Monday April 11th 2016

I got underway from South Carolina about 10:30 this morning. Today was a much better travel day than my travel days last week. The wind was not as strong so I was not constantly fighting to keep the Motorhome in the lane.
It still wasn’t perfect. South Carolina likes concrete roads. The seams in the road can get a good bounce going. This is particularly bad on older or patched concrete. I suppose concrete lasts longer than other paving materials, but I wish they could keep it smoother.

I had to buy gas today. This is more complicated than filling the tank in the car. I need to find a place that has enough room to get the big rig in and out without backing up. When pulling a car you can’t back up without disconnecting the car. I usually plan ahead by using Google maps to identify places that I can stop at successfully. Many of the Flying J truck stops have special RV lanes. That is what I stopped at today.

It still took well over half an hour to fill the tank. First I had to wait for another rig to finish before I could get into one of the two RV lanes. Then I needed to position the RV correctly relative to the pump. It only took one extra pull ahead (remember I can’t back up). The next part is the same as filling a car; swipe a credit card and start pumping. Today the pump wasn’t very fast and it had a $75 limit per transaction so after putting in 43 plus gallons I had to start over again. The second swipe of the credit card only needed about 12 gallons to fill the tank. You rarely know ahead of time how much fuel the credit card processing agent will allow on a single swipe. Sometimes it is $50 or $75. What I really prefer is the $100 cut off but that’s rare.

I try to fill the 80 gallon fuel tank when it gets to a quarter on the gauge. I also wanted to buy gas in South Carolina. The prices are the lowest on the east coast in South Carolina. I only paid $1.73 per gallon from a station at an Interstate exit. I saw lower prices in the Charleston area over the weekend.

It is interesting to observe the progress of spring as you move north. At the Georgia South Carolina boarder all of the trees were in full leaf. Two hundred and fifty miles north were I am tonight, the leaves on the trees are in there early stages. I wonder what it will be like in another couple hundred miles?

Tonight’s site number 38 at the Fayetteville RV Resort

This is a one night stop. I’m trying to move at a comfortable pace to get to the DC area for the weekend. My version of the two and two rule is travel about 200 miles and don’t travel more than 2 days straight. This is my modification of the version often discussed on the internet of travel 200 miles and stay 2 nights.