Unraveling The Grand Adventure part One

Ok, you guys got me dead to rights. Last week’s blog, Grand Adventure Part One was a bit confusing. But I guess with old age sometimes one gets a little over-confident and confused. That is, if the old one (me) can even remember what day it is.

So let’s see if we can unravel the confusion that I created, just a bit. First point, we live in rural New Hampshire and planned the Grand Adventure to take us around the perimeter of the country. Well not quite the perimeter but across the country using the Lincoln Highway, which runs from New York City to San Francisco. This would keep us below any winter weather, allowing us to swing northwest from Salt Lake City to Seattle, if the weather report was favorable. We would plan to drive the remaining section of the Lincoln later.

We started the trip a week later than expected because I decided at the last minute to upgrade the electronics in the coach and add solar to the system. RV Solar Electric in Phoenix, AZ, fixed us up with a kit that would provide 160 watts of solar, a 2000-watt Magnum inverter/converter/charger. The charger side puts out 100 amps to make short work of charging the batteries. The battery pack was upgraded to 6 golf cart batteries in series parallel and one 8D truck battery for the house power. I retained the original 8D truck battery for the chassis power.

With all of that installed we hit the road. From Newport, NH, we headed for Route 30 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. As I said last week, we began the Lincoln Highway there instead of in Times Square in the Big Apple for obvious reasons, 38 feet of RV plus 20 feet of trailer. Lancaster is the center for the tourist trade visiting the Amish and Mennonite populated countryside. From there, the road runs down to Gettysburg and on to Chambersburg and west. As I wrote last week, the hills and grades between Chambersburg and Ligonier are awesome, boasting 10% grades.

Now, here is where the confusion comes in. I began last week’s blog with a radio weather report for Seattle and then jumped back in time to the trip. We are in Seattle enjoying grandparent time with a new granddaughter; but I closed the blog last week with a report of getting to Rockford, Illinois, and saying that next week, this week, would report on getting through to Kansas and beyond.

In all honesty, folks, we are not lost. We know where we are, but I have given readers the impression that we are lost.

The Lincoln Highway, and roads like it that have changed or charted the course of human history have fascinated me from the beginning of my travels 6 decades ago. Unlike some of the authors who have written very successful books like William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways, I am fascinated with the topography, the road’s reason for being, and with trying to put myself in the place of the early traveler as I tool along in our rolling ranch house. Heat-Moon and others use roads as backdrop to tie together interviews with characters along the way.

The Lincoln Highway gave the traveler of 1915 a variety of experiences, from the hard grades, often 10%, of Pennsylvania to the prairies, to the vastness of the west, and yes, the mountains.

Now with this all said as a backdrop, I will try to get back on track and I thank you for your comments that yanked me back to reality.

See ya next week around the bend.

Brad & Lucy