We departed from Kathy’s house in East Greenbush, NY at 10:15AM EDT and and started our trek South to Cabela’s in Hamburg, PA (247 miles). We took I-87 South to I-287 to I-78. We stopped for fuel at the TA Travel Center in Bloomsbury, NJ.
We arrived at Cabela’s around 2:41PM EDT. We have stayed here overnight twice in 2019 and 2020. Upon arrival, we immediately dumped our tanks at the free dump station. Then we went into Cabela’s to purchase some items (ammo and targets) to thank them for our free overnight stay. While we were checking out, Beth made an online carryout purchase from the Red Robin that is about 400yds from our parking spot. We picked up our wings and then parked the camper, dropped the jacks, and put the room out. We had chamber of commerce sunny and 72 degree weather followed by an overnight low of 47. We watched Alabama vs Florida St. football via Starlink and YouTube TV.
We departed from Mom & Dad’s at 10:00AM EDT and headed East to Lampe Campground at the Port of Erie, PA. We took the “toll avoidance” route across US-20 and OH-2 (with some connectors along the way until we reached the free portion of I-90 in Cleveland. Traffic was heavy on I-90 until we got closer to Pennsylvania. We arrived at the campground at 4:30PM EDT (322 miles).
Beth discovered a Chick-fil-A just before we got off US-20 and onto I-475 in Toledo, OH and dialed up an order on her phone. I was a bit nervous about the parking lot situation at lunch hour based on every other Chick-fil-A we’ve ever tried to visit, but this one had a real nice setup to route the drive-thru commandos (who drive 30MPH minimum through the parking lot to beat any competitors to the front of the line) away from the parking spots. We managed to snag a parallel parking spot near the entrance and the food was ready when Beth arrived inside. We were chomping on chicken nuggets within about two minutes. We also decided to try the chicken strips for the first time. The meat was excellent and perfectly cooked (as you would expect), but the batter was thicker and sweeter than the nuggets. Although the strips were great, we didn’t care for the sweet taste and will stick to the nuggets in the future.
We stopped for fuel at the Loves Travel Stop in Madison, OH. That was a quick stop. We saved about $0.80/gal with our diesel fuel card.
This campground is a part of the Port of Erie and is directly on a canal that comes in to a harbor from Lake Erie. It’s very nice and very full with Water and 50Amp Electric at each site.
Today we started our migration South. We left Albany just after 10AM EDT and arrived at Twin Grove RV Resort in Pine Grove, PA at 4:15PM EDT. We took I-90 West out of Albany and caught I-88 West to Binghamton where we picked up I-81 South. This route is longer by about 20 miles, but avoids going through New Jersey and then paying the $16 toll to cross back into Pennsylvania on I-78. We didn’t find I-88 to be as smooth as it used to be, but it was only bad in sections. When we got South of Scranton, I-81 got very rough. It wasn’t visually obvious, but something about the distance between the bumps in the road seemed to catch a resonant frequency on the trailer and it was shaking the heck out of the back of the truck. The rough ride ended about 50 miles South of Scranton, but there were votes in our vehicle to never take this route again. The problem is that my recollection of I-78 is pretty bad too, but that was several years ago.
This is a nice campground albeit hilly, which can result in leveling issues in some sites. We stayed here in August of 2021 and had some tires off the ground when the motorhome was leveled. The site we’re in on this trip is fairly level and only required that we raise our driver side about 2″. Our neighbors, on the other hand, have a massive 5th Wheel and both passenger side tires are completely off the ground.
We have full hookups and very few trees allowing our Dish antenna to pickup satellites 61.5, 110, & 119. Our AT&T hotspot connection is receiving excellent connectivity at 123/49 Mbps download/upload speeds. Our TV antenna is picking up NBC, CBS, and Fox out of Harrisburg, PA.
Twin Grove RV Resort – Site #A19Twin Grove RV Resort – Site #A19
This morning we left Speculator, NY at 9:15AM EDT. Last year we headed towards Albany and picked up I-87 to head South, but encountered significant tolls. Therefore, this year we elected to retry I-81 through Scranton, PA. We stopped taking that route years ago because I-81 through Scranton was awful. Google Maps wanted us to take NY-8 West out of Speculator and several other back roads to get to I-88 and then I-81. We’ve done that in the past and found it to be a bit too winding and hilly. So, we took NY-30 back to Amsterdam (the route we always take to get to Speculator from Albany) and then continued South on NY-30 to get to I-88. NY-30 South of Amsterdam was definitely more winding and hilly than North of Amsterdam, but we were only on it about 16 miles. The only issue we ran into was that we hit the intersection of NY-30 and US-20 at about 50MPH and there was a significant dip in the road at the intersection. I realized it at the last second as we approached the intersection and slammed on the brakes, but it still felt like the RV left the ground enough to make Evil Knievel proud. We pulled over as soon as we could find a spot and inspected the RV and the Tahoe. We couldn’t find any signs of damage.
We stopped in Binghamton, NY at the TA Travel Center for diesel fuel at $2.91/Gallon. After filling up we parked in the parking lot and made sandwiches for lunch. After lunch we headed South on I-81 and other than very heavy traffic the remainder of the trip was uneventful. I-81 through Scranton has definitely improved. Not once did we think the TV was going to fall off of its wall mount. The only rough area we encountered was probably the first 30 miles entering Pennsylvania and it wasn’t unbearable.
We arrived at Twin Grove RV Resort in Pine Grove, PA at about 4:15PM EDT. This campground is HUGE and it has lots of amenities. Beth said the campground store was ginormous. Our site has full hookups. We have a nice pull through site, but it’s not very level from front to back. We were able to level the RV without using our ramps, but we had to put down multiple boards and several plastic jack pads to lift the front. The passenger side front tire came off the ground so I had Beth (Bubbles) lift it enough to get a board under the tire and then had her lower the tire back down on the board. We have a very nice view of the Pennsylvania mountains from our living room.
We haven’t tested the campground Wi-Fi, but our AT&T Hotspot got 82Mbps/20Mbps download/upload speeds. DISH blacked out the Rays game because we are parked in Pennsylvania and the Rays are playing Philadelphia, but we were able to stream the game no problem with our Hotspot.
Twin Grove RV Resort – Site #A21 – Front Passenger
This morning at roughly 9AM EDT we left Mom & Dad’s house in LaGrange, IN and started heading East to visit Beth’s family in Albany, NY. We headed East on US-20 until we picked up I-475 North in Toledo, OH. We followed I-475 to I-75 North and then picked up I-280 South to get to SR-51 which then takes you to SR-579. SR-579 eventually dumps into SR-2 which runs parallel to Lake Erie and eventually dumps into I-90 just East of Cleveland (avoiding the Ohio Turnpike tolls). We stopped at the Sam’s Club along SR-2 in Sandusky, OH and purchased fuel for $3.17/gallon (the best price we saw all day).
We pulled into Camp Eriez on Lake Erie in Lake City, PA at 3:20PM EDT. We stayed here last year on our trek East as well. We are in the same site as last year and were able to eventually pickup the DISH Eastern Arc satellites on our portable satellite antenna (R2D2) after several tries. I don’t think we would have any luck if we were in any of the sites beside us. We would probably have to get a site in one of the rows behind us (Sites 1 – 10). We would definitely stay here again.
On our second day in the campground a new neighbor arrived around 2:30PM just two sites to the East and we had a temporary loss of power shortly after he connected his camper to power. Our power came back, but only at about 107 Volts so we shut our air conditioners off. I talked to one of the campground employees and they recommended moving to another site because they didn’t know much about power. He recommended Site #5 because it’s on another circuit. The beauty of Site #5 is that we were able to access the DISH Western Arc satellites from our roof antenna, but our voltage from the power source was only slightly better. We got both air conditioners running with our voltage barely reading 110 Volts. In order to eliminate any risk we switched the water heater to gas and avoided any excess use of power. It was a very hot day (91 degrees) for a campground on Lake Erie so they were probably at their power limit even though the transient area of the campground had minimal occupants.
Today we started our trip home leaving Speculator, NY at 10:00AM EDT and drove to the HUGE Cabela’s in Hamburg, PA. We drove 323 miles and arrived just after 4:30PM EDT. The fastest route home when leaving Speculator is through Scranton, PA, but in the past we’ve found the roads there to be absolutely horrible. So, even though it means paying tolls in New York and New Jersey we have taken I-87 to I-287 to I-78 the last few trips. I guess we’ll have to give Scranton another try on our next trip because the NY/NJ tolls were $25.35 and then Pennsylvania hits you if you travel Westbound on I-78 across the Delaware River (state line). The fee for a car is $1. The fee for a motorhome towing a car is $16 (Eeeek!).
On the way down out of the Adirondacks we stopped at the Sunoco in Mayfield to top off the fuel tank for $2.49/gallon. We stopped and fixed a sandwich at the Modena Travel Plaza along I-87 near Modena, NY.
Upon arrival we went into Cabela’s to spend some money so we could get the passcode to their onsite RV dump station. I bought some reloading case lubricant, some cast iron skillet cleaning gear, and a Moon Pie. Beth bought some Gear Ties to organize all of our phone charging cords in the camper.
We went back to the camper and reheated the leftover Chicken Parmesan from last night’s meal at the Melody Lodge in Speculator and watched the Thursday night NFL game (Miami vs Jacksonville).
This morning at 9AM EDT we started heading East to visit Beth’s family in Albany, NY. We left Chain O Lakes State Park at 9AM EDT (dumping our tanks on the way out). We headed East on US-6 and stopped at the Walmart on the East side of Kendalville, IN for fuel. On our way into the Walmart my sister Deb called and told us they had just seen us driving through Kendalville. I filled up for $2.20/gallon while Beth ran into Walmart and picked up some groceries.
We continued East on US-6 until it merged with Ohio SR-2 and stayed on SR-2 until it merged with I-90 just East of Cleveland (avoiding the Ohio Turnpike tolls). The rain was very heavy around Sandusky and the traffic was very thick, so we pulled into a Rest Area and ate lunch in order to let the rain and traffic pass on by. We had my sister Deb’s leftover pulled pork for lunch and it was still delicious!
We pulled into Camp Eriez on Lake Erie in Lake City, PA at 3:45PM EDT. There are a lot of seasonal campsites here, but they are all kept in very nice shape. There is a separate section set aside for transients and each of those sites is 33′ wide and 66′ long. They don’t have sewer hookups, but the bathhouse is extremely clean and the shower heads are higher than mine (which pleases me). We would definitely stay here again.
We had a short drive today (168 miles) to the HUGE Cabela’s in Hamburg, PA. Cabela’s has an RV section in their parking lot and allows overnight stays. They even have a free dump station. We are parked here in in the back of the parking lot. It’s warm enough that we are running our generator (for air conditioning) so for safety I hooked up our exhaust Gen-Turi which has only been used once. I brought it along in case we get to do some serious boondocking out west.
Once we got setup and waited for a heavy rainstorm to pass through we headed into the store to see if we could contribute to the local economy. Unfortunately, most of the things we wanted to purchase were big enough that we didn’t want to haul them across the country for 4 months. So we bought a moon pie and a small pack of red licorice (big spenders). We’ll make a bigger contribution on some future shorter trip.
