Sunday, August 29, 2021

The Trip Home - The Big Apple - Day 1

For those looking for the posts about my ride cross country, the last post was "Day 69."  What continues here is the documentations of our trip home.  You are welcome to follow along though it likely won't be as exciting.  

We left fairly early Monday morning for the 4 ½ hour drive to New York.  Kenzie, who nominated herself as tour guide (which Cheryl and I thought would be awesome until we saw her itinerary!) found an RV park in Jersey City on the water looking right at the NYC skyline.  Good news is the location, bad news is the location.  I need to get the RV through downtown.  The drive was extremely stressful.  It was pouring rain most of the way (remnants of Henri) and of course I had the nasty check engine light flashing at me.  To add insult to injury, Google sent us on HWY 15 Palisades Parkway, a 74 mile stretch heading into New Jersey.  Turns out that only passenger vehicles are allowed on this road and the bridges have low clearance.  You would think there would be FLASHING signs on the ramps onto this road, but I didn’t see any.  I would see clearance signs with the right side 11' 6" (RV is 12 feet by the way) and left side 12' 8" so I would move into the left lane and hope the right side
cleared.  After 15 miles and 10 overpasses, I decided enough of this nonsense and pulled off the road. (Yes I am a slow learner).  There was no good alternative road and we had to drive through wooded neighborhoods at 25 mph adding about 45 minutes to our ETA.  Oh did I mention that the roads were really bad and with the high quality suspension of the RV, the refrigerator door flew open and the eggs broke all over the floor.  Great first road day on our journey back!

We finally rolled into the RV park at about 4:30 pm and I could not open a beer fast enough.  Was thinking about something stronger.  Kenzie, who was my co-pilot was feeling the stress and joined me.  After we got our bearings and heart rate down, we headed into Downtown Manhattan.  We went to the World Trade Center, visited Wall Street and had a terrific dinner at Watermark right on the water.  Great location with the Brooklyn Bridge as the backdrop.  I had a burger and Cheryl and Kenzie split a salad and chicken sandwich.  We rode the subway home and went to bed.  Sheesh, I thought riding my bike was tiring.  Kenzie's itinerary is way tougher.  That doesn't even touch what she has planned for tomorrow.      

Need to get my rest.  


2 comments:

  1. How about doing me a favor and asking Kenzie to add a barn or two to the schedule?

    Like the eggs, it cracks me up that Kenzie's site seeing agenda is making you wish for something more relaxing, like a five-hour bike ride up and down hills. "Half-assed" ain't in the Winkler dictionary.

    Enjoy the rest of your time in NYC.

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