Our planned departure time was Tuesday, May 3rd around 11 am, but as if to remind us that we shouldn’t plan on many things going according to plan, we discovered that the head gasket seal was leaking, which delayed our departure time to 6 pm. Thank you to Steve’s Foreign Car Repair in Rockville Centre for prepping and fixing Bessie (that’s our van’s name).
Luckily we didn’t hit too much rush hour traffic leaving New York and we made it to Wilmington, DE by a little after 9 pm. Keep in mind as you read this that our max speed in the van is 65 mph and a good bit slower than that going uphill. Right-lane warriors!!
In Wilmington, we spent our first night with our wonderful friends, Cat and Jeff and their dog Scout. They fed us a delicious bbq dinner and we gave them a “tour” of Bessie of course.
On Wednesday morning, we filled up on biodiesel, then headed to the University of Delaware, our alma mater and where we met and started dating seven years ago. Go Blue Hens! Unfortunately it was raining pretty steadily, so we weren’t able to do too much walking around, but we enjoyed being back. We then headed south to Dover, Delaware’s capital, and where Cat works for the state. She gave us a behind the scenes tour of Legislative Hall and then we hit up popular lunch hot spot, 33 West.
From Dover, we headed further south to Indian River Outlet, where we were to spend the night. We drove through the beach towns and after scouring for surf (there was none), we set up camp (which means we parked and hooked up to electric). For dinner, we headed to Bethany Blues for some more bbq and then headed back and set up camp again (we parked again). Love van camping-no tent set-up required!
This morning we woke up, organized the van, looked for surf again (still none), headed south and drove through beautiful Delaware and Maryland farm country. We’re almost to DC, where we’ll stay for a few days to visit with Kaitlin’s sister and parents and friends. We’ll check back in a few days as we make our way to Virginia!
Posting from the road, so pics to come soon!
Best…website…ever! So glad you guys are having a rockin time! I may crash the site by visiting too much, might want to bulk up on backup servers.
It was so great to see you both on Friday! I can’t wait to follow your journey!
Loving the twitter updates on the right column. I feel like I am on the trip. Can’t wait to see more pictures.
Totally agree with DK…loving the updates!
Glad you got off to a good start. What a mixed feeling of freedom and anxiety we had when we left NJ in 1970 in our VW Van. I thought the van was too overloaded, so we stopped at a VW dealer in Bristol TN and they said not to worry. Phew! Wishing you guys a great trip. Look forward to updates.