Any trip requires various phase of planning. The final phase is always route planning to our next destination. While the program I use chooses a route for me, and I use its estimates for the higher level planning, the night before we move on, I like to consider what my actual options are. Within an acceptable range, I will choose a more scenic, but still RV safe, route. Also, within an acceptable range, I will choose a longer drive “no toll” option. Case in point, Streetsboro, OH to Perrysburg, OH. Use toll road (I-80 – Ohio Turnpike” 123 miles, 1h55 drive, $23 in tolls; Avoid tolls: 137 miles, 2h25 drive. Indeed it was a much nicer drive than just following the turnpike.
Techie details: Toll roads charge by a combination of number of axles and vehicle height. In our case, 2 tuck axles, and two RV axles, with the RV being 11’6″ high, puts us as a “Class 4 – High 4 axle vehicle” which is of course significantly more expensive than a regular 2 axle passenger car (which incidentally in the example above would have been $8.75)
Our chosen route was great, BUT as the title suggest, bad luck can still happen. Right at an interchange between two highways, torrential rains started, and even with the wipers on high speed, it was hard to see ahead of us. It was so bad that I took video and picture of that, just before our lane stopped moving completely. After a while the tractor trailer two vehicles ahead of us starting backing up and hit the truck behind him, which was the truck ahead of us. While this was happening, Claudette held her hand on the horn, but that didn’t stop the trucker from continuing to back up and push the truck ahead of of onto us, and then we too felt ourselves moving backward. Thankfully, we were in a straight line, so the RV didn’t go sideways into vehicles in the other lanes, and whoever was behind us must have been able to do a lane change before we hit them.
In the end, damage to our vehicle was sufficiently minimal that we didn’t even exchange insurance or contact details, but it could have ended up badly. We were both shaken up a bit, but Claudette did great, and we got to our destination safely.
Our day ended nicely, with the sun back, and a nice wide and long campsite (many campgrounds would have made 4 campsites in the space occupied by our site)
