Driving "around" New York

Today we said goodbye to the Normandy Farms 'resort' and hit the road. We want to spend a full day tomorrow taking in the sites of Philadelphia which means driving almost 300 miles today. Normally not that big of a deal except this time we route right by New York City.

I finished my work, we got the trailer ready and were on the road by 10:30AM which was pretty good. We told Tom that we wanted to avoid tolls to have him route around New York. This added 100 miles but from everything I read was the best way to go to avoid the worst traffic of New York city.

About 80 miles into the trip we stopped at the Submarine Force Museum in New London, CT. They have the first nuclear submarine there with tours and the cost is FREE!  We made it in pretty good time to the museum, had lunch and then explored the sub and all of the other exhibits in the museum. It was really interesting stuff and gave a good feel to the history of submarines and the goods and bads of serving aboard one. The kids loved the periscopes and pretending to drive the sub in a display they had.

Audio Tour aboard the Nautilus-Control Room

2 Captains in Action

USS Nautilus-1st Nuclear Powered Sub

Crew Quarters on the Nautilus-Thinking we
need these for the trailer

Checking out a scope

Hydrogen Peroxide Powered sub

Cool little sub-I think it shuttled "swimmers"

Nice traffic. "I know, Let's drive through NY at 5 pm with a
50+ foot vehicle. That'd be fun!"

From here we headed south until we hit New York and then headed west. Unfortunately it all timed out that we hit one of the metropolitan areas at 5PM so we had stop and go traffic for about an hour and a half at the end of which we were driving in the dark. To make it more interesting, there were times it was raining so hard we could literally not see more than 30 feet in front of us so we had to slow down a bit. Finally, we needed gas and it is always a gamble getting off as to whether the gas station will fit us or not. Of course the first one we tried could not so we had to route around about 5 miles in residential neighborhoods to get back on the highway and try again. The second one was a bit easier and we found a gas station we could fit into. Good news is gas is much cheaper in New Jersey than in the other states we have been in recently. Strangely enough they also have attendants to pump our gas just like Oregon. We have been pumping our own for so long now that it felt really slow to have to wait for someone else to and then explain that 20 gallons was not a full tank and to try again.

We finally made it to our campground about 9:15PM and parked. We hooked up, ate dinner and hit the sack as tomorrow we are getting up early to take in the sites in Philadelphia. The campground is about 15 miles from Philadelphia so it should be a fairly easy drive.