Another Pothole in the Road of Life

Remember that bent tailgate? It would no longer latch properly so before we left Port Clinton Denny used bungie cords to fasten the gate closed. By 8:46 AM we were on our way to New York, figuring we had a 5 hour trip of about 300 miles. Wrong. Oh so wrong.

I think we were in Pennsylvania when Denny realized the tailgate was hanging open. Pulling off onto the shoulder of a road with a big rig is never fun, but it's less fun on a busy highway on an uphill grade. Denny got out to shove the tailgate back up and that's when the excitement began. Expletives flew because it seems that the bouncing on Ohio's Rt. 2 had joustled our power cord, which connects us to a campground's electrical source, had bounced out of the truck bed at some point. As had one of our water hoses and the bucket that held our two whole-house water filters. I'm sure as the week progresses we'll find something else gone too, but those were the biggies.

No power cord, no power, no TV, no computers. Luckily I had called the Camping World south of Buffalo to order the new tailgate so the number was still on our cell phone. I called them to see if they carried power cords and they had some in stock. Whew. I obtained directions from the young man and asked them to hold one for me. We figured we'd be ahead of the game in a sense as we could also pick up the tailgate without making a separate trip tomorrow as planned. Wrong, or so wrong. Upon arrival at Camping World and receiving the power cord we were told that they had made a mistake when I called about the tailgate; they had none in stock after all because the ones they had were damaged gates that had been returned. Sigh. Another long trip tomorrow if the expected order arrived. Okay, back on the road.

Using the directions in our campground guide I instructed Denny to follow I-190 to Robert Moses Parkway. Wrong again. The tolls for rigs have gone from $1.25 to $4.25 and there were two toll booths on I-190. Following I-290 would have avoided one, although it would have added miles. A trade-off. The gate attendent was very apologetic (apparently she gets yelled at by RVers a lot) about the increased fee which has something to do with the fact that a fifth wheel is tall going over the bed of the truck while a travel trailer being shorter still only pays the $1.25. There was no time to ask her if Class A motorhomes would pay the higher fee.

We now approach what I believe to be our exit. Our first clue should have been the "no commercial trucks" sign, but hey, that could mean anything. We swing around the cloverleaf and at the end of the ramp is the I-190 overpass and a sign that says 12' 0". Okay folks-we're 12'10" which means we would shear off our roof top air conditioner if we drove under that overpass. I called 9-1-1 and the operator said "I just transferred you to the state highway patrol!". Excuse me? I just called! Apparently she was still connected to the state patrol's dispatch center as a man there started laughing and asked if we were stuck by the low overpass. Yep. The gal was still arguing with me that she had already spoken to me while the man was telling me he'd get a trooper or a city police cruiser out there. I told him that was a good thing because now there was a Class C rv stopped behind us also. So we weren't the only ones to make that mistake today.

Eventually both a cruiser and a trooper showed up and the trooper instructed Denny to slowly drive in the center of the two lanes to go under the highest part of the overpass while he watched to see if we'd pass under safely. With lots of yelling about 'bear right, more center, SLOW, SLOW, SLOW!!!' we squeezed under. With traffic stopped behind us, we had no chance to thank the officers, so THANKS!

Now we're on the road to the middle of the city of Niagara Falls and we know that isn't right! The atlas doesn't show a lot of details and I didn't bring the New York map into the truck. Dang. Lots of searching for route signs, Denny is tense, when I finally see a sign for Rt. 104, which is what we want. We're still in downtown Niagara which isn't right, but we're heading east. All of a sudden after cresting a hill we see another overpass with a sign showing the height as 11'. Arrggghh. Fortunately there was a side street right before it that we could turn on without having to back up or try to turn around. At this point Denny is so frustrated he can't talk so we pull over to find out where we are and how to get back to I-190 because we know we aren't where we're supposed to be and we can't go back the way we came because of the low bridge; I don't think the trooper would take kindly to being asked to guide us under the overpass going the other direction, do you? Denny figured out which road he needed to get back to the highway, I figured out which ways we needed to turn to get there and after driving a lot of city streets with crazy New York drivers we finally located I-190 and headed north. We found the second northmost Robert Moses Parkway exit several miles up the road and recognized the area from visiting once before. Finally, at 4 PM we pulled into the campground, were given a site and got set up, although not before it started raining. Naturally.

It was 5:30 before we were both seated, bitter lemon and vodka in one hand, scooping Alabama dip with the other. That was dinner and that was wonderful.

So we're set up and we're good. We'll have to make that long trip back to Camping World whenever they call to say the new tailgate is in, but that's okay because we don't want to worry about losing another power cord (that's very expensive). Life on the road is fun, educational and relaxing for the most part but just because you don't have a permanently fixed residence and you're retired doesn't mean that life doesn't throw roadblocks your way. The intent of this blog is to talk about the fulltime rving lifestyle and the unfortunate things that occur are part of that life. But as I said, we're fine, we've calmed down, we're okay.

Today is a new day.