Keystone stopover

We are at the Elks lodge in Erie, Pennsylvania, off US-20 just south of Presque Isle (map).

After our nice lunch yesterday in the poolside grill room at the Shoreby Club, we headed east on Ohio 2, which is a divided freeway that runs some 20 miles east of Cleveland, where it ends at US-20. This latter road brought us all the way here, and this afternoon will take us all the way to Buffalo.

The lodge here has four 20-amp circuits, and being the only rig last night, we used one for our main feed, to run the battery charger, water heater, etc,, and the other to run the air compressor, which otherwise tends to knock the inverter out of sync every time it starts. That let us finally put a full soak on the batteries after a couple weeks of boondocking; without the need for air conditioning, 20 amps is more than enough for us to run the whole coach indefinitely. We also needed water, which involved driving around to the back of the lodge on the lawn.

When we pulled in last night, the parking lot was filling fast -- someone had booked the lodge for a political fundraiser. While we were filling the water tank, I had to run over and set cones out on the grass next to the power outlets -- the paved lot had filled up and cars were starting to fill the lawn. By the time we finally got parked, we were surrounded, and could not have left if we wanted to. This morning, the place is empty and we will have no trouble backing out onto the pavement again.

Today we will head east along the lake on state route 5 until it rejoins US-20, which will take us all the way to Buffalo, where we will have to decide whether to continue east on 20, or head north towards the lake. We need to be in Webster, east of Rochester, by mid-day Friday.