Day 48 -- Coatesville, Pennsylvania to Blairstown, New Jersey -- 190 Miles

Today was one of the highest mileage days we've had on this trip, and one of the craziest. We left Coatesville, Pennsylvania early and, of all things, headed south not north toward the state of Maine. My original intention was to stay away from Philadelphia as much as possible, since we had "endured" rush-hour traffic there yesterday. Last night, I spent at least an hour pouring over the maps trying to find a way around Philly, but one that wouldn't meander too much and eat up a large portion of our travel day.

At the end of that study session, I determined that dropping south into Wilmington, Delaware, crossing the Delaware River, then catching the turnpike north into New Jersey might just accomplish both those ends. That turned out to be a perfect idea, or at least it would have been had I chosen a GPS coordinate ACROSS the Delaware River and closer to the turnpike.

Most of the morning went smoothly, and, as we approached Wilmington, I had completely forgotten that I had told the GPS to take us to Wilmington. So when the Magic Brain told us to exit Interstate 95 and enter the city, I didn't even question it. But seconds later I realized that we had not wanted to exit, and had really wanted to bypass Wilmington.

If you've ever tried to maneuver a 31-foot rig through the antiquated, narrow streets of a city laid out in the 19th century, you will sympathize with what happened next. Once we had plunged into the waterfront area of the city of Wilmington, we immediately recognized our mistake and hastened to reprogram the GPS to get us the heck out of there. This was our second mistake.

There are probably people who believe that a GPS is correct most of the time. Personally, I would dispute that in any court of law. I would agree that it "tends" to know what it's talking about, but when it tells you to turn left at the "VERY NEXT STREET," and then it tries to navigate you off what is really the wrong street, things can go horribly wrong right away.

Wilmington, Delaware is one of those old cities where, in their infinite wisdom, the city fathers have created a spaghetti bowl of one-way streets that they don't mark very well. This can be no problem if you're driving a VW Beetle. But if you have a great deal of length as well as width, you can end up trying to put your rig where nothing that large should ever be put.

So, once the Magic Brain asked us to turn south and we turned a street too soon, it then asked us to turn west to correct that action. That's when we found ourselves on a tiny, one-way side street that was lined for the entire block with bumper-to-bumper cars on both sides. The gap between the cars, where thru traffic was meant to pass, looked just wide enough for perhaps a standard sized sedan; no wider than that.

If you've ever seen that wonderful submarine movie, "Down Periscope," with Kelsey Grammer, where Diving Officer, Lieutenant Emily Lake (Lauren Holly), has to steer the submarine between the closely-spaced, lethally-spinning propellers of a huge ship overhead, you know how we felt "squeezing" between the parked cars for that tortuous block.

I was watching the mirrors on both sides as we crept up the street, each one just clearing the windows of the parked cars on both sides. With each foot we moved, I held my breath, waiting for something to begin scraping the paint off the side of the rig. As we passed by one house, an old black man sat on his front steps watching us. The expression on his face, I thought, would be exactly the same if we had just rolled by after landing in the Delorean from "Back to the Future."

Well, the GPS did get us out of Wilmington finally, but little did we know that she intended to have more fun with us later in the day. Fortunately, we got to breathe normally for awhile as we rolled east into Delaware, then chose Interstate 295 North and set the cruise control. We had our choice of two routes, actually. We could have taken the New Jersey Turnpike, which I have driven. The scenery on the Turnpike is beautiful and verdant, but I couldn't remember whether they charge a toll nowadays or not. So we took the "free" Interstate, and it turned out to be pretty nice as well.

My original plan, as we motored north toward Trenton, New Jersey, was to jump onto Route 1 that ran north off Route 295, then jog over to north-running Route 206 near Princeton, New Jersey. I felt that if we did that we would avoid most of the traffic generated by the city of Trenton. At this time we were not trusting the GPS, and I have to take full blame for what happened next.

As we approached Trenton, I saw a sign for Route 206 North. Well, I thought, why not skip Route 1 north and just jump on Route 206 north since that's where I wanted to head anyway. Little did I know that I had just chosen a route that would lead us through some of the poorest, most run-down sections of Trenton. I felt like Chevy Chase in National Lampoon's movie, "Vacation," when he and the Griswalds get lost while motoring through St. Louis.

In addition, the signs for Route 206 were so infrequent and confusing that it was everything we could do to pay close enough attention to maintain our course. Finally, we thought we had put the Griswald's adventure behind us. We hadn't lost our hubcaps, and we had made it out of the city alive.

But here's where the GPS decided to get in on the action. Once we "thought" we were actually headed for Princeton, Concetta programmed the Magic Device to make sure we ended up there. The next thing we knew we were crossing the Delaware River again and a sign was welcoming us to Pennsylvania. If you could only imagine the looks on our faces. When I had calmed down a trifle, and had tapered off in my condemnation of the GPS, we navigated our return trip to New Jersey and once again set off for Princeton.

The rest of the afternoon went semi-predictably. We had our lunch. Later on we did a little grocery shopping. And then we programmed our thoroughly unreliable GPS to take us to our evening's camp at Blairstown, New Jersey. "Fine," the GPS intoned as we left the grocery store parking lot. "Which way does Jezebel want us to turn," I asked Concetta, as we arrived at the stop sign next to the store's parking lot.

Concetta told me that the "lady" was not divulging that information.

"Okay," I said. Knowing that Blairstown should be reachable by going north, I turned right and proceeded in that direction. The GPS seemed to think that was fine and merely mentioned that we needed to turn right in a couple of miles. "Right?" I said. "That doesn't make any sense. Blairstown is going to be a left."

"That's what she says," Concetta verified. And so up the hill we went going north.

But when we arrived at our "right" turn there was nothing there. No street. No parking lot. No place to put a rig that we could see.

I was so pissed by this time that I just drove on. But almost immediately we started hearing a persistent sound like something was dragging. With a sigh I pulled up, backed into a side street, and got out to take a look underneath. I didn't see anything. So I got back in the rig, entered Route 206 going south this time, hoping to see a place to turn in where Jezebel had originally told us to turn.

Again the dragging sound returned. So I pulled over onto the shoulder as far off the pavement as I could, then got out and climbed to the top of the roof. Remembering that we had severely tweaked the crank-up aerial back in Saltville, Virginia, I thought perhaps that the broken remnants had come lose where I had secured it with rope.

No go. There was nothing wrong on the roof. So we drove on some more, but again had to stop when the dragging sound returned. This time when I pulled over I found a skinny twig, about thirty inches long, had become lodged in the passenger-side running board. That fixed, we were on our way to see what other obstacles the GPS intended to throw at us.

As we approached the place where Jezebel had demanded we turn on our recent northward run, we saw once again that there was no place for us to go. We rolled on past. The GPS immediately responded that she wanted us to proceed about twenty miles straight south the way we had come originally, then jump on Interstate 80 going west.

Well, that was the last straw. I told Concetta to unplug the mutinous thing and we would navigate the old fashioned way -- with a map. I knew by now that we had to go north just a few miles to the town of Newton, then jog a few more miles to the southwest toward Blairstown. There was no way I was going to follow Jezebel's instructions.

Concetta actually left the GPS on while I performed the aforementioned maneuvers and it would sputter out spurious directions and commands every once in awhile, but in the end we only let her have her way once we had reached Blairstown and we needed her to sort out the myriad of tiny roads that you had to drive to actually reach the camp. This she did somewhat satisfactorily, though her spoken commands didn't seem to match the display directions most of the time.

We had a bit of a scare when we got to the Blairstown camp as they told us the entire park was sold out for the Memorial Day long weekend. But once all the resident workers had conferred, they determined that someone had recently called and said they'd not be arriving until tomorrow. So we got their spot for the night. As you know we almost never make reservations, but this upcoming holiday as put a bit of a negative spin on that mode of operation. So for tomorrow we called ahead to Cooperstown, New York, and made reservations, though the first place we called refused to take any. They were full as well.

And that's the story of our day. We didn't take any photos at all, which is unfortunate, but we spent the whole day driving and bickering with the GPS. Maybe I should take a photo of her!

Until we meet again, we wish you Happy Travels!