Turn South at Maine

We left home a month ago today. For four weeks and 4,000 miles we headed almost due east until we arrived at the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine. From there, we turned south, aiming for Florida and zigzagging slightly to pick up the remaining states on our map. “Lord willing and Winnebago able,” we will fill in that last state on the continental US map and head northwest, aiming to be home in Spokane by Thanksgiving.

In general, our travel plan has been to travel a day and rest/explore the next, and several times we have travelled two or three days in a row. That is a little fast, even for us. We would prefer to travel about every third day, but we are trying to take advantage of the fact that we are this far east, and want to take in all we can before the snow flies.

We are extremely pleased with the performance of the Winnebago so far. The size seems just about perfect for us right now: big enough to be reasonably comfortable, but small enough to maneuver in cities and correct mistakes when I wind up where I shouldn’t be. We have had a few misadventures, most notably windshield wipers that have intermittently stopped working and an emergency brake release cable that broke. More on those things in another post.

Weather on our trip has been generally good, but we expected that in September. We stayed just ahead of the worst of the smoke from the western fires and have had almost no freezing weather. We have had a couple of windy, rainy days, especially as we have hit the east coast and turned the calendar to October. But thus far the extra coats and sweatshirts have been used sparingly.

So far, we have seen most everything we wanted to see, within the limits of COVID social distancing. Although rules have varied state to state, and we have avoided some of the normal tourist locations, the virus has not seriously impeded travel and campsite availability. We mask up everywhere, socially distance, and limit restaurants to takeout or outdoor seating. Some people have taken our names for potential contact tracing, and we occasionally have to sign an “I promise to follow the rules” sheet when we enter campgrounds. But by in large, masked travel is uninhibited.

If today’s windstorm allows, I will post several other picture-filled blog entries on our off day here. Stay tuned.