Maryland

When Jerry started up the motor home on Tuesday so that we could travel down the road to the Washington D.C. area, he had a slight problem. When he stepped on the gas, the RV would not move. It took awhile, but he got it moving. He knew that something just was not right with the transmission.

So, the first opportunity he got, he located an Allison transmission specialist in Essex, Maryland. They were located near an airport and a large Lockheed Martin plant.  Little did we know that we would spend the next three days in Essex, Maryland, and a few thousand dollars getting the problem fixed. Bummer!!

Parked at the Allison repair place

in Essex, Maryland

The first two nights we stayed in the motor home, but last night we went to a motel. It was weird being able to take a bath in the motel since we only take showers in the motorhome. 

While we were there, it was mostly overcast outside. But, I walked around and took some pictures of the colored leaves anyway.

For some reason, I lose the colors in my pictures when I enlarge them. Need to research why this is happening. If anyone knows the answer to this, please let me know. 

After we got the motorhome back today, we drove just 40 miles down to College Park, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C.

Taken out of the window on our way to College Park, Maryland

We checked into the Cherry Hill Park with the idea that we would only stay for one night and give up our plans to stick around to see the Washington D. C. sites until the storm has passed.

Parked at the Cherry Hill Park

Our thinking was that we needed to get out of the way of Sandy, the hurricane due to hit the East Coast in the next few days. After all, we have wheels and with a couple of days' time on our side, we figured that we needed to get out of Sandy's way. But, after we arrived here and started talking to some of the folks here (and checking in with our first responder relative, Bill), they all convinced us to stay here. We can't go South, because that is the path of Sandy. We can't go West because an unusual storm is coming this way to collide with Sandy. We definitely can't go East. And we can't go North because that is where Sandy is expected to wipe out the Eastern shore. Many of the states here, including Maryland, have already declared their states "disaster areas" and the storm hasn't even hit yet.

Pat sent an email saying that she will be looking to us to be the reporters on the ground and, assuming we have cell and/or internet coverage when this is all over, we will be your personal weather reporters for this storm. The weather reporters on television here are declaring this to be the mother of all hurricanes because of the magnitude of Sandy (800 feet wide), a full moon on Monday and the monster storm moving in from the East. More to come!!!!

One more picture -- this one taken at this RV park.

Stay safe everyone!