The Secret On Ramp

March 25, 2026 — Day 1

Keene, NH — Cracker Barrel, Rochester, NY

And we’re off on the Let ‘Er Rip tour. But first, mad props to Susan who pretty much loaded 99.999% of the stuff in the RV since Paul was still recovering from his surgery. (Paul here, I’m fine…)

So why Let ‘Er Rip? That’s the tagline of two YouTubers we watch, The Hanks, they’ve been full timing in a 5th wheel for, what, 7 years now. They’re great fun to watch on Thursday night when they publish their weekly vlog (that’s a video blog for you non Tubers). If you do check them out, look at the old ones because they’ve actually been pretty boring recently. They’re pregnant so they’re not their usual adventurous selves.

Let ‘Er Rip is what you say, well, when you empty the nasty black tank. You want to open the gate valve quickly so all the, uhhh, liquids and solids rush out into the sewer hookup. BTW, RVers always wind up talking about poo. That and gas prices. Seems that’s all we talk about. Oh and awesome campgrounds and places to visit.

And this is the Let ‘Er Rip tour because we have to get to Phoenix fast. You see, Paul’s daughter is also having a baby! And we want to see the live ultrasound, and that’s doable if we, well, Let ‘Er Rip.

We almost left yesterday but at 5pm we still hadn’t finished loading, we needed to extract Clifford from it’s parking space. That can be a 20 minute job minimum, then hook up the Jeep, plus get the bikes on the Jeep and load in what we just couldn’t manage. So we got up early this morning and were out the door by 10:30.

Paul was chatting with their good friends Fred and Diana about they’re yet to have their RV  delivered, and yes, it is broken again. Something is leaking, which somehow means it might need a new windshield, and Diana said, “Tell us when you hit the road.” So Paul did, in the best way possible.

Sadly, we had another a rock strike us. This is our 4th chip, it’s too close to the edge for them to fix so that also means a new windshield. These can cost multiple thousands of dollars, but, we have glass insurance. Phew!!!

Next we ate lunch at the Blandford Rest Area on the Mass Pike. These are horrid rest areas for big rigs, we hate doing this but, well, you know Paul and Lunch. There is no choice.

A half hour later we were in the Lee rest area, to top off for gas. Why not at Blandford? There isn’t big rig parking on the gas side and the big rig side only has diesel. We topped off to avoid the higher gas prices in NY. Wow! Somebody had a bad day at the pumps.

We stopped next at the Onvo rest stop in NY to get weighed. That gas was $0.20 cheaper than on the Mass Pike. Leaving we saw the ramp to the highway which Paul was about to go down until we saw all the DO NOT ENTER signs. He didn’t but now how do we get back to the highway? You can’t, you can only got Eastbound!

Paul turned around in the Sunoco station further down the road that had potholes the size of small Lunar craters. Then we looped back and found the west bound ramp.

You can see the secret ramp above, the google car even drove down it in August 2025.

But when driving by on the highway Susan saw the sign, $1,500 fine! We saw a big rig using it. LOL.

Next up, crossing the Hudson. Susan was happy Paul was driving, she always seems to get this bridge. (susan here: it used to have Jersey barriers so this trip wasn’t as squished. I’ve also had to drive it in bad thunderstorms. I do not like this bridge!)

A quick drivers’ change at a lock on the Erie Canal. We’ve been here before, they have a nice short walk telling all sorts of things about the canal.

We’re just trying to get to Phoenix so we didn’t get out. And yes, that’s the 4th stop of the day.

We also noticed the Erie Canal river was really low. We’re not sure why.

But we did get to see the ice on the side of the river. We saw this crossing the Connecticut River into Vermont. The high water had receded leaving huge chunks on the banks. Paul got lucky with this shot since he just took a shot of the rapids under the bridge.

Lots of birds in the sky, Susan estimated maybe 1,000 in this flock.

We were seeing more and more, oh wait, we stopped to change drivers again, LOL. Paul noticed the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge marked on the GPS. We were here last year! So Susan got a shot of the Montezuma Eagle. We really like this wildlife refuge. Very good bird watching opportunities here. 

We pulled into the Cracker Barrel, met our neighbors. Did some more dewinterizing of the RV, found the Washer wasn’t working! So what else do your intrepid travelers do? We popped into the Cracker Barrel to get breakfast for dinner…because Paul and Dinner.

Paul had the fried catfish. He knows better than to eat dinner at a CB because it’s awful. And yes, it was awful. (susan here: it even looked unappealing.)

And while waiting he realized that the generator has to be on for the washing machine to work, so we finished dewinterizing and then sat down to blog.