September 26 - Driving Home to Fairfax, Virginia

We were up by 7:30 and finished breakfast, hitching the trailer, and dumping the waste water tanks by 8:40, which was a pretty good start. From the campground we turned right and drove almost immediately onto the bridge leading to the U.S. The connection from Canada to the U.S. at that point consisted of two high suspension bridges, the first one to an island in the middle of the river that was still Canadian territory, and the second from the island to the American shoreline. We had great views of the 1,000 islands area from the top of each bridge, but we weren't allowed to stop and take pictures; besides I was too concerned about crossing the U.S. border to really relax and enjoy the view.

That worry, as it turned out, was needless. The U.S. Customs officer was polite and seemed to believe our tale about camping for 3 weeks in Canada. Of course, we were pulling a 25 foot travel trailer and had bicycles, firewood and tools in the back of the truck, so that added some verisimilitude to the story, I guess. In the end, we were through customs and on our way down Interstate 81 to Syracuse in about 3 minutes flat, so up to that point we were somewhat ahead of schedule.

The drive down to Syracuse was along the land just to the east of the eastern shore of Lake Ontario. The landscape was very gently rolling hills covered with a nice cover of deciduous forests that were just starting to turn colors. The stretch from Syracuse to Binghamptom became a bit more hilly as we cut through a corner of the Finger Lakes area of New York, but still very pretty. The further we went south, the fewer trees we saw that were changing into their fall colors of yellow, red, and orange, and by the time we crossed the border into Pennsylvania we had returned to the deep, uniform green of late summer.

After a quick lunch between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, we continued on Interstate 81 to Harrisburg where we switched over to Interstate 83 to head to York, Pennsylvania. But between Harrisburg and York, my doubts about the 4th trailer tire were confirmed when it followed the lead of its compatriots by suddenly blowing out. Once again, a nice passing motorist signaled me that the tire had blown in time for me to pull over and put on my last spare. Since tractor trailers were booming by at 60+ miles per hour and buffeting both me and the trailer, changing the tire was a lot more exciting than it should have been. The jack slipped off the frame quite suddenly at one point, but I had not yet removed the old tire and my hands were not underneath it, so no harm was done. Still, I vowed to try to find a more stable way to brace the jack when jacking up the trailer. In particular, jacking 2 tons on a soft shoulder was difficult because the wheels of the jack just kind of sank down into the dirt as it lifted the weight, preventing the jack from achieving its full lifting height, which in turn made it doggone hard to replace the tire.

But finally I was done and we started back down I-83 past York and on to Baltimore where we picked up Interstate 95 for the hop to Washington. Not having any more spares I kept the speed down to 55 miles per hour to try to avoid another blow out. That was often the posted speed limit, but the reality is that traffic moves much faster on those roads and I was probably irritating other drivers. Fortunately it was by then Sunday evening and the traffic was light, which was part of the reason we had planned our drive back on that day. The sun set just as we entered Fairfax, but I still had light for the last leg of the trip home, and that was all I really wanted. The house was still standing, the lawn was cut (Thanks Pablo!), and we didn't even have many fallen apples on the front yard., which we later found out was due to our neighbor gathering them to feed a ground hog living in her back yard.

After about 11 hours total time, 10 of them driving, we just tried to calm down for the rest of the evening so that we could finally get to sleep. It was curious how sleeping in the bed at home felt strange after almost a month sleeping in the trailer's bed. Although both beds are queen sized (I like to be comfortable!), the trailer "queen" sized bed is about 6 inches shorter than a normal queen size bed. Being over 6' with size 13 feet, I really do need those extra 6 inches and you would think I could just relax and enjoy not falling over the edge of the bed, but strangely enough it was disquieting to be able to sleep normally, at least for a while. But the bed in the house didn't move at all and we were not right next to an interstate highway, an airport runway, a 24-hour sawmill, or a railroad main line, so it was a lot quieter. All in all, we had a wonderful trip but it was still nice to be back home and watch the fall colors creep slowly down from Canada to our house in Virginia.