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Sunday, March 15, 2020

From Georgia to New Hampshire



We packed up our tent and camping gear and were ready to hit the road by 10 a. m.. That’s pretty normal for us. I was looking forward to putting some miles in. Unfortunately, my taillight check on the boat trailer revealed they weren’t working.

After fiddling around for some time, testing and redoing connections, only the running lights worked, no brake or directionals. That was not acceptable for a journey of over 1300 miles. There was no help for it but to unhook the Blazer and go into town for new lights. Turns out my old “totally sealed” LED lights had failed internally.

The installation of the new lights was pretty quick and dirty. Instead of carefully running all wires through the frame they were just held in place with electrical tape. I’d already lost four hours and didn’t want to lose more time. The lights can be properly installed at my leisure while at home and with full access to all my tools. The lights worked perfectly for the rest of my trip.

Due to the delay and being worn out from trouble shooting the lights, we only got as far as northern North Carolina. We decided to take a hotel room and get some sleep. Our mistake was availing ourselves to the free breakfast buffet. We both came down with intestinal upset that hit so quick we had to run into the woods rather than find a rest room.

To make our day more interesting, a trailer tire blew about twenty miles into Virgina on route 95. I put a spare on, only to have it stop holding air once the trailer was lowered off the jack and the trailer weight came on it. It took some searching, but new tires were found about 30 miles away. With the new tire on we headed up the road once more.

By around 11 p. m. we were thinking of maybe getting another room. However, the prices were high due to everyone in that area charging a lot for us having a dog. I figured I’d just take a nap in the car. In the end we drove home after taking only an hour and a half nap. One thing about driving all night, there are a lot fewer cars and trucks on the road.

Traveling from the south to the north I saw a wide variety of responses to the coronavirus. Some places were business as usual. Other places were ghost towns. To reduce contact with people we paid for gas at the pump and had sandwiches in the car for a number of meals. When we did eat in a restaurant, it was at odd times with much smaller crowds. Currently we plan on isolating ourselves for two weeks to make sure we didn’t bring anything home with us. It would be nice to get together with family and friends, but not so nice if we make them sick.

-Sixbears

8 comments:

  1. Sounds like a plan. Hope you have toilet paper! - lol

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  2. I guess that I shoulda checked the air on that spare tire huh ?

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    Replies
    1. no biggie. The pressure was fine until the weight of the trailer came down on it.

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  3. Good to hear you made it home in one piece.
    I overfilled a trailer with crusher dust once - tire went flat in 500m, spare did the same as yours and let go when off the jack and I had no jockey wheel attached, so couldn't remove the trailer. Lucky close-ish to home, so rang around for hours until I found someone who could bring another trailer, some shovels and willingness to cross load 1.5T of gravel on the side of the road. Thanks Mick...

    Stay safe and calm y'all.

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    Replies
    1. We do what we have to do. That's a good friend who'll shovel gravel on the side of the highway for ya! Probably easier to find friends who'll move bodies. :)

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    2. Yeah, instead of running home.
      You could have just came to my place and helped me hang drywall on the ceiling lol.
      Actually , I finished getting the last piece up a couple days ago...
      Now just gotta tape and mud.

      Did that hand held doucher actually show up ? I woulda thought they'd be back ordered to sometime next year !

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    3. My order is supposed to be in by Wednesday. I might have gotten some of the last items to ship out. They disappeared from the Amazon web site a few hours later.

      I'm enjoying the isolation up here in the frosty woods.

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