A Moose, a Beaver and Turkeys Walk Into a Bar

April 6, 2025 — Day 1

Keene, NH to Redmond Fleet Services, Hudson, NH

We’re off on adventure again. This is just a short shakedown trip, we needed to get the annual service done on Clifford and that’s in Hudson NH on April 7th. And on the 8th and 9th we’re seeing one of our favorite bands play a 2 day concert in Concord, NH. (susan here: not 2 days straight, 2 evenings! They’d be hoarse and exhausted if it were 48 hours! But you, gentle readers, figured that out didn’t you. I didn’t have to insert my comments here. <g>)

So why not have a shake down cruise before the “real” trip starts next week!

We’d hoped to be somewhere not at home on the 6th and close to our mechanic’s place an hour and a half away (susan here: RV mechanics are, surprisingly not on every corner, and the good ones are even farther apart.) We were sure we would be spending a night in the parking lot at our mechanic’s business. Probably the 7th. Weren’t planning on the 6th. But the forecast called for snow on Monday morning so we decided to head out on the 6th, a Sunday evening.

So back to Friday night. Paul schlepped 13 boxes up from the basement to load into Clifford. Like every other RV family, we empty the RV at the end of the season to make sure there is as little as possible for mice to eat or nest with. If it can be schlepped into the house, it’s schlepped into the house. We also spread this horrible herbal potpourri all over the RV, it is so bad you want to gag. (susan here: think of the worst possible Christmas tree potpourri, triple that idea, then triple it again.)

On Saturday Paul put those into the RV and Susan unloaded all of that. On Sunday we loaded and unload 9 to 10 boxes of clothes, food, board games etc. For those of you that are counting your correct answer is 23 (susan here: No it’s not 42 but it felt like it. If you don’t get the joke, oh well. Read The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy.)

When getting ready we had a chance to pull Clifford out of the it’s new parking space. Paul thought we had a 5% chance of being able to make the tight right turn, Susan gave it 0% chance. We really wanted this to work. If we couldn’t it meant we would have to back down the drive and then hook up the Jeep in the street. Pretty much the reverse of when we didn’t have the parking pad where we’d back in and drive out.

Here’s what it looks like from satellite view.

The white line is 36 feet long, which is how long Clifford is. Last September, you might remember in the blog 25′ Tape Measure that we measured the turning circle and it was 70 feet! You can see why we were concerned.

We made it with only 1 back up and reset. We still don’t believe it. We were like a pit crew at the races. Susan drove and Paul spotted her on the radio. Forward. Turn Driver. Reverse. Turn Passenger. Slowly, you’re getting close to the barn. Everything clicked. We’re super excited about that. It’s nice having the RV parked out of the way. It makes coming and going with the cars so much easier.

You can see the concrete parking pad on the right. Clifford was backed into that, Susan made the right turn, as Paul spotted, and then she backed Clifford up to the house so we could fill the water tanks.

Susan remembered that we need the registration. We couldn’t find it! Paul found a check from December, so we must have registered it. (susan here: We looked high and low and even in Narnia. And Oz.) We decided to drive to Hudson, then back to Keene Monday morning to get duplicate registration paperwork, then back to Hudson.

Then we needed to test the Jeep’s brakes so Susan drove around the block and Paul sat in the passenger seat of the Jeep, watching the brake pedal as she used the RV’s brakes.

Note, it is really weird sitting in the passenger seat, watch the steering wheel turn and the brakes being applied (!!!) around corners.

Then we needed to go get propane.

How late did we leave? We made it to Gormolo’s in Swanzy at 5:05pm which happened to be 5 minutes after the propane guy left. We saw him drive away!

It was going to be a cold night. So we drove home again just to get our oil filled space heater. We have very good batteries and knew that could take the edge off the chill somewhat.

After the quick stop home and on the way to our mechanic we saw some turkeys, then a moose (!) and then a white pickup truck flashed his headlights. Traffic was stopped, Susan was instantly on the brakes and we saw something in the road. It was a beaver!

(susan here: when we got there it was looking at a car, with body language like “this is MY spot to cross how dare you impede me!” and then it indignantly waddled off to our side of the road, tucked under the guard rail and headed off to it’s beaver lodge [probably].) That might have been one of our weirdest animal sightings in all our travels. The other that comes to mind was the cowboys doing a roundup of cattle alongside a major interstate outside Salt Lake City. That was bizarre.)

We pulled into the parking lot around 7pm, got settled in and the skies opened with heavy rain. We had yummy leftovers for dinner, sat around getting colder even though the heater was on. And finally said, “outta here” and went to bed fairly early just to be under the covers. (susan here: thankfully we’re experienced travelers and we bring more than sheets with us.)

Oh map geeks, why didn’t we drive straight across 101? It is a much slower road and you have to drive through the small city of Nashua, which is’t fun in a huge RV. The below route is 83 miles, the direct route is 60-ish miles, and the 60 mile route is 3 minutes longer.

Daily: 83 miles.

Total: 83 miles

Driving miles/Day: 83 miles/day

Overall miles/Day: 83 miles