Through The City and on to Connecticut via multiple states

June 11, 2010
Broad Brook, CT

Today was a very good travel day. We bid PA farewell and headed for CT.

We were up early and greeted with a partly sunny morning. Coffee in hand, I finished the travel preparation, which was basically just pulling in the power cord and hooking up to Rover. We left right around 8:00 AM as planned, and made our way cross-country (there are no direct routes) south. We tried a new route and it worked out pretty well, heading west from the RV park, then south to PA-41. We soon crossed into Delaware where a quick maneuver put us on DE-141 right down to I-295. We were soon across the Delaware Memorial Bridge into New Jersey, and ducked into the Flying J for fuel - both the coach and the people (this time, I remembered that we were going to have breakfast at our first stop).

We then made the quick hop over to the New Jersey Turnpike (aka "The Turnpike"), zipped through the EZ-Pass express lanes and headed north. As we usually do, we check New York City (aka "The City") traffic around New Brunswick. After hearing that there was a negligible delay on the local approaches to the George Washington Bridge (aka "The George" - OK, you get the idea: we can sometimes be New York-centric), we decided to go for it, saving 40-75 miles in the process. We had our alternate routes identified from past travel, so we knew we'd have options if things changed.

As it turns out, we really didn't have any issues. We followed the Turnpike all the way past the Meadowlands sports complex to the end, used the local lanes, cut over to the upper deck lanes (no trucks/propane on the lower level of The George and saw an empty HOV lane marked "6-9 AM and "3-6 PM". It being 11:00 AM, that looked like the right lane for us, and we drove right up to an EZ-Pass only lane and were through in a matter of seconds.

From the tolls, it's only a few hundred feet to the bridge, then quickly across the upper tip of Manhattan into the Bronx. OK, "quickly" is relative since we had a bit of stop-and-go traffic for a few miles. Other than a few slow spots along I-95 in Connecticut (the inevitable construction zones), we had a good ride up to New Haven then north on I-91, sneaking through Hartford just before the afternoon rush and arriving at Pat & Al's place in East Windsor right around 4:00 PM. Other than a run-in with an angry wasp while plugging in, we were quickly settled and enjoying a beer (the Lone Star that we brought Al from Texas) on the porch. All in all a good day.