Saturday, 7/05/03, Day 17.  Shopping today. My main TV is starting to have some sort of a heat problem - It's installed in a compartment over the dash and acts up when the overhead heats up after a day of travel. After the AC cools the RV for a while, it starts working ok. So as a backup, I got a new small TV to fit in the compartment in the bedroom - Wal-Mart, $69, how can you go wrong with that! Finished the installation by noon and everything works fine.

 Decided to catch up on my exercise and go for a bike ride. Burlington has a nice bike trail that runs along the coast of Lake Champlain. My intention was to ride north from the southern terminus for about six miles then turn around and come back. Seems I got a little carried away and went all the way to the other end - a distance of 12 miles one-way. It's quite a bike trail, they've done a nice job on it. It goes by three or four different beaches (ogle stops) a car/passenger ferry that will take you across the lake and a bike ferry that takes you and your bike across the Winooski River for $1 each way! The bike ferry is operated for the regional recreation  commission by one of the downtown bike shops. It's at mile 7.5 so if it doesn't operate, you loose about 5 miles of the trail - or you swim. The last mile or so of the bike path is on a causeway built into Lake Champlain to create a protected harbor for Colchester - water to the right of you and water to the left of you! 

 Sunday, 7/06/03, Day 18.  A travel day. My intention is to make it as far as Unadilla NY for the night (Exit 11, I88), then on Monday stop at the NE Classic Car Museum in Norwich NY (at the intersection of SR 12 and SR 23) before heading home. Since the schedule for today is not too demanding, I thought I'd stop for an hour or so at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Rutland VT.

 Now here is where an important motor home lesson begins - always make sure a parking lot can accommodate your rig before going in! What I mean by accommodate is that you can turn around and get out when the time comes to leave! Well, I'm not all dumb, so I called first and asked. The answer was, "Sure, we have a large lot and get lots of RVs all the time!" I told the woman I have a LARGE RV and tow a car behind it - the answer was the same, "Sure, no problem!" I was heading east on RT 4 out of Rutland and was climbing the hill to Killington while carefully watching for signs for the Museum. All of a sudden, the sign and the entrance to the parking lot appeared at the same time and I took the entrance to the lot. Big mistake. Once in the lot, it was apparent I wasn't turning around in here - even if the lot was empty! There was a road to the side of the museum so I got out and walked it. I found the employee and handicapped parking lot and it looked like I "might" be able to swing a turn in there. So I gave it a shot. You guessed it! I was trying to turn a 10 pound rig in a 5 pound parking lot. One of the first things you learn when towing a car with an RV is that you CANNOT back up with that rig. There's something about the geometry of the pivot points and the front wheels of the car turning on you -- you'll jackknife in a heartbeat. So, my only choice at this point was to unhook the car, move it to the side and complete a K turn with the RV. By the time I got the RV turned and the car hooked back up, I was in no mood for Norman Rockwell.

The Lesson? Don't ever believe the merchant when they say, "No Problem!" They generally have no clue. So always check out the parking area before committing your RV to it - or resign yourself to the local Wal-Mart lot and unhook your car for local travel.

 I arrived at a KOA just off exit 11 of I88, Unadilla NY, at 3:00 pm.

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