A few weeks before we started out, Hal and I began to overhaul the motorhome. It's provenance was somewhat interesting. Hal had been living in Florida for the past two decades, and this Bounder belonged to an old friend of his, and had been lived in full time. Friend Larry came in to some money at one point, and bought a larger and more luxurious camper to live in, so when the time came for Hal to come to New Jersey, he bought the Bounder and moved up here. Through circumstances that have no real bearing on this tale, we ended up buying the Bounder from him, and he ended up moving in to our home about half a year after he moved north. So we more or less co-own it, for all intents and purposes.

The Bounder was a fairly well put-together motor home in the 80s and 90s. It's 34 feet in length, which was rather long for the late 80s but is just mid-sized now. It's based on a Chevrolet truck chassis, and uses the simple, moderately powered, but reliable Chevrolet 454 cubic inch engine for power. This is the same engine that powers the Suburban and other large Chevy trucks and pickups, so you could say it's either wildly overpowered for a pickup truck, or woefully inadequate for a 20,000 pound RV. I truthfully believe the former.

Our plan was to head west, cross the upper part of Maryland through Hagerstown and Frederick, slide up into Pennsylvania south of Pittsburgh to connect with I-70, and then head due west through the tip of West Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana. In Indianapolis, we'd head northwest on I-74 through Illinois towards the Quad Cities area of Davenport, Iowa where we would hook up with I-80 for the rest of the trip west to Salt Lake.

I'd driven the I-80 route at least twice in my lifetime, but not recently. In the mid-70s I did it in a U-Haul truck, moving to California to finish college, a fresh-faced 20-something newlywed.  I remember the endless plains of Iowa and Nebraska, the towering bluffs of southern Wyoming, and the dry, dusty basin of Nevada before finally breaking through the peaks of the Sierra Nevada and seeing California gold.  18 months later, after my last final exam, I and my extremely-homesick first wife headed back over the Donner Pass to Pennsylvania.  We wouldn't be going quite so far west this time, but I was curious to see how much, if at all, the general tone of the trip had changed. Huge truck stops, tourist attractions and roadside diversions may come and go, but 2,000 miles of roadway can't have morphed that much.  One difference is that the 55 MPH speed limit established nationally back then has thankfully been lifted, but I didn't think the RV would spend much time at 75 or 80 anyway. As a matter of fact, a creaky old RV at 60 is at least as exciting as a passenger car going 20 or so miles faster.

Morning of our departure. Temperature 92' F at 8:30AM. Humidity 84%. Heat Index north of 100. Such fun...