Re: Colorado BBQ Convoy

From: Jason Bleazard (dml@bleazard.net)
Date: Tue Apr 25 2006 - 13:59:17 EDT


Josh, I have two questions for you:
- How long does it usually take you to travel to and from the BBQ?
- Is the area around South Bend and Elkhart, Indiana as scummy as Gary?

> Right near me here there's a campground (RV Friendly)

Heh... is that a polite way of saying "don't plan on crashing at my place"?
:-) No worries, with the trailer I'm not planning on getting too far off the
freeway anyway.

> called "Windy City Campground and Beach" that's pretty reasonable from what I
> hear. I've not stayed there but my cousin's cub scouts are always camping
> out there.

This place here? http://www.windycitycampground.com Looks pretty nice, but
it's $33 per night. That's a bit more than I was planning on spending for
overnight stops. I was thinking that $10 is about the limit, as I'm hoping to
find a Flying J or Wal-Mart parking lot, or even a rest area where we can park
for free for a few hours of sleep and a meal. We'll be pulling our bedroom
and supplies, all we'll really need is some empty ground where we can park for
a few hours.

I don't know about the highway rest stops, though. I've heard they're not
terribly safe places to sleep. I've read good things about Flying J, as long
as you're at a location that has separate parking areas for RVs and commercial
trucks. I'll have to think about this some more.

I'm also starting to think that I might want to spread this drive out over
four days instead of three. It'd be cool to stop in your neighborhood but
that's quite a ways from Jon's place at 60-65 MPH. If we do three days, we'll
need to average 525 miles per day. For four days, we can get away with just
under 400, so that saves us two hours per day. I have the time off of work, I
just have to figure out if I'd rather be on the road for more days, or for
some really long hours each day. We pushed close to 700 per day when driving
to SLC, but that was empty. Pulling the RV is slower and takes more constant
attention to everything that's going on.

At any rate, the four day plan starting from Jon's puts us around South Bend
or Elkhart the first night. That's why I was asking about that area to begin
with. I think after that we'd be around Des Moines and then somewhere in the
middle of Nebraska. No matter how I split this trip up, we end up spending a
night somewhere in Nebraska. It's just too wide to tackle in a single day.

-- 
Jason Bleazard  http://drazaelb.blogspot.com  Burlington, Ontario
his:  '95 Dakota Sport 4x4, 3.9 V6, 5spd, Reg. Cab, white
hers: '01 Dakota Sport 4x4, 4.7 V8, Auto, Quad Cab, black

. . .------------------------------------------------------------------. | Make your plans NOW to attend the National DML Meet in Colorado! | | Date: July 15-23, 2006 - More info: http://meet.dakota-truck.net | `------------------------------------------------------------------'



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