Summer 2010 Part II

Not a great day for a ride in the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire...

With a little help from the weather (it stopped raining for a few minutes), we left the Montreal South KOA fairly early. We had hoped that our easy departure was an omen of things to come... it was not. We got through US Customs fairly easily and were soon crossing Lake Champlain at Rouses Point, NY and entering Vermont. A few miles into Vermont and the rains came back. The first 20 miles of our drive through Vermont involves passing through small towns on local roads. Once we got on I-89, I had hoped that we would have an easy run down I-89 to I-93 and I-95 to Foxboro and The Normandy Farms Camping Resort. Once again, the weather had the last laugh and virtually the entire trip was in the rain. We arrived at Normandy Farms in mid-afternoon and set up the trailer in the rain. I put out the awning to allow the rain to wash off the leaves that got trapped in the rolled up awning when we closed up in Montreal. Unfortunately, the wind was gusting at over 25 MPH and I didn't want to risk tearing the awning up so I rolled it up again. I hope the rains end before we leave so that I can open the awning and let it dry out.

The terrain that we traveled through in Vermont and New Hampshire was quite hilly and that had a negative impact on our fuel consumption. I generally start looking for a truck stop when the tank has six gallons of diesel left in it (except in sparsely populated areas where I start looking at 10 gallons). The area we were traveling through was not sparsely populated and had a lot of truck traffic, yet we could find no truck stops along our route. I don't like to stop at gas stations after damaging the old trailer last summer. In eastern Vermont we were down below the six gallon mark and I was now looking for gas stations. I carry a five gallon spare can of diesel for emergencies and have only had to use that once in the three summers since we bought the new truck. We finally got off the Interstate at a gas station selling diesel fuel. We got lucky, the diesel pump was in a location that was easy to access and reasonably easy to get out of. Now were cruising again with a full tank and as we entered Massachusetts, I started to look for truck stops. Once again, there were none to be found within easy reach of the I-93 and I-95. We finally stopped at a service area on I-95 in Wellesley (30 miles from our destination) and filled up the tank. I have to say that I was amazed that in nearly 300 miles of travel on Interstate highways in three New England states, we could not find one convenient truck stop when we were low on fuel. Even traveling in much more empty country across the US, we had not encountered this few truck stops. I guess, in the end, our luck was not so bad... we found diesel fuel and did not have to resort to the emergency can of diesel.