The Blue Mountain and Blog Updates

I finally got around to updating our blog layout.  Now readers can conveniently get email notices when a new post is uploaded.  Hope this meets the needs of our friends and family and anyone else who is interested in our journey.

Now that we have hit the 2 month mark of our one year trip across North America, I thought it would be fun to highlight some of our most memorable adventures.

Early on (maybe a week into the trip), Lisa and I were looking at the map and were decideing how to proceed from Allentown, PA to Bar Harbor, ME.  To get onto the main highway we had a choice; backtrack about 15 miles or; take side roads north.  To Lisa it was a no-brainer; "I hate backtracking," she informed me.  Lets take the backroads."  This was music to my ears.  I really think you get a feel for a p[lace by meandering through the hinterlands as opposed to speeding along on the super highway.  So off we went.

All was well as the GPS steered us on to one road to another.  Than I saw a series of mountains in front of us.  "I guess there is a pass through," I thought.  Then we made a left onto the now notorious Blue Mountain Road.  The road started out paved, but with quite a few curves.  Then the road narrowed.  No way to turn around now. The we hit a few hairpins. I had to slow down to 10 mph.  Before we new it, the road had turned to gravel.  It narrowed further and became rut filled and rocky.  Each turn the RV precariously tilted away from the mountain.  No sign of any other car.  I was now down to 3 mph.  I had to look for rocks to drive over to keep the wheels away from the mountain from not tipping too low.  Felt a roll over was not far off.  As I wiped the sweat from my brow and moved my fingers on the steering wheel to keep my iron-clad grip of resulting in severe muscle fatigue.  As we ever-so-slowly approached the summit, I passed a shocked backpacker as our behemoth tilted back and forth.  As we finally hit the summit, the road deteriorated into a mountain trail.  I stopped as we headed down the back side of the Blue Mountain.

 After this excursion, I did become much more adept at handling our 29.5 foot travel monster.  However, we did become a little more careful about how we selected future routes.