2 days, 493 miles via I-495 (MA), I-90, I-84, I-91, I-95, I-286, NJ 440, US 9, I-195 (NJ), I-495 (MD and VA) and some local roads.
I routed this trip so that we could overnight in NJ and thus earn the right to put another state on our map. In retrospect, we would have been wiser to just skip NJ. That sticker was earned the hard way.
Day 1: Bellingham, MA, to Jackson, NJ
There is really no good way to get from southern MA to NJ. Our choices were either to either take I-84 across CT, then down the Garden State Parkway, or find a way through New York City. We have driven I-84 before and it is horrible and I don’t have many fond memories of the Garden State Parkway, either, so I opted for I-286 over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. That would take us through Brooklyn, but, hey, it’s an interstate. How bad could it be?
Plus I wanted to go over the bridge.
Well, never again.
Hop 2, Day 1
One problem was that the road was even rougher than I-84. When we finally arrived in NJ – exhausted and frazzled – we had to deal with the mess inside the RV. The new table next to my chair fell over, nearly everything that was on the bunks had fallen off (including cans of soda, which, thankfully, did not explode) and everything in the refrigerator looked like it had gone through a dryer cycle. We didn’t have any eggs in there but if we had, they would have been pre-scrambled. We did have a jar of pickles that somehow ended up standing on its lid. How does that happen?
Another problem was cost. The tolls on that route exceeded $100. The bridge alone was $62! I was expecting more like $30. Outrageous.
The worst problem, though, is that there is an underpass on I-286 in Brooklyn with a 12′ 6″ clearance, which is exactly the height of Patience. I admit that I had not checked for low clearances on the NY segment because it was all interstate and interstates have standards, right? Wrong. Lesson learned, but not before getting an earful from Jett, who nearly had a heart attack. I, too, was pretty upset as I had visions of either getting stuck on a surface street in Brooklyn and needing a police escort to get extricated, or paying the price of a very long detour back up to I-95 and then across the George Washington Bridge – which would take me on the Cross-Bronx Expressway, another of my least favorite roads.
Well, fortunately it was just a matter of exiting at the underpass and re-entering on the other side, with was really no detour at all. But our blood pressure remained highly elevated for another 45 minutes until we had crossed the bridge (and paid our ransom at the toll booth there) and were safely on US 9 in NJ, which was a pretty nice road.
Our campground for the night was the Timberland Lake Campground in Jackson, NJ. I have to give this place a very mixed review. The site was huge and level, so I think the campsite itself gets high marks. There are also a lot of amenities here, including a very large pool (as shown on the home page of their website), a very nice playground, an open-air pavilion, horseshoe pits and a basketball court, all of which, except for the pool, were being heavily used when we arrived. The park was nearly full and it seems that most everybody knew each other. There was a huge pot luck dinner and party that night which, if we were invited, no one bothered to inform us. But the place had a festive, friendly air about it.
So why the mixed review? The place is impossible to get out of. The road from the gate into the office area is wide enough for two vehicles but is marked as one-way inbound. I had to walk the campground to find a way out. There were two choices, neither marked as an exit and both very narrow and difficult. I chose what I thought would be the better of the two and nearly got hung up on trees. If there hadn’t been an empty pull-through site at that location I would have had to back up and go the wrong way out the one-way road (which Jett was telling me, vociferously, is what I should have done to begin with).
Also, the road leading to the campground is basically a mile of 1-lane road with very soft shoulders. Two large RVs meeting on that road would both run the risk of getting stuck. Plus the telephone wires overhead are low enough to snag a large rig that pulls over to let another get by. Combine that with the horrible, rutted, unpaved dirt paths inside the park and I have to rate this campground as a 0 on the accessibility scale. Just plain awful.
It is located very close to the Six Flags amusement park, so I am sure it is a popular campground in the summer. But not one that I will ever return to.
Day 2: Jackson, NJ, to Lorton, VA
I had planned to take the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to the Beltway, then take the Beltway to the east side of DC. But after our I-286 experience on Saturday I opted to stay on I-95 which I knew had no low bridges and go to the west of DC on the Beltway. That added a couple of miles to the trip.
Hop 2, Day 2
There were more tolls on this route and we cut it pretty close on our cash – we arrived in Lorton with $15 remaining. The total for the 2 days of tolls was over $130. Ouch!
But other than the pain to my wallet, there was nothing painful about this trip. We arrived before 2pm (thanks to an early start, made possible by the extra hour of sleep we got on the switch to EST). We settled in at Site 75 at Pohick Bay Regional Park for the third time. It is a difficult spot to back into, but is a very nice campsite once settled in. We really enjoy having the open field and the playground right behind us.
I will be working remotely this week while Jett catches up with family and laundry.
On one of my commuting trips home I witnessed a spectacular sunset. I took this photo, through my windshield, while driving.
Alexandria sunset