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