The Unexpected Thrash Part II
April 11, 2025 — Day 6
Cracker Barrel East Greenbush, NY — Lums Pond State Park, Bear DE
We were beat from the thrash that was yesterday and decided to sleep in. (susan here: no, really slept in, maybe 9:30 am, kind of sleeping in.)
Paul hates driving in big cities so he programmed the Garmin to drive to the west around NYC, and dropped more shaping points into our Garmin to loop around Philadelphia. (susan here: which is always, “fun” except when it isn’t, which is pretty much always.) We also wanted to avoid the NJ Turnpike because crazy, crazy tolls last time we used it.) We had what we thought would be a simple 4 to 5 hour ride. We weren’t in a hurry and left around 11AM. A decision we would later regret.
Heading through Albany we drove past this beautiful building.
That is the State University of NY, lovely building. It then got scenic.
We’re feeling pretty good about the trip. We planned on 2 short shifts each, maybe 75 minutes. We made the first change at a rest area of the NY State Throughway, had a quick lunch also. We had about 200 miles to go and thought we’d make up some time by doing only 3 shifts, 100 miles each. That’s easy. Sure, Susan has to do two, but we trade back and forth. She likes taking first shift so she often offers to do a double.
We took the 287 to 202 which was a bad idea. Route 202 ranges between 45mph and 50mph and then dead stop because of lots of traffic lights. The next 20 miles often looked like this. (susan here: we’re sure you’re envious of well, not being in this.)
The view wasn’t always ugly. We had been seeing trees starting to bud earlier but now they had their spring flowers on and it was beautiful!
About a hundred miles later Susan used satellite view and found a great place for a driver’s change. We got on the 295 to go around Trenton & life was good. Oddly the GPS wanted us to exit to Route 1. Huh. That’s a pass. We’d just done the 202 traffic mess & didn’t want more of that on Route 1. Susan chose to do 295 to 95 and push on thru Philadelphia. Apple Maps showed bad traffic in Philly, but it also showed bad traffic on the loop roads around the City of Brotherly Love.
We did get to see the downtown in the mist, that was nice.
For you non Philly folks, Philadelphia didn’t have a skyline for quite years and then all of a sudden it grew. It took just 7 years!
The Philadelphia skyline is anchored by a group of particularly tall buildings, but just 40 years ago, not a single tower rose over 548 feet, the height of the City Hall tower that was completed in 1901. An informal “gentlemen’s agreement” held towers back from rising above the limit, but no developer was successful until One Commerce Square was approved in 1984, which was soon followed by a series of even taller skyscrapers. Philly YIMBY looks at the history behind these Center City buildings, which shaped a major portion of the Philadelphia skyline as we know it today. The Illustrated History Of Philadelphia’s Skyscraper Boom Of 1984-1991
Traffic was bad and it was only going to get worse. We were leaving Philadelphia heading towards Wilmington where what feels like a 100 roads come together.
The Idiot Box, otherwise known as the Garmin RV890, said to be in “any of the left three lanes.” There was a lot of traffic merging in from the right so Susan grabbed the leftmost lane. A sign said Delaware Memorial Bridge and she said, “Content!” That’s what we tell each other to grab photos for the blog. Paul, who grew up in Philly thought “This isn’t right!” That’s the $25 bridge we don’t want to go over since it’ll put us back in New Jersey and we just left Delaware! Traffic is at a standstill. Susan spied a pair of tractor trailers, pulled up alongside the 1st one and started to wedge us inbetween them. Paul opened the window, leaned out waved to get attention and pointed at us and then where we needed to be. That angel of a trucker knew exactly what we needed and stopped so we could merge. And you know what, a little car behind us jumped in front of him almost blocking us! We find that most truckers are helpful. They’ve all been in bad spots and had kindness shown to them. Ok, the short haul ones are nasty though, they’ll run you off the road to get there faster. If the truck has a container on it, watch out, they’re the ones that speed and drive recklessly.
Then onto Wilmington, where once again a 100 roads come together. Susan was starting to getting tired, not physically but mentally. Her 100 mile shift has taken quite a long time than longer expected. Paul tried to find a place to exit and do a driver’s change. We even thought about doing a running change. In the right kind of stop and go traffic you can put in park and quickly swap seats. But we had heavy traffic rolling traffic not stop and go. She was stuck in the driver’s seat for a while yet.
Paul eventually found an exit with a strip mall which had a big parking lot. But at this point we only had just 20 minutes to go and she thought it wasn’t worth the hassle.
Soon we were parked and had power hooked up. We’re starving but weirdly not in a mood to consider defrosting the white chicken chili that Paul had made and frozen about a week ago. We nibbled on some cheddar cheese until we decompressed. Later we ate and zoned out and had an early bedtime. We’re very happy that we don’t have to be anywhere else for 5 sleeps. We count sleeps when we are the road, not days. Days get too confusing.
Daily: 281 miles.
Total: 550 miles
Driving miles/Day: 110 miles/day
Overall miles/Day: 92 miles