RVing to and from Long Island is nuts!
Last year before we got delayed leaving our home base in MA, we had plans to make Long Island, NY our first stop, and for good reason. Anthony grew up there and his family still lives in the area. We did a lot of research on which campgrounds were open in winter. There weren't many, but we had the option of staying at Battle Row Campground, a county park near Anthony's hometown. We also contemplated moochdocking in Anthony's sister's driveway. Due to our need to head south quickly and get out of winter, we skipped over this portion of our RV plans, instead visiting the relatives without the RV the weekend before we launched. Given that winter wreaked havoc, creating potholes that were causing tire blowouts galore, it was probably for the best that we skipped NY and headed straight down to Philadelphia.
Fast forward to launching out for Season 2, and this time we left on time. Our first stop: Long Island. We booked New Year's weekend at Battle Row Campground and made plans with the family to celebrate the New Year and our nephew's birthday.
We set out on December 30 in the morning, giving us about 90 minutes of buffer time to ensure we'd arrive before dark. As soon as we hit the road, we knew we were in for a long drive. Sometimes, the travels seem to breeze by, like we blink and we're there. Other times, we drag along, feeling like a few hours' drive is an all-day affair. This was the latter. We experienced something that we hadn't had much issue with last year. Lots of cars wanted to cut us off and speed around us. It seemed like every time we put our signal on to change lanes, the car behind us whizzed into that same lane, blasting its horn as it zoomed past us. Due to those extra adrenaline boosts, even without much traffic, it seemed to take forever to get out of MA and through RI. Then once we were in CT, the traffic slowed us down even more.
The traffic pattern was frustrating. Instead of a few slowdowns, there were patches of traffic jams, so that as soon as we thought we were in the clear, we approached another. None of the traffic was terrible, but the jams were persistent. It wasn't long before we realized we'd be racing the sun. Because of this, we only stopped for a 10-minute break to use the bathroom. We hadn't budgeted enough snacks for a long trip, but we couldn't do much about that. We needed to try and get to Battle Row before dark.
Due to our delays in CT, by the time we got into NY, we were hitting the early bouts of rush hour. This is also where the roads get bumpy, but we're used to that. There are a few notorious sections of I-95 where the roads are built with concrete Super Slab. New York is one of them. All you RVers that complain about Florida into Georgia? There are sections that use this too. We've done our share of bumpy roads both towing and not towing, but driving over the Throgs Neck Bridge and making our way to the Long Island Expressway, we were experiencing rough roads like never before. Thankfully by that point we were going slow; rush hour on the LIE on a Friday night is no joke. We thought all these people would be taking a long weekend for New Year's. We were wrong.
When we finally made our way off the expressway exit, we followed our RV GPS. New York has a lot of roads and parkways with low clearance bridges, so an RV GPS that knows our height is key. Unfortunately, Garmin failed us and ended up taking us 11 minutes out of the way. Apparently it thought there was a low bridge on the more direct route to the campground, but future dry runs of the road assured us that there was not. Even worse, the GPS took us to the wrong address. Despite my double checking the address, including street viewing the entrance, there we found ourselves at a closed gate, across from an industrial complex. We pulled over in the complex, resigning ourselves that, had GPS taken us the correct way, we would have arrived while there was still some daylight. Instead, we opened our maps and found the actual park entrance - on a road with a weight limit, nonetheless - and we slowly made our way there, with our Garmin beeping at us the whole way to tell us that we were venturing into weight restricted territory. To tell you the truth, even the actual entrance wasn't much better. Very dark, desolate industrial area with tiny signage for the campground. That's not what we want in the daytime, let alone after dark!
We got to the campground and saw that the office was closed. Evidently the hours are very limited, and the office closes shortly after check-in time. On Sundays, it closes an hour before check-in time! We checked for any papers left for us and found nothing, not even a campground map. I tried to search for a map on my phone to no avail. Alright, I guess we just drive around in the dark until we find our site! We were looking for site 14 and drove up a row with increasing numbers: 5, 6, 7, 8. We thought we were on the right track, until we got to the outer campground loop, which turned into tent areas. At that point, we rounded a curve and were bombarded by two dark creatures scurrying out in front of our RV. Cats! I got out and shooed them off to the side so we wouldn't run them over, at which point I discovered about 6 more. The colony really wanted to visit the front of our truck, so I kept ushering them away as Anthony carefully drove through.
After making our way through the cat den, we stopped at the first row of sites that we hadn't yet been down. I was already out of the truck, so I decided to walk the row looking for our site. I started down the row, looked to my right and saw #52. No way 14 was going to be down there. At this point, I got back in the truck and made my 2nd attempt to find a campground map. I eventually did...in a buried review on RV Trip Wizard, where a good Samaritan posted a picture of a dinky hand-drawn map with no legend, sitting in her lap. We scoured the map for site 14 and finally found it...in the same row I had starting walking down! Where was it? Across from site 52! Logical, I know. If only I had looked to my left instead of right, and it would have been right there.
I stayed at the site while Anthony drove around so he'd be facing the correct way to back in. It was an easy spot to get into, except that it was dark and we couldn't see where the pavement began and ended, and we were hungry and tired. We didn't quite bite each other's heads off, and finally, after a nearly 8-hour drive day that should have taken us 5.5, we were in our first official campsite of our 2nd season of travel.
For reference, it took us the same amount of time to drive from MA to Philadelphia last year.
The plus side to RVing, though, is that even if a drive day is rough, once we get settled, we can breathe easy. We have all our belongings with us, can enjoy the outdoors, and this time, enjoy the company of family as well. We had a great weekend with our loved ones. Despite the issues getting to the campground, it really wasn't bad for a county park. We had good space on our end-row site, and the park was reasonably clean and quiet.
We got ourselves into Long Island, but we knew soon we would have to leave. We did our due diligence to ensure that we would not make wrong turns this time, no matter what our GPS said. The dry runs helped us figure out where we could go without worrying about low bridges. We put our next destination into 3 different GPS devices to see what directions they'd give, and we asked my father-in-law to give us the low-down on which way he used to send his company trucks going from NY to NJ. We formulated a route, and the night before departure I spent over an hour street viewing it, getting more and more anxious as I saw overhangs that were "tall enough" for us to get under, and turns that if we missed them, we'd be in big trouble. All night long I thought about our travel plans between sleeps. Funny though, how often plans change.
To be continued...