Cabelas, Love, and Uturns

We are on our way to New England.  Our first stop is Shartlesville, PA, a campground near the rv repair shop in which we will have a supplementary braking system for the toad installed. It is really needed for the towing as even the hills along route 10 demonstrated on the way here.  No real problems, but the mountains in NE will create a lot of wear and tear on the rv, imho.

It took about 40 minutes to hook up the toad and get out of the lot.

Some observations on the way up

     Folks along Lancaster and Reading really keep their property attractive

     Route 10 was a two lane, curvy road

     I am much more comfortable driving now

     Farm machinery rules the road in rural PA - slow, slooooow

The drop off for the toad work involved a uturn through a Hess gas station with the toad behind and then through a hardware store parking lot on the way back.  I am learning that the no uturns signs for businesses mean maybe and will try my best not to do this, but the PA road rules almost demand it for rvs.  I doubt if the businesses will ticket us, but the PA state police will for sure when making an illegal turn on the highway.

The rv feels like a race car without the toad behind.

While looking for a grocery store, we came across Cabelas.  We did not know what kind of store it is, but it is BIG.  Turns out to be a an outdoor outfitter.  They had a huge parking lot with room for sixty or so rvs and hundreds of cars.  We spend about an hour there.  They have great merchandise if one is an outdoorsman or like that kind of clothing. It was quality stuff with comparable pricing.  Lots of camo clothing, ammo, guns, fishing supplies, a pond with fish in it, stuffed animals (kept looking for deer crossing signs), and some bargains too for some things.  It was busy for a late Wednesday afternoon.  The second amendment is the rule here.  A sign in front of the store says to check your firearms there...

We missed the turn for the rv camp despite some precise directions from the office.  An interesting thing we saw was a Love's gas plaza.  Must have been 100 trucks there.  It was like they were having a party or something.  Went the wrong way in the lot and got a wave from a driver passing by.  I thought he was being friendly and he probably was. Retrospectively, he may have been communicating to me about going the wrong way and saying that he spared our puny existence in our 31 foot rv by not being run over by a HUGE semi.

The Appalachian Campground is nice.  While in the lot at Cabelas, I thought it was a good idea to call and make reservations at 4 o'clock.  Luck that I did.  They closed at five and we would have been stuck with no place to camp - unless we pretended like we were a truck at Loves and boondocked.  They had cable, which is really nice.  It was our first experience with that as opposed to the very spotty antenna reception.  There were no trains too - a first for us.  I woke up several times during the night with the silence and said, "What was that?"

Will pick up the toad by noon according to the shop's schedule.  Yeah, fat chance!