The Unexpected Thrash – Part I

April 10, 2025 — Day 5

Spacious Skies French Pond Campground, Henniker, NH — Cracker Barrel East Greenbush, NY

We couldn’t really sleep in late because the campground had an 11AM check out time. Usually you have until noon although 11AM isn’t that unusual. I think we had one campground where we had a 5pm check out time!

After getting up, Susan looked at the weather and said, “Uh oh, snow coming, 2 days in a row.” It would be a night time snow but the roads would be nasty early. So we couldn’t even wait a day and make the long push to Bear, DE in one stretch on Saturday. We had to leave Thursday. We found exactly 1 campsite available in Lums Pond State Park and quickly booked it for Friday & Saturday nights. Now we just had to get there! Easy right? (cue the uhh oh music) We found a Cracker Barrel in Fishkill, NY that could be possible since it was only about 3 1/2 hours from Keene. We don’t like getting to Cracker Barrels early, later is actually better. We could go home, frantically pack everything for the longer trip, leave late and arrive in Fishkill.

Thursday afternoon to save time we split up. Susan took Clifford and got gas and propane on the way. I took the Jeep and made 3 stops for things we needed, including the bike alarm. Bike thefts from campgrounds are a very real thing.

We got home and set about packing all the things. The kayaks and bikes on the Jeep.

Then it was time to put the brand new bike cover on the bikes. There’s a tube of material that goes over the hitch and it looked like the cover has to go on first, before the bike carrier! What a dumb design. So everything had to be removed.

The cover has a front and a back. The back has yellow reflective spots and mounts for the brake lights which we just didn’t have time to install. Good thing we’re not driving at night. (Oh wait, we will be!) The reflective strips would have to do.

We loaded the bikes again and found out that we had put in on backwards. After a few colorful words, Susan saved the day by noticing the tube of material had Velcro. We could just remove it! Now that is a much better design.

There is a cargo net of bungie cord material that is supposed to stretch enough to gather up all the loose material. We couldn’t get it done and we were pressed for time so we just grabbed some lashing straps to hold the fabric off the ground. It would have to do.

We packed up more regular clothing, rain coats, bike clothing, kayak clothing, birding gear and whatever food was in the fridge (susan here: and the kitchen sink. OK. Almost, I’m just kidding). We’ll have to go shopping in Bear, DE for sure. Last step, was hooking up the Jeep. Paul took care of that.

We pulled out of the driveway at 5pm and then headed to Home Depot to return the water hose we just bought a few days earlier. It was nice long one so we could fill Clifford when parked on the concrete pad or if we had an exceptionally long reach at some campsites (it’s happened). Problem was it was blocked by something so the water came out at a trickle. This is not ideal when you need to get 70 gallons of water into a tank. Turns out it is almost as easy to back Clifford up to the house and use our existing hose.

In the Home Depot parking lot we realized that we’d have to stop for dinner and that meant the optimistic target for getting to the Cracker Barrel in Fishkill, NY was 9:15 to 9:30 pm. It was then we decided to “Plan B.” and we found a closer Cracker Barrel in East Greenbush, NY. It was 8:15pm when we pulled into the Cracker Barrel, very hungry and tired. The thought of trying to even boil water for pasta wasn’t quick enough and required more effort than we had left in us. It didn’t take a whole lot of thinking to say, “Hey there’s a Cracker Barrel right here and it’s ‘breakfast for dinner’ night.” Breakfast is usually at least OK at a CB. Dinner, well, no. Just no. So breakfast it is! It wasn’t the best CB we’ve been to but it certainly isn’t the worst. We’d give it a solid 7 out of 10 stars.

Daily: 101 miles.

Total: 269 miles

Driving miles/Day: 67 miles/day 

Overall miles/Day: 54 miles

mpg: 5.82