A day of downtime

We are at the Elks lodge in Parsippany, New Jersey (map).

After leaving the Philly area on I-95, we had set our sights on the Wal-Mart in Manville, NJ, about halfway to our final destination, and, according to our maps, adjacent to some other shopping we needed, as well as a nice looking local Italian restaurant. Unfortunately, after trundling a couple miles off our route on US-206, we arrived at the Wal-Mart to find signs prohibiting overnight RV parking, by city ordinance. We passed the Manville Elks lodge on the way in as well, which also does not allow overnight parking, possibly due to the same ordinance.

I had some shopping I needed to do at Wal-Mart, but our policy is that we do not patronize municipalities that forbid parking, if at all possible, and so we moved along. Another 30 miles or so brought us here, to this very active and recently remodeled lodge. They seemed genuinely happy to have us, buying us our first round of drinks, and running an extension cord out to the parking lot, where they found us a level spot by moving a couple of cars. It's so pleasant here, we decided to spend a second night, and catch up on a few things around the house. We've dialed our power draw in at 12 amps, plenty to keep the batteries topped up and run the pumps and fans, but we're still running the diesel boiler all night in the bitter cold.

Tomorrow we'll have just an hour's drive to my aunt and uncle's house in New City, NY, where we will spend the Thanksgiving holiday. My folks will be driving up from Brick, NJ to join us there.