Sept 9 Day 8

Finally reaching our limit with the wet weather, Lennie and I decided to make a major change this morning. We stopped at the local Prevost dealer and traded the wing in for this 43 foot Prevost Diesel pusher coach. It was a great deal, we only had to come up with $1.2 million along with the wing to cover the purchase. Thank goodness we had so many accessories on the wing, that really brought the amount of cash we needed down to a reasonable level. The remainder of our trip will be dry and comfortable. We'll even save 4 nights in hotels !!!! It will consume slightly more fuel than the wing but that's OK. After we spend today traveling in the coach, I will post some interior photos.

What is this? Is that a photo of clear blue skies? I was beginning to think it always rains on the east coast.

Actually, the weather today was wonderful, with clear skies and highs in the low to mid eighties. Wish I had the wing back.

OK, enough wishful thinking. Since we can't really afford a new Prevost, we'll continue our trek on two wheels instead of 10.

We crossed through New York again today, and since Lennie missed the welcome sign earlier in the week, she got a shot today.

On our way across New York and into New Jersey, we crossed the Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River, about 25 miles north of midtown Manhattan.

The Tappan Zee Bridge is one of the primary crossings of the Hudson River north of NY City, and carries 7 lanes of traffic.

The Hudson was exceptionally muddy looking, likely due to the vast amount of rain the area had been getting the last few weeks.

Once across the Tappan Zee, we entered into our next "new" state New Jersey. New Jersey makes the 6th new state that we have traveled across during this trip.

We hopped off the turnpike for some fuel and ended up driving along the Raritan river which had heavy flooding during Irene. You could see that some of the park areas along the road were still flooded.

We also passed a section of the turnpike where flooding of the Rockaway River from Irene caused a section of the shoulder to collapse.

With another 10-15 miles left in our route, we passed into our 7th new state for the trip, Delaware.

The crossing from New Jersey to Delaware takes you across the Delaware Memorial Bridge. The Delaware Memorial is actually a set of two suspension bridges crossing the Delaware River. The Delaware Memorial Bridge is the southernmost vehicular crossing of the Delaware River and the only vehicular crossing between Delaware and New Jersey.

Below you can see the two spans of the Delaware Memorial Bridge.

Our ride took us through or near a number of large cities today, Stamford CT, New York City, Trenton NJ, Philadelphia PA, and Wilmington DE. We also passed a couple of well known college campuses today, Rutgers and Princeton.

And we ended the day with one more college. Until we arrived, I was not aware that at our hotel is actually located on the University of Delaware campus in Newark Delaware.

Tomorrow we plan to travel to Alexandria VA by way of Washington DC. We will spend the next two days visiting Lennie's niece Stacey and the DC area. With the September 11 anniversary on Sunday, I hope everything in DC goes smoothly.

We covered 250 miles today traveling from Milford Connecticut to Newark Delaware, taking our trip total to 1726 miles. Below is a map of the route from today.