Was today Day 13? OR The Horrible No Good Very Bad Nigt

I think today was day 13. It had to have been because we had an unlucky day although nothing serious happened. We left the KOA near Cooperstown with step by step instructions from Mike, the owner/manager/boss. These were really good instructions and they were not the reason that the cars couldn't find each other for a while this evening.

My GPS, the new one bought just for this trip, froze. It would not and still won't move forward from the change route screen. I have implored, pleaded and begged; tapped, pushed and held the DONE button all to no avail. I wasn't too worried because Mike's instructions were easy to follow and I was quite happy with them. And then we entered Maine.

The trip through the eastern hills (I can't seem to call them mountains) was scenic and enjoyable with Sterling quite happy with the ups and downs and Sil (Silver Lining) following along nicely. All was well until the phone rang. Luckily we had added more minutes to the US phones and thank goodness for that. It was then that my adventure began. 

I was sitting in a restaurant enjoying the wifi and air conditioning thinking that i was still ahead of Ken and Ruth. They called to check that I had seen and followed the route when it veered left. This is a good thing to know when you are rolling down the highway except that I wasn't rolling anywhere...I was sipping an ice latte. I had seen a route sign that veered left quite a ways back but had decided it wasn't the route we were using. that nowseemed to have been a mistake and so I headed south to find it. What happened after that is fuzzy, very fuzzy. It involved driving in the dark, making a U turn on a dark roadway and realizing the road wasn't quite wide enough, backing up in the middle of the road in order to make the turn, watching the lights of an oncoming car as I'm doing this, praying that he saw me, completing the turn and knowing I would never try that again no matter how empty the road was. So now I'm a little rattled but turned around and heading in the right direction. Then I see the turn off and join hundreds of cars heading somewhere at great speed. 

I'm watching for Exit 10 because that is where Ruth and Ken are waiting for me. After passing exit 4 I see a sign for exit 3. Am I going the wrong way? I pass exit 3 and next up is exit 5. I didn't really relax until I passed 7, 8 and 9. And then here's exit 10 but no Denali trailer, another phone call...turn left Linda, says Ruth's calm voice, Ken is standing at the entrance to the parking lot.

Ther he was, with two police cruisers and two officers. As I approached one officer bowed and ushered me into the parking lot. My relief was immense but there was a little fear that perhaps my very illegal, I will never try that again, U-turn had been reported. That wasn't the case at all. One officer pulled over to ask why Ken was standing there, the second arrived as he was explaining. Whhen they knew I was approaching they decided to usher me in with grand style. It was an adventure I don't wish to repeat. But we still were no where near our campsite or any campsite for that matter. A WalMart parking lot would have looked good at this point. But there was a KOA waiting for us.

Ruth rode with me and after some more freeway travel, we followed Ken down miles of back country road, missed the turn Ken's GPS was suggesting and turned onto a slightly larger country road. A car stopped to talk to Ken and  then we were led to the entrance to the campsite.

It was close to midnite before we had navigated the road which wound through the heavily treed campground and backed into our sites. That was easy after my earlier mishap.