Rolling at last

May 05
Collecting the fifth wheeler from the dealer was no problem; all I had to do was convince myself that it was just a big caravan. Ha! Easier said than done and I was not able to convince myself at all!
I looked at this lot sitting in the yard. It was all hooked up to the truck by me under the careful supervision of Seth, my tutor for the morning. No problem if I could ignore the sheer bulk of the thing, it’s 12ft high and 34ft long, and 8ft 4” wide and I have the longest truck that Ford make. No doubt about it, this is kinda BIG. When it is on site and the slide outs are out, it is 13ft 6” wide, kinda spacious!
With Seth sitting beside me, we departed for a short drive, leaving Freda biting her nails in reception (she was actually making a video with rude comments).
Seth suggested we make right turns, the hard ones of course as they drive on the ‘wrong’ side of the road over here. For the non drivers, the trailer always tries to take a short cut on the corners, and with a fifth wheel hook up, even more so than a caravan does
I survived and then gathering confidence, practiced reversing in the car park after we returned! Dead easy! (who am I kidding?)

We had chosen a campground about 30 miles from the dealer and 15 miles from daughter Caroline’s house not far from Philadelphia, so we made our way at a sedate 60 mph to our first overnight halt. Another consideration for choosing this campground was that there was a large branch of Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, nearby. We made several trips there to equip our new house without too much fuss or expense.
We have been treated with tremendous courtesy and professionalism wherever we have been and are delighted to be back in the USA (bloody good job too!!)
We now have the 32 inch HD TV and a ton of other bits including surround sound. The campground also has broadband internet and we have lashed out $10 and bought a pay as you go phone with calls at 20 Cents (10p) per min. We are getting well organised but now I’m feeling “shopped out”. The truck has now exceeded one thousand miles and turns heads wherever it goes; this is a big truck even by American standards.
We have made a few plans and expect to depart for Virginia/Washington DC tomorrow (Tuesday 6th). Watch this space, share our holiday with us. We are being read by over 100 good friends in at least six different countries and by about six different nationalities! My, how life moves on.
We visited the beautiful Longwood Gardens this last week. What a fantastic blast of colour! I have put a few pic’s on the album. I think I will have to take some pictures off the album or it may become too unwieldy or perhaps open another album. Any comments/suggestions would be appreciated (Fredy?)
See the pic’s at http://picasaweb.google.com/arthur.croasdell/AmericaTwo