After a 7½ month RVing hiatus we are back on the road again ….happily leaving the balmy 16o temperatures (windchill around 4o) of Langhorne behind. The bad news is that the forecast for our first night's stopover in Ashland, VA isn't much better!
After some last minute loading of our motorhome, we had the coach "de-winterized" … dealying our actually getting on the road until around 10:30 AM, about two hours later than our usual departure time … for a 264 mile trip through Philadlephia and around Wilmington, Baltimore (we can't go through the city;'s tunnels as we have a propane tank) and Washington DC.
After suffering through 5 miles of rush hour traffic in Philly, the next hour or so proved promising with only modest traffic and encouraged us to thinking about getting to Ashland by mid-afternoon.
After a pitstop at the Maryland House along I-95 our luck ran out!
and then there was the large sheet of polyethylene which flew off a truck ahead of us
and luckily missed us and other cars.
While there had been some gusty winds,
they fortunately seemed to evaporate by the time we crossed the Francis Scott Key Bridge while circumventing Baltimore.
(1.6 miles long with a roadbed almost 200 feet above Patapsco River)
South of the bridge, the traffic all but disapperared,.
Then, about 20 miles north of the Potomac River … SURPRISE … more traffic!
With our estimated arrival time slowly becoming later, we were delighted to see
suggesting that the traffic along the last eight miles to the Virginia Sate Line was probably moderate.
After crossing the Potmoac … we had 20 miles of unexpectedly traffic-free drive … when we ran into a traffic nightmare.
For the next 20 miles from just south of Lorton to north of Fredericksburg, our progress was measured feet and yards per minute as oppsoed to miles per minute … taking us some two hours to cover that distance!
As daylight faded
so did any hopes of reaching Ashland before dark!
What we at one time had hopes for a 3:00 PM arrival at Americamps RV Park ended up as an after dark (only the thrid time we'd actually arrrived using headlights) around 6:15 PM.
However, there was a bright note at the end of our I-95 rainbow … the campground was hosting a complementary Lasagna dinner this evening.
Cold this evening with morning temperatures expected around 14o.