June 22, 2010 – Day Forty-six

This was a day I was dreading ever since I planned this trip – driving from New Jersey to Long Island, because I would have to navigate through New York City traffic.

There just aren’t that many places to camp with an RV in the middle of Long Island that I could find. I had to do a thorough Internet search to come up with a site, but none of them gave a specific address. For example, Blydenburgh is just listed as on the Veteran’s Memorial Highway in Smithtown. I guess if you live in the area that’s all you need to know. But a guy with 25’ long truck pulling a 30’ trailer needs to know a wee bit more.

The first number I called to try to make a reservation turned out to be the county parks and recreation department, which gave me a second number, which turned out to be the phone number of the park, but not the manager of the campsite. The third number was the charm.

When I checked into the availability of a campsite at Blydenburgh County Park in Smithfield, I was informed that the campground does not take reservations: first come first served. This alarmed be, especially since I was driving all the way through NYC to get there, and the availability of any other campgrounds in the area was apparently non-existent.

But have no fear, I was told, since I would be coming during a weekday, and the park currently had only five sites occupied. Just come on in. I was so excited that I forgot to ask for the park’s specific address.

I was informed that I should take the George Washington Bridge route, around the northern boundary of the City to get to Long Island, since driving a travel trailer close to the city was practically unheard of.

We’ll, I trusted that my GPS programs would guide me safely.

It turns out the GPS gods may have a sense of humor. A twisted sense of humor.

Leaving New Jersey, the GPS instructed me across Staten Island and then the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, ending up in Brooklyn, where the freeway was under repair and I was forced to drive the truck and trailer on city streets, underneath the ailing interstate.

Marianne thought this was great, shooting photos out of the window in rapid succession, capturing details that were only blurs on my retina. I was tense, and getting a bad headache because people in New York drive like crazy – abruptly changing lanes and cutting me off, running red lights, blocking lanes by random parking, and worst of all, speed limits are only to be used as a minimal guide. Fortunately Marianne had some Ibuprofen for my pain.

I do however remember across the East River and seeing Wall St., and Manhattan as we went under the Brooklyn Bridge. When we finally got back on the Interstate, traffic was moving at a snail’s pace. I kept looking for just one other RV, but I never saw one. Not one – except when we finally reached the campground. Not for the entire time I was driving on Long Island, almost 200 miles over three days did I see any other RV on any of the roads I was on.

Oh, it doesn’t help that I couldn’t go on many of the roads that would have made the route a bit shorter. That’s because many of the roads have a height limit of 7’10”, my trailer is 10’6”, and the truck alone without the kayaks on top is 6’4”. I’m guessing that the kayak rack and the kayaks add at least another 18” to truck height, so I was right at that 7’10” mark, which I certainly didn’t want to risk. I went well out of my way to avoid those height limitations.

Since I didn’t have the actual street address of the Blydenburgh County Park, I had to guessimate where it was, but armed with that knowledge my GPS kept insisting I take those vertically challenged roads. I knew better, but there’s no sense in arguing with the voice on the GPS that insists I take the next right, then complains I’m off route, and wants me to take the next right, and when I don’t, I’m off route again.

And so it goes, until I finally turned it off, and used a different GPS program, one that is meant expressly for locating campgrounds. It could found the campground, but it doesn’t plot the road to get there. I could see where I needed to go, where I was, and what road I was travelling on, but not exactly how to get there. I had to trust my instincts.

These are now instincts dulled by Ibuprofen – better living through chemistry.

After fighting traffic for two hours on something called the Long Island Expressway – it’s long, it’s an island, but it isn’t an expressway, it’s slow, we made it to our exit, now we had to find the actual park.

My first guess turned out to be wrong, because I drove into the area’s huge police compound. At least I didn’t have to try to turn the truck and trailer around, there was a way out of this mess without doing that. I’m sure the people in the buildings were looking out of their windows wondering what the heck I was doing in their area. I didn’t want to guess what they were really thinking.

It turned out I turned one street too soon.

After getting back on track, we found the park entrance. In case you don’t know, I have to let you know that Long Island is a very populated place and to find a forested oasis in the middle of such an urban jungle is a treat. Blydenburgh Country Park is a treat.

This park has 648 acres of woodlands with a 100 acre lake smack in the middle of it. The entrance is guarded by a special park police building and the gates are closed from sundown to sunup. I counted three park police cars at the entrance.

After driving ½ mile into the park through a canopy of trees, I was finally at the campground entrance. When I checked in the man behind the counter commented that I was out of luck, because now there were seven campsites out of fifty in use, instead of the five he mentioned previously during our phone call.

We got to drive around the park and find the campsite we wanted, and we picked one in the extreme southeast corner, away from everyone, since we’d be using our generator during those hours it was allowed, because this park only offered a water connection. And did I mention it was still warm?

We got the campsite for two nights, unhooked the truck and trailer, and fired up the generator so we could have air-conditioning.

We just relaxed in our air-conditioned comfort until 9pm when it was quiet time and time to turn off the generator. Afterwards we turned on all our battery operated fans, put a Wanda Sykes comedy DVD into the laptop with the 17” screen and proceeded to laugh our butts off. When it was over, we were really tired and just went to bed to the soothing sound of whirling fans.