Pink Ice is Content

March 26, 2026 — Day 2

Cracker Barrel, Rochester, NY — Cracker Barrel, Springfield, OH

When you winterize your RV you put the RV antifreeze in. Its pink. We guess is so you know when the lines are full of it, and when the lines are empty. To de-winterize you just run all the taps until they run clear.

Last night Paul really didn’t want to deal with the ice maker, but Susan was on it. She had it making ice all day!

Of course the first few runs are slush, and even some liquid, you see, it is anti-freeze, not pro-freeze. And what is driving an RV like? It is like putting your house through an earthquake plus a small hurricane. So yeah, it sloshed.

and how do you clean this up? Your bench scraper. It isn’t just for making bread!

Ahhh. The majesty of scenic views of the Cracker Barrel parking lot filled with the golden light of the early morning. Actually, the camera didn’t quite capture the warm glow. It was much prettier than what’s here.

We forced ourselves to do the blog fast last night. We both usually do 2 passes. Paul goes first, since he is funnier and better looking. (susan here: 🤨) Then Susan adds a lot of color. Next morning with a cuppa in hand she takes a 2nd pass and hands it off to Paul for the final pass. Last night? Nope, Paul wrote, Susan wrote and then she just clicked Publish. Much faster. Can we go faster? Yup, we can blog while driving.

And today? We saw about half a dozen of these rolling lane closures, but the lead truck wasn’t doing any work. Some were on our side, others on the other side. Curious. (susan here: it was almost like they were out joy riding.)

Next we drove by the Native Pride Travel Plaza with this cool Native American statue.

Susan sort of remembers a story, that this statue might have been moved from the Mohawk Highway is Massachusetts. Anyway, in is on the Cattaraugus Reservation now. (susan here: After a bit of digging the statue I remember was in Charlemont, MA and that statue went to Oklahoma.)

We made it to Pennsylvania. That NY State Thruway seems to go on forever.

And did the same to Ohio.

And we were just going to buy 3 gallons… LOL, I’ve never seen this before. I should have checked the car pumps, what does a motorcycle do?

Is that snow?

Yes! That’s the Boston Mill Ski Center. Yikes. Especially considering what the weather was when we arrived at the Cracker Barrel in Springfield.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The winds were really picking up, so much we went down to 1 hour driving shifts because the RV was getting pushed around. Neither of us are fond of heavy wind while driving the RV. Susan got on the laptop and started looking at weather. [cue suspenseful music] Uh oh… it is going to be nasty. It seemed as if we could skip Cincinnati and go further west, to Springfield OH and we might just miss the worst parts of the storm. Paul was disappointed because he’d hoped to visit Cincinnati for some Cincinnati chili. He had found a Skyline Chili that was in a strip mall with a Krogers, so we could park the RV. He had heard about Cincinnati Chili back in his Fidelity days. His boss, Jin, had a favorite it was either Skyline or Goldstar. It’s a rivalry like Mike’s vs Modern party shops in Boston. Or Philly’s version, Pat’s vs Gino’s for cheesesteaks.

We were clearly not in New England anymore. The Daffodils have poked their yellow heads out of the ground. Fields were lush and green. And shrubbery are getting leaves.

We kept an eye on the local weather station. Eventually the storm got bigger and there was really nothing could do but stop and park before 9pm.

Paul went next door to the Hampton Inn to see if we could shelter in the lobby if we got a tornado warning. Nope. Memo to ourselves, don’t stay in a Hampton Inn. The plan was to run over anyhow if the storm hit. They’d have to call the police to get us out and by then the police would be busy doing storm things. (susan here: and even if they did show up? I’m pretty sure that the officer would give them the stink-eye for being jerks.)

“Dinner and show” isn’t just at a campground, you can be entertained at a Cracker Barrel. I felt bad for the truck driver, 2 of the employees were either on break, or supervising, one even brought a chair out!

It’s Thursday night, time to watch the latest episode of Shrinking!

Soon it started raining, which always makes for great nighttime photography.

Then things got serious, the winds hadn’t picked up, but we saw this on our phones.

Uh oh. We packed our “GO!” bags with clothing, medicines, electronics and were prepared to dash to the Forbidden Hampton Zone. At least we were on the edge of the red.

Wow, we are really flying!

Daily: 435 miles

Total: 810 miles

Driving miles/Day: 405 miles/day 

Overall miles/Day: 405 miles