decided we had to visit. So we planned our mid-way point to be Lebanon, Kansas and the park at the geographic center of the lower 48. We were not disappointed. 

Overall the park was just as gods forsaken as we were expecting, but still interesting. And a fitting place to make the middle of our drive across the country. 

Expense Report: September

September was another fairly expensive month. We drove a ton in Alaska, all the way back to the lower 48, and started east across the country.

Maintenance: We blew another tire, so we replaced the ones that were older. We also did a little bit of work on the house.

New Tires : $608
More "home depot" type purchases: $21
RV running total: $18,323

Fuel - We've updated our Fuel log! We drove further in September than we did in August, so naturally we used more fuel.

This month, we drove 4369 miles on 330 gallons of gas, averaging 13.2 MPG (up from last month!)

Gas: $1140

Propane: $12 - We only needed to get propane once. We're amazed at how long the propane lasts, but we haven't been doing much with it besides cook and run a fridge.

Food: $706. We didn't do a good job avoiding restaurants this month, especially in Anchorage. Groceries only account for $250 of this and are the source of most of our meals. Duck football season isn't helping.

Pets : It's hard to separate pets from groceries, since we usually pick up what we need at the same time, so I've included them with food and will do so going forward. Usually it's roughly the same as last month: $60-$70 for dog food, cat food and litter.

Entertainment: $336 - This is almost entirely our Kenai Fjord tour cruise.

Lodging: $10 - We, again, only spent one night at a site we needed to pay for, in Seward.

Ferries: $716 - Turns out putting an RV on a boat is expensive. The ferries got us from Prince Rupert to Vancouver Island and then back to Washington.

Phone and Internet: $60

Haircut for Kathleen: $18

Other Expenses: $45 - We had to buy new hiking pants at Value Village. Kathleen tore holes in the bottom of both of her pair of jeans and they were past repairing. So this was another necessary expense.

Total Travel Expenses for September: ~$3675